In the upcoming U.S. Congressional elections next week, the Republican Party candidate in my district is a retired U.S. Army Colonel; and the Green Party candidate (believe it or not) is a retired U.S. Navy career man, though I forget now the rank he attained. There are a number of other ex-military people running for office locally, and the same phenomenon is noticeable in many other races I read about across the country. I'll watch with interest this coming week to see how many of these candidates get elected. In the current political environment, their chances are pretty good, as voters seem willing to try almost anything.
I've expressed my view before that notwithstanding the achievements and dedication of our career military force, we lose something of value to our society when we allow the professional military to bear the whole burden of a war, and we also risk our democratic tradition of civilian control of the military by doing so. A professional force, no matter how effective, needs the leavening of exposure to a civilian mindset to avoid becoming an insular warrior caste. That's why we we still need conscription in our society.
It's the caste mindset that concerns me when I see military professionals flocking to run for public office at all levels of government as they now seem to be doing. Gen. McCrystal was not an isolated case. It's known that many military officers, in recent decades, harbor contempt for civilian leaders, and impatience for the messy and sometimes slow nature of decision-making in a democracy. They (the military) think they can do better. A few may; most cannot, because their successes usually have been won in a rather one-dimensional arena that is far less complex than the broader civilian political environment.
The greater danger is that to the extent military professionals quietly (and not necessarily with malice aforethought) assume civilian political leadership roles, we then have the military in charge of the military. And that is a danger. Here too, some may succeed in totally reinventing themselves adopting a purely civilian approach to issues; most will not. And here too, conscription provides the answer.
Civilian society needs leavening too -- by exposure to a military approach -- and the way we've always achieved that was to create a pool of civilian soldiers who learned about military issues and solutions but left the profession after two or three years. When they ran for political office, they remained civilians. The current crop of candidates, I fear, does not.