<p>“Strange ideas”??- it’s a statement of legal fact that every officer who has served in the Joint Staff or Service staff since 1986 knows full well. Go read the 1986 Defense Reorg Act-(better known as Goldwater- Nichols ) it’s the letter of the law that the Army CoS , the CNO , CMC and AFCoS are specifically excluded from the chain of command- their responsibilities are only as force providers to combattant commanders. What’s strange is not knowing that- I guarantee you that all of the Joint Chiefs know full well that they are not in the chain of command, and that the role of the CJCS is: “the principle military advisor to the President” - note the wording “principle advisor” - not “only” advisor, and not “commander”. In this case- Bush obviously didn’t believe the advice he was getting from his military advisors. No argument that the administration balled up lots of things badly- it would appear that appointing Fallon; Mullen and Casey would fall into that category as well. The administration obviously didn’t want appointment fights in a newly hostile congress- but it would appear that they were more concerned about that than they were about getting flag officers who salute and drive on. Mullen came in talking to Army families about about limiting Army tours to 12 months- while the President was announcing the surge; and Casey was doing likewise while “gloom and dooming” about the Army being “broken” as opposed to focusing on how to win the war (“do more of the same thing” was apparently the Casey strategy.)
It’s pretty naive to believe that the right thing for the 4 star Theater commander to do is just to tell his boss that he needed more troops and more support on the ground and then expect that he just sits there while the CINC sends a different sitrep and priorities up to the White House. At the O4 level maybe you bury your objections when the O6 spins your report- but at the 4 star level you think that’s the right thing to do? Dream on- that’s not what we pay officers for in any service and the President has a responsibiity to dig as deep and as hard as he can to determine what’s going on on the ground- even if his conduit is the retired vice chief of the Army. In fact Bushs biggest failure was not digging past the bureaucratic roadblocks that were being thrown up from 2004-to January 2007.</p>