Commander-in-Chief: McCain vs Clinton
I was surprised a few months back when President George W. “The Decider” Bush again changed his rhetoric about what lies ahead in Iraq. Instead of saying that when the Iraqi troops stand up, we’ll stand down, or that when we win in Iraq, the troops will come home, as he has said in the past, he stated that General Petraeus will decide when and how fast our troops will withdraw from Iraq.
I found that to be quite astonishing, given as how throughout his presidency he has sought to burnish his reputation as a decisive commander-in-chief, one who makes the final – if bad -- decisions. Perhaps, at a time when the results of the surge and new military leadership were largely unknown, he was more interested in being able to deflect blame for any failure of the surge to work as expected back on Petraeus, than he was in promoting himself as a decisive decision maker.
Under the normal scheme of things, Petraeus reports to Admiral Fallon, the Central Command unified commander, who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Gates, with a dotted line type of relationship to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen. Secretary Gates reports directly to the President.
It is in this context that I did a double-take when I heard Senator McCain recently say the same thing as Bush, that in his administration Petraeus would make the decisions about troop withdrawals from Iraq. Petraeus’s recommendations should be carefully and fully considered by our commander-in-chief, no matter who he or she might be, but the military chain of command should be honored. Fallon, Mullen and Gates should all weigh in on the issue of troop withdrawals from Iraq. There are many factors outside of Petraeus’s purview that come to bear on a decision affecting troop levels in Iraq.
What was McCain thinking? If some other candidate made the same statement, I would excuse it, but I can’t do so with McCain, the presidential candidate with the greatest military experience and expertise.
Senator Clinton, on the other hand, clearly understands the military chain of command. She says the first thing she will do as president is to direct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop an Iraq withdrawal plan, the implication being she would review that plan, modify it as she felt necessary, then direct the Secretary of Defense to carry it out. That’s the right way of changing military strategy.
