Inconvenient civilian control of the military

It's hard to argue with people who have been maimed or lost family members in the war in Iraq.  Whether it's Cindy Sheehan who uses her son's death to seek an end to the war, or other's who use their loved-ones' deaths to justify continuing the war, attacking their arguments is always met with a "they earned the right to take position 'x', so leave them alone."

Someone (I forget who) once said "war is a continuation of politics by another means," or something like that.  I can see no valid reason why participating in one aspect of political action (e.g. war) gives one a greater insight into the policy underlying that extension of political thought than, say, me, or anybody in congress.

With that in mind ...

The other day I began seeing these commercials here in Tennessee (I assume they are elsewhere around the country).  (I won't slow your load time by embedding them here).  I won't get into the details of each ad and why any particular ad is mind-boggling in both its naivete and outright stupidity.  However, one consistent theme demands comment.

My daughter just turned 12.  While watching these ads, she hears these people say, using different wording, that politics, and by extension politicians, should not be deciding whether the war continues.  She looked over at me and said "but isn't that how it's SUPPOSED to work!?"

Now, she's 12, and she apparently understands the fundamental concept of civilian control of the military - namely that the military does what the civilians, through the politicians, say.  They don't go to war without political okay - and they come home when the politicians say so.  The military doesn't get to decide when and where it's going to fight.  The military is the tail - it is not the dog.

"Don't play politics" with the military is a resounding theme in these ads - and one that is precisely wrong in both its conceptual foundation and its pragmatic demand.  War is exactly that - a political game.  It's very function is to serve as a tool of politicians and as one extension of foreign policy.  And just as it is the right of the politicians to use that tool, it is no less their right to withdraw its use.

Freedom's Watch, the organization sponsoring these ads, is frightfully nearer the political philopsophies of Stalinists and Communists than freedom-loving Americans.  To even harbor, for a moment, the thought of relinquishing civilian control of the military (even as such philosphy is phrased in terms of "don't act") is the first, clear step toward dictatorship and a shift to the far-left side of the "J curve" (which I'll discuss in another post).

All freedom loving Americans should watch Freedom's Watch, and make damn sure they don't gain a foothold anywhere that matters.  "We have met the enemy, and he is us."