Watada Controversy

Active officers should not make political stands against the civilian leadership because the military, and particularly officers, are supposed to be a-political. Some don't register with a party at all to make this clear. It is one of the strengths of our military that active duty officers refrain from openly political behavior in most instances, and instead serve under the elected/appointed civilian leaders regardless of party.

Pre-commissioning education for officers makes this pretty clear as does ongoing military education, and it is hammered home effectively. Colin Powell was unwilling to run against Bill Clinton with Bob Dole in part because he had served in uniform while Clinton was President. That has been a tradition for a while as well.

Considering the generally monolithic conservative nature of most officers, we should be glad that they do not openly criticize politicians, or it would appear as near mutiny during democratic regimes.

But to reuse an earlier post in this new context:

Bad Intel, No UN Support, Bad War

No, not Iraq...but an example of a bad war where the military accepted the bad decisions of the civilian leadership and executed to the best of their ability, unlike this officer:

We went to war in Kosovo without UN support, with bad intelligence, and we probably killed as many Serbs as Kosovar Albanians were killed by Serbs prior to the war. The UN was never going to support Kosovo, so we bombed without it. There was no threat to us, and the suffering of the Kosovar Albanians was no worse in comparison to the Iraqis.

The actual numbers of pre-war dead in Kosovo are relatively low, but first I think you have to ask yourself how many people you assumed had been killed before we got involved. Estimates of dead before we bombed ranged up to 100,000 (from Defense Secretary Cohen). Actual body count has it at about 4,000 (almost all military age men, but some women and children), with a possible 3,000 officially missing (still almost all men). Tragic, for sure, but it is not genocide. Then the question is is it justified to pre-empt genocide? In any event, even the numbers proposed by Cohen pale compared to the number dead from Saddam.

After Kosovo, the US had a virtual news blackout in major media, but I did find this to explain the contention from reasonably reliable sources:http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/06/columns/fl.mariner.kosovo.06.20/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/781310.stmAnd this post lists news articles from the 80's, when the Kosovar Albanians were the bad guys:http://www.kosovo.com/press1980.html

I also found this interesting. This is the 1999 SOTU speech from Bill Clinton concerning Kosovo, and his justification for it:

All Americans can be proud that our leadership helped to bring peace in Northern Ireland. All Americans can be proud that our leadership has put Bosnia on the path to peace. And with our NATO allies, we are pressing the Serbian government to stop its brutal repression in Kosovo, to bring those -- thank you, thank you, to bring those responsible to justice and to give the people of Kosovo the self-government they deserve.

Sounds like we were bombing them into democracy to me, but I find it interesting that a place that we were to bomb incessantly for 79 days a few months later gets practically nothing from Clinton in the speech. At least George was focused on his preemptive war.

And of course, Kosovo is not a raging democracy yet either.

And, "successful" Kosovo today:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3928153.stm

Kosovo was a preemptive war with bad intelligence, no UN support, and no resolution.

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Many officers were against the Kosovo campaign, and many left the military rather than be involved in that unjust war. But they did not do it in an overtly political way.

My point is simply that in our system, decisions regarding where and when we go to war are for the civilians, not the officers, to make, even if the decision is wrong. If we allow officers to pick and choose the fights they are in, we will only be a step away from having a military coup, since s president without the power to command the military is a president without the ability to protect and defend the United States.

Estate Tax

In response to the following assertion in the Seattle PI:

Senators must choose between the interests and welfare of 99.7 percent of Americans or a tiny group of the superwealthy.

The reason that the estate tax is bad is precisely because it only effects a small minority of the population. When the majority of citizens can require taxes that the majority will never have to pay and only a select few will have to pay it, it is a tyranny, even if those effected happen to be rich. I for one could support a flat estate tax on everyone's estate if it effected everyone to an equal percentage, but I do not support selective taxation on small groups.

It is interesting that so many people who are presumably liberal support a system of tyranny of the majority when it comes to this issue without reflection that much of the civil rights we have today came about by defeating majoritarian self-interest in favor of protecting the minority.

If selective punitive taxation can stand against this group, what other minorities can we target?