Opinion: The Military Needs Change by John Sayen

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The Military Needs Change

A multitude of problems await the Obama administration

By JOHN SAYEN


We seem to be living in an age where so much that we thought certain and permanent crumbles into dust before our eyes. Our once robust economy founders while our once cherished personal liberties fade away.

Less apparent has been the ongoing decay and corruption that could lead to a crisis for our nation’s armed forces.

Many of us view our military as the one sound institution we have left. It claims to dominate the full spectrum of conflict from disaster relief to all-out war while remaining apolitical and under constitutionally prescribed civilian control.

Yet its constitutional controls are eroding. Although Congress retains authority over the military budget, it has, since 1950, all but formally abrogated its power to declare war. This has left the president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, with de facto power to take us to war on his own. Most presidents have exercised this power with results that have ranged from disappointing to calamitous.

The press has credited the winding down of our war in Iraq to a modest reinforcement of our troops, called the surge. In reality, it took a Sunni-Shia civil war, Iranian intervention and some hefty bribes to persuade enough Iraqis to break off their hitherto successful insurgency against us.

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