Michael Mullen Quotes
I'm not a policy and a strategy guy. I'm - you know, the military basically supports what the president wants, the decisions that he makes.
Mullen, Michael. Interview by Fareed Zakaria. GPS, CNN, 2011.
The President told McNamara that if the administration does not send the troops the Generals want, they will be blamed for any military failures that occur. If they do send all the troops that the Joint Chiefs wanted, they would be going far beyond the limits that the Defense Secretary recommended and the President would have preferred. JBJ felt he really had no political choice. He authorized the wanted troops further escalating the war. See his special assistant’s question about that decision in {617151}.
Actually, there are many in politics who to this day castigate Truman for his decision, but for Bloomberg’s generation and before, anyone would have pushed the button. And there are some who still fault Obama as technically, the U. S. had no right to violate Pakistani airspace and kill a resident of their state without any due process in the U. S. or Pakistan. Bloomberg would have easily pushed that button, but there are many officials who warned against it, and earlier Presidents—George W. Bush and Bill Clinton who did not authorize assassinations in foreign (allies) countries.
even though in this case the objective The State Department, the Defense Department and most important President Kennedy had decided to get rid of Diem. Most of the Central Intelligence Agency thought that this was a very unwise policy, because Diem was a known risk, and the people who would replace him and their talents and policies were unknown. The negatives of Diem—the facts that he, a Christian, was persecuting the majority Buddhists, was totally corrupt, and not a very good leader was less distressful to the CIA than to the President and the other agencies as the intelligence agency frequently not only tolerated “offensive” allies, but actually employed them including war criminals. Another importance of this quotation is that it shows that it was by no means certain that the CIA would always follow the orders of the President and the government policy makers. Colby, who was not the agency director at that time but was the head of the South East Bureau, was one high level official who argued that the policies should always be followed even if they were unwise or foolish. Another importance of this quotation is that it illustrate a common error that administrations are frequently forced to make: making a policy decision to eliminate a problem while not having much of an idea of what the alternative or consequence would be when the policy is implemented. The Syrian Civil War in 2013 was a good example. The Government side appeared to have used Chemical Warfare on Civilians and public opinion demanded that we do something. However, having a no-fly zone or any of the alternatives to prevent (punish) the government for the Chemical Warfare would strengthen the rebel side which was made up of numerous factions—some of which were known Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and jihadists. If the balance of power were tipped toward the rebels, the consequence for the American national interests were unknown—just as the consequence of ousting Diem was unknown and turned out to also be bad and was probably worse.
Michael Glenn Mullen is a retired United States Navy admiral, who served as the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2007, to September 30, 2011.
