Back during the height of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur, one of the most famous and most decorated Generals in American history, was sacked by President Truman for speaking openly and negatively about the President’s decision to limit American military action to the Korean peninsula and not take the war to Mainland China. Whether that military decision was right or wrong, Truman felt, rightly I think, that MacArthur’s open disdain for a Presidential decision once it was made was a danger to the tradition of military commanders being subordinate to civilian leadership and crossed the line from military strategy to foreign policy.
Now, General Stanley McChrystal’s outspoken advocacy for his call for a wider war in Afghanistan are leading many to ask if he too is crossing a line that American military officers have previously been careful not to cross.
In today’s Washington Post, Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman argues that the answer is yes:
As commanding general in Afghanistan, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements. Under law, he doesn’t have the right to attend the National Security Council as it decides our strategy. To the contrary, the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 explicitly names the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the National Security Council’s exclusive military adviser. If the president wanted McChrystal’s advice, he was perfectly free to ask him to accompany Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when the council held its first meeting on Afghanistan this week.
But Obama did not extend the invitation, even though McChrystal was leaving Kabul and could have gone to Washington easily. Instead, Obama asked the general to report to the council via a brief teleconference.
News of McChrystal’s position had been leaked to Bob Woodward and was published in The Post early last week. But it is one thing for some nameless Washington insider to engage in a characteristic power play; quite another for McChrystal to pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy. This is a plain violation of the principle of civilian control.
Along similar lines, Michael Cohen argues that the leaking of McChrystal’s report, which at the very least seems to have come from some source close to and sympathetic to the General, sets a dangerous precedent:
The political implications of such leaking make it that much harder for the President to engage in the sort of deliberate national security decision-making that is required of the commander in chief. Worst of all, it has placed the President in the unusual public position of appearing subordinate to the wishes of his commanding general – Obama’s political rivals have even argued that to deny McChrystal’s request is to “concede defeat.” This practically turns the civil-military balance on its head.
No matter what course Obama adopts on Afghanistan, of perhaps greater concern should be assertive members of the military placing inappropriate political pressure on the President to accede to their wishes.
Jonathan Adler, however, takes a contrary view:
Ackerman’s essay raises some interesting issues, but I wonder if he’s making too much of McChrystal’s comments (as is Cohen). There’s ample precedent for Cabinet Secretaries and other presidential appointees making policy statements in advance of a Presidential decision. While the military is, and should, be different, I also seem to recall other instances in which it was widely known that military leaders disagreed with their civilian leadership, and yet no one saw any threat to the principle of civilian control or the President’s authority as commander-in-chief. Presidents have removed military leaders over strategy and policy disagreements in the past, and no doubt will again, and not every general who disagrees with the President is another General MacArthur.
This is true to some extent, and the true test for McChrystal would come if and when Obama decides to adopt a policy on Afghanistan different from the one that he recommends. If he continues to speak out in public, or leaks through sources continue to voice his disagreement with Administration policy, then he will most assuredly have crossed the Yalu, to borrow a MacArthuer-esque analogy.
So far, then, I wouldn’t say that McChrystal hasn’t crossed that line, but as I’ve said before:
McChrystal is coming very, very close to crossing that line. If he wants to speak out about policy, he should resign his commission and run for political office. Until then, he’s a uniformed officer duty bound to follow the orders of his superiors and the Commander in Chief. Its time for him to shut up and sit down.
Barack Obama is the President, and the right to decide Afghanistan policy lies solely with him, McChrystal ought to know that.
