Why is civilian control of the military so important?
When you look back at the firing of General [Douglas] MacArthur, President Truman writes in his memoir that civilian control of the military “is one of the strongest foundations of our system of free government. Many of our people are descended from men and women who fled their native countries to escape the oppression of militarism.” The importance of it really comes from the founding of our nation, [similar to] the separation of church and state. How rare is it for retired generals to be critical of an ongoing war? It’s pretty rare. The impetus for it comes from the fact that after the war in Vietnam, it seemed like the generals at the time, both in and out of the service, had been too quiet. By going along with the escalation of the war, with a policy that was neither pull out nor all-out, their silence had actually been as written in the book Dereliction of Duty a failure of responsibility. My guess is the memory of that, which still probably haunts the military, creates an atmosph
