John Abizaid Quotes
I think you also understand that one of the key things that's got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control and respectful of its own people.
Abizaid, John. Interview with Wolf Blitzer. CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, 14 Mar. 2004.
In principle few disagree. However, in practice the norm of American polity is that the civilian leaders must consult the military and or intelligence leaders and take their advice seriously. If they President and his civilian leadership to not take the advice, they pay a heavy political price as there is a sometimes contradictory norm that says that you must allow the military experts to run the battles. In the given case, the Iraq War, the President and Vice President made the decision to invade Iraq. However, if we believe them literally, they were heavily influenced by the intelligence agencies who assured them that Iraq had a nuclear weapon about to be completed. It was a “slam dunk” in the words of the CIA director— {633093}. JFK as a young president did not feel that he could override the CIA and DOD people who had assured him that the Bay of Pigs lading would trigger a massive uprising in Cuba. He was misled but had to take the responsibility for the fiasco where not a single person in Cuba rebelled. The President can and should override the best military advice when it is wrong, but how does he know? If he does, he always pays a short term price—even if he is right, for that is not clear for some time. Politics in a democracy is not easy in a democracy.
Civilian control of the Military did not just pop in to the Constitution 11 years later. This and many other fundamental ideas had come from the State Constitutions and other documents.
Many of the fundamental principles of government that were in the United States Constitution, were already in the Constitutions of different states. Vermont had a substantial number of them. When we speak of the Constitution as a “revolutionary document” it was to the rest of the world but not to many Americans who had these concepts in their state constitutions and had been living with them for some time.
The irony is that it is just for the lack of this fundamental principle that Napoleon eventually became the Government and the Military in France.
His statement was on the issuance of Executive Order 9981 which outlawed military segregation and granted equal treatment and opportunity to all service members regardless of their race:
Arias abolished the army in Costa Rica.
America is almost unique among nations where the military has never been a force that either dominated or controlled the government or acted independently from it. The Founding Fathers knew well the history of Europe and other nations, and built many checks into our Constitution and our traditions with George Washington, setting the example for American military men forever after.
In 1776 General Charles Lee imposed a loyalty test on inhabitants of New York in the name of the new government. Four distinguished public men wrote this letter.
The only soldier ever so honored
John Philip Abizaid is a retired United States Army general and former United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander who served as the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2019 to 2021.
