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Seven Questions for the Next Commander-in-Chief
I just came across this item in the Huffington Post, suggesting that the target audience is left-leaning, but I think these questions should be asked — and asked often — of anyone running for the office of Commander-in-Chief. I don’t think I’ve heard any of the candidates offer any kind of specific response to these questions, alone or together, so I thought I’d reproduce them here. Maybe a Ricochet member will get a chance to ask them at a campaign event.
If you do, please share what you learn, because I genuinely don’t know how any of the candidates would answer. The seriousness and sobriety of a candidate’s answers to these questions would be very important to me in deciding for whom to vote:
1. After the war in Iraq, we have seen the problems associated with deploying our forces without a specific endgame and exit strategy. If you believe we should deploy more of our military forces to Syria and Iraq now, under what circumstances would you envision bringing them home?
2. After seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan less than one percent of our population fighting our nation’s battles, which often resulted in multiple tours of duty, what do you think about imposing a draft like we have done in the past?
3. Many military servicemembers state that the current services provided to them as they transition from the military to the private sector are not helpful and do not prepare them for their new lives. How would you improve this process?
4. Studies show that the financial costs alone of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach at least $5 trillion dollars. There were also approximately 7,000 lives lost, 50,000 wounded in action and hundreds of thousands with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. How does that affect your decision to send American troops back into the Middle East?
5. Many senior officers argue that our military cannot solve all of our problems, and that Congress should give the State Department and USAID larger budgets so that they can help countries be more stable on the front end. What is your opinion on that?
6. Our government has clearly not provided many of our veterans the care that they need and deserve. Appeals of their cases can take close to a decade to adjudicate, the veteran suicide rate is through the roof, and Post Traumatic Stress still has a huge stigma attached to it. What specific measures would you take to rectify these problems?
7. Recently 20 national security leaders including General Petraeus, General Casey, Michael Chertoff, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft authored a bipartisan letter opposing efforts to deny refugees from Iraq and Syria access to our refugee program in the United States. If you disagree, please explain why you think these experts are wrong.
These are good questions, and serious ones. If you’ve already heard any the most prominent candidates (of either party) answer these questions in a serious, specific way — in a written proposal or a speech — could you tell me where and post the link? If you think any aspect of a candidate’s voting record would be an answer in itself, could you explain which vote or votes make you think so?
Published in Elections, Foreign Policy, Military, Politics
I live in a one party state (California), so no politician at the federal level is ever available for contact with constituents, and letters to them go unanswered. I am very sorry to say I cannot afford to contact them in the only way available, fund raisers.
Regarding question 2 (the draft), I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the draft age population is not suitable for modern combat, or even support roles such as fork lift operating or potato pealing. The draft is something anti-war movements push because they think it will make people anti-war, but the purpose of the military is to take and hold territory and destroy opponents, so lets not lose sight of that. There is also the problem of women. They would be drafted, but could escape by getting pregnant. That seems inequitable.
Re: The Draft: Would any candidate ever say this?
I didn’t appreciate being drafted at 19, especially since I was headed for a rice paddy. What I have noticed since that time though is that my attitude and outlook on life in general differs in a fundamental fashion from my peers who had luckier lottery numbers or a compliant family physician. My attitude is superior to that of most citizens, a topic for another post. I believe that stems from the concept that true citizenship is earned, not conferred.
Obviously, I don’t subscribe to the fashionable twaddle that making such judgments is somehow unfair; I know what is right and what is wrong and will publicly say so. A thorough reading of the Bible most emphatically doesn’t support the “judge not…” junk analysis floating about in the progressive ether.
Mandatory public service, not necessarily military, should be required for full citizenship, which by definition would include voting rights. Robert Heinlein was one of our most prescient authors and deserves close reading.
Let the stones fly…
This question has two basic interpretations, as far as I can tell.
First, it gives the impression that our units are undermanned and proposes the solution that we have to compel people to serve. It ignores the fact that combat units aren’t undermanned, as well as ignoring that the services have achieved the desired end-strength as mandated by Congress.
The second (although related) interpretation is that the makeup of the military doesn’t equal the population at large and fits with the lefty belief that if politicians and wealthy had to send their kids off, there would be no more war. Also not true, based on simple math – there aren’t enough wealthy families for a sufficient percentage of them to be affected by a draft to cause them to go all peacenik.
Question 2 is just lefty talking points as a Jeopardy! solution.
Oddly, I think that reasoning is backwards. The people I know who most wanted us out of Iraq, no matter what, were not in the military, nor did they have family serving. It struck me — to the extent I could get a read on what they were really thinking — that they were people who felt incredibly guilty that the burden was being borne so inequitably. I think a deep sense of guilt about the unequal burden prompts many people to feel the military shouldn’t be used, period.
I think if there were some form of a draft, it might actually cause an uptick in national sanity, in two ways. It would sober up the contingent of people who are quite cavalier in baying, “Send in the troops!” as a knee-jerk response to any provocation (and might force them to learn something about what this really entails), but it would also sober up a large class of well-meaning people who suffer from an ill-defined sense that they somehow owe it to our troops to oppose necessary military action.
The big problem with my scheme is that the last thing a modern military needs is a bunch of unprofessional, unwilling draftees. But otherwise, I think some sense of a genuinely shared burden would have a salutary effects on our political health.
I think that point of view deserves a fair hearing. My comment above suggest something of the same impression.
I agree with BDB. I couldn’t get past the first question.
Anyone who would say such a thing did not follow the war and did not listen to GW.
Very annoying.
I want to address number 2 specifically.
I think part of the problem with manning is that we no longer fight wars with the intent of winning them outright, but rather we fight wars with the intent on not losing elections. What do I mean by that?
Well let’s take Afghanistan as an example. Why in the hell did it take us a decade to find UBL? Granted he scurried off into Pakistan and thus we took the route of using clandestine means to find him, but a nation with the mindset of fighting our enemy no matter where they are would have rolled into the FATA and crushed the enemy before UBL was able to take up residence in Abatabad. A confident nation would have given Pakistan a week to either destroy al Qa’ida in their territory or gone in and done it themselves telling the world where they can go when the shrieking started.
Since none of that happened, and it became clear that we were fighting a war with the intent on not offending people, of course people stop re-enlisting, of course they then tell their friends not to join, and of course manning numbers begin to slide. I maintain that many of the people in our military–especially enlisted–are not interested in dying in vain. Confidence is inspiring and our society and political leadership does not exude that confidence.
Strange thing is that I think that would have been vastly more electorally popular, too. It seems we neither fight wars with the intent of winning outright nor with the intent of being electorally popular.
Please point out these people who are “baying… send in the troops” – because I have yet to meet them.
Lefties who proclaim we should never have gone into Iraq do so from a position of hindsight (not any sort of actual principle) and remind me very much of the person JS Mill is describing here.
Claire that might very well be true. I just think that when a Republican is in the Oval Office the concerns of the NYTimes editorials and the WaPo seem to orchestrate what the strategy will be. Democrats have a different problem when it comes to military deployments and that is that they hate the US so much they would rather not win, but they can’t be blatant about wanting to lose either. The simple fact that since Korea the only wars we have won have been over in about a week should tell you that until we get a C-in-C who can go before he cameras and tell the media to go hang and tell the American people that we have real threats that need to be dealt with so shut up until the next election, we are never again going to be viewed by regional allies as dependable. That’s just the plain facts. Someone needs to start using the rhetoric of Reagan in terms of building up the confidence in the American people and talk to us like adults when it comes to foreign policy/national security. Oddly enough I don’t even think W. was very good at this either.
Do you want anecdotal or statistical evidence? Here’s polling suggesting 33 percent would “strongly support” sending more ground troops to Iraq and Syria, as opposed to the 32 percent who would “somewhat support.” (I interpret “strongly support” when you have the option of “somewhat support” as meaning, “baying for it” — this on the grounds that sober people should treat the idea of sending in ground troops — anywhere, but particularly there — with caution and reservation, especially considering who the CoC is right now. I would support it under certain clear conditions.)
As for anecdotal evidence, I can pull up a thousand examples from the Internet, but I don’t think that counts as much as polling data. I’ve seen some very unthinking comments, though.
I feel like Cruz has touched on a couple of these by saying that we should not send the military to build up or fix other cultures. I think his exact wording was along the lines of, our military should kill people and break things until a real threat to the US is eliminated and then leave.
The qualifiers for #’s 5 and 7 are incredibly stupid. First, nobody in their right mind thinks that the military can “fix all our problems” and insinuating that anyone is arguing otherwise is just obvious that the person asking the question is doing so in bad faith and out of ignorance. Second, many people have given obvious reasons why allowing this occupation force to take root in this country is dangerous. For instance, one can simply respond “I watch the news about how those people are raping and burning Europe into chaos and it gives me pause”. That should be enough for any reasonably intelligent person but these questions are not from a reasonable perspective. These are purely emotional declarations masquerading as attempts at gaining legitimate information in the form of a question.
You said, “baying… as a knee-jerk response to any provocation”. The poll you cite doesn’t ask about minor provocations (like kidnapping USN sailors) but for a three out of four question stint asks, in order.
We have been at war with ISIS for a couple of years now. We are losing. You cannot win with airpower alone. The response seems actually quite thoughtful to me.
That hardly seems like “baying to send in the troops”; certainly it doesn’t seem like a “knee-jerk” reaction to “any provocation”.
So three retired officers vs serving officers?
They encouraged congress to spend more money on aid, vs the spirit of the question seems to indicate that the State Department should have more money at the expense of the defense budget. Which I do find preposterous that any serving officer would argue.
As to a draft I would do limited civil service drafts. Say the entirety of Dept of Veteran Affairs is now drafted into the army. You are now subject to military discipline and investigation. Sure we cant fire you, but we find out you have been stealing money or murdering veterans we will throw you in Leavenworth.
I also am not a fan of Mike Mullins his blindness on Pakistans intentions borders on the willful if not incompetent.
True, Q1 implies a false leftist premise, but for an interesting reason:
Every so often a specialist term escapes into common conversation, half-understood, and is bandied about as though it proved the utterer wise, but actually leaves the naive less able to judge problems than they would be with the layman’s vocabulary that at least they understand. “Exit strategy” is the most regrettable example of the past 30 years.(Torts lawyers among you may go for “duty of care”).
An exit strategy is a genuinely useful concept (related to ‘criterion of failure’). BUT-and this is the point- *your ES is vital military information* and must never be even hinted at where the enemy might hear. If you do not have the highest security clearance, and you ask a commander “What is your exit strategy?”, you are proving yourself a fool.
It’s a *common* stupid question though, so candidates must be able to deal with it.
Claire is right.
One could, but I’d like to know if the candidates believe this. I’m not surprised that many Americans believe it, given the way it’s been treated in the media. But I’m in Europe. “Those people” are not “raping and burning it into chaos.” I agree that it would be an understandable thing for people to believe, because that’s the impression the media’s giving. But it’s false. Given that I know it to be false, firsthand, I’d like to know whether candidates for the presidency have good judgement about what they read in the media.
This is like watching cat herding. CB, Ed. is working overtime.
Many are responsive answers, but so many want to litigate or toss out slap dash impressions.
Again, these are very good and fair questions. Those who answered the questions. Thank you for helping me understand!
Well, now you’re upping the ante. You didn’t ask for serving officers, did you.
What I want to know — and this may not be what the author of the question meant — is whether they think federal spending on soft-power tools of influence is a good use of money, and if so, whether they think these bureaucracies are up for the job — or whether they think that at this point, they’re a bloated money sink.
You’re changing the question, now. You asked if this was a point of view held by anyone of that rank, not if it was a point of view held by serving officers of whom you’re a fan.
I am open to a draft for national service, but it would be really destructive of the military’s esprit de corp to draft for the military.
My kneejerk reaction to this: absolute, utter nonsense.
To rephrase: certainly not in my experience.
I know many lefties, and I know many who wanted us to get out of Iraq no matter what. None of them have family in the military, though they all know my family does.
To the extent that military members even factored into their opinion, it’s a patronizing pat on the hand and a “ … Oh my God. How’s your son????”
(My sons are fine, BTW. And if either of them get a whiff of a patronizing attitude on any queries, I suggest you duck. Quickly)
I’ve never seen anyone struggling with guilt on either the left or the right. And why should they?
Lefties use their “concern” for the military as cover.
The question is fine as it sits, but a suitable sub for the last clause would be what is your definition of the endgame?
Eric Hines
If we’ve fought the war properly–that is to say, it was thrust onto us, and we destroyed the attacking nation–it certainly would behoove us to rebuild it, so we control how it’s rebuilt.
As you say, though, the questions of whether we should, and how, are for Congress to decide, with the President’s signature on the law; it’s not for any place in the Executive Branch to determine unilaterally. Especially after the fact.
Eric Hines
Nothing stops the candidates from pushing back against the assumptions underlying the questions. I do that all the time; these candidates are orders of magnitude smarter than me.
It would be instructive to see whether they push back, waffle, or walk into the trap. The world is full of landmines and traps; there’s no point in coddling the candidates at this stage.
Loaded questions shouldn’t be the only ones asked, but there’s nothing wrong with throwing some at them. The winner will have to deal with the Left all the time; I want to see how they deal with the Left before I’m stuck with one of them.
Eric Hines
Hardly Mr. Hines. I will stack you up against the “strongest field in years…” any day.
You’ve been getting into too much of Baby Kim’s stock, Brent.
Eric Hines
I’d guess your experience would be different than mine because your sons are in the military, which probably makes people who feel the way I described hesitant (at least, I’d hope) to talk about their feelings about this in front of you. I mean, it could hardly be more self-centered, if you’re someone who suffers from deep guilt at the thought of the burden being shared unequally, to walk up to you — or your sons — and say, “I just feel so bad for me, because I feel like there’s an unfair burden on you.”
Even though I think that’s probably the underlying thought process.
I’ve probably discussed this with a very limited number of people compared to you and most people on Ricochet, so I’ll defer to those who’ve had these conversations more often. But usually, unless I’m talking to ravening idiots who think we shouldn’t have a military at all — and I do my utmost to avoid talking to those people, period — the conversation goes something like the one I was thinking of when I made that comment.
A while I got into one of those discussions with my aunt. By “one of those discussions,” I mean, “one of those conversations about politics that you know you shouldn’t get into, because you don’t see this member of your family very often; you know you won’t change her mind; and you don’t want to ruin a rare chance to catch up with her — but you just can’t let the stupidity go totally unanswered.” The subject was, precisely, pulling our troops out of Iraq. This happened exactly as we were doing it, and while even I didn’t have the imagination to see just how bad a mistake it would prove, I was sure it was a mistake and that it would have grave repercussions.
I don’t remember what prompted it, but she shook her head and casually said, “Thank God we’re finally getting them out of there,” as if it was just obvious that any sensible person would feel that way. She’s a very nice woman. She’s not at all stupid, or frivolous, but she’s been working hard all of her life, busy raising a family, and she’s never had a chance to really learn a lot about Iraq. She lives in the heart of California la-la land. A woman with a big heart, and not an obnoxious, doctrinaire leftist, just someone who doesn’t pay close attention to what’s happening in the rest of the world, and sort of standardly-indoctrinated in California political pieties, by default.
She reads what I write about the region sometimes, so she says things like, “I know you don’t agree with me about this, and I know you know a lot more than me about the Middle East than me, so I respect your views, but … ”
I took the bait, and tried to explain why I thought withdrawing the troops would be a mistake. Even as I was speaking, I knew I was using language that wouldn’t connect with her — phrases like “regional stability,” “forward basing,” “Iraqi security forces,” “signal of commitment” … and I also used words that I now know never to use when discussing the region with Americans who don’t think we have any business there: Shiite factions, Sunni factions, Kurds … These words freak Americans out and make them think, “What on earth are we putting our noses in that for.”
I sketched out what I thought were solid local, regional, and international reasons to feel very uneasy about this decision. To which she said, and I quote, “But they’ve been doing back-to-back tours, we can’t keep doing that to them and their families. It doesn’t make sense, Iraq’s not a threat to us.” She mentioned someone she knew at the gym whose son hadn’t spent time with his family in years (I can’t exactly remember how long, but obviously, she’d been speaking to someone who was unhappy with this.)
I thought I discerned a hint in her voice the old chickenhawk accusation– “So easy for you to say you’re willing to deploy someone else’s sons forever.” And I’m pretty sure I heard in her voice a deep fear of being one — a chickenhawk, that is — someone who’s willing to let other Americans pay any price, and bear any burden, for gobbledygook like “Shiites.” Stability in Iraq? Why should that be so important to me, in California, that other Americans should die for it? And who am I to say they should?
And in my experience — which, again, is probably much more limited than yours — this kind of view isn’t only widespread on the left, it’s also pretty common on the right. And it comes from the right place, I think: A sense that it’s morally wrong to send other people into harm’s way to achieve an abstract foreign policy goal that you don’t even really understand.
I do fault Bush for this: Among the responsibilities of the office is explaining, to the public, why a war is necessary. I think he did a remarkably bad job of that. My reason for saying this is that if you ask a random sample of Americans what caused the Second Gulf War, they’re almost always unable to give an answer that’s in essence chronologically accurate, at least. That speaks for itself.
Claire: It’s late. I’ll read your response again tomorrow, but what in the hell do you mean by the burden being “shared unequally?”
Because I am still getting a whiff of patronization from you, and, for that matter, from your aunt.
Who do you think is in our military? Son #1 could have gone to any university – but he chose USNA.
I could write for days about his peers at USNA; I guarantee you that you’ll have the opportunity to vote for at least one of them. These are guys who had every opportunity, and chose to serve.
As for son #2, who enlisted, every guy wants to hire him and every woman wants to date him.
When I read comments like yours, and your aunt’s, it implies that these guys had a choice between 7-11 and the military. Trust me. That is not the case.
I have fed these guys. They have slept on my couch. They don’t appreciate you, or your aunt, opining about their back to back tours. They are men. Men who knew what they were signing up for. And they certainly recognize that foreign policy shouldn’t be based upon their individual circumstances.
Is it easy? No. Does it suck? Yes.
When son #2 called me after weeks of training in the field, he said: ” Oh my God. Mom, it sucked. It was so awesome.”
To feel sorry for them and pity them is to not respect them.
p.s. I share your frustration with W’s lack of communication – he could have done a much better job explaining to us why war was necessary.
But at the same time I am very frustrated that the necessity for war be determined by “public opinion”.
p.p.s. I couldn’t help but notice that my comment “Lefties use their “concern” for the military as cover” was cut from your comment.
I have thought about that comment of mine all day, and I stand by it.
I don’t doubt for a minute that there are some that who are truly concerned and appreciate our military. You know who those people are? The ones who leave anonymous Christmas cards on my porch addressed to each son with a $50 bill enclosed. Or the guys who insist on paying for son #2’s haircut whenever he shows up at a barbershop.
My lefty friends, on the other hand, grip my hand with faux sincerity, enquire as to their well being, then vote for big government candidates that ensure malfeasance and poor service at the VA and a muddled and confused foreign policy.
I agree with you. My argument isn’t that she should feel this way, it’s that she does feel that way, and I suspect the sentiment is widespread.