Our Ongoing Crisis In Civ-Mil Relations -- Al Franken Edition Posted by David Shorr

I am taking the liberty of glomming onto adding to Michael's continuing series on civ-mil relations. His last installment takes a step back to keep the revelations from Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings in perspective -- mainly by highlighting more significant manipulations of the Afghanistan policy debate. I saw Sen. Al Franken mentioned as one of the high-level visitors whose buttons the Army's info operations specialists tried to push, which prompts me to recount relate an episode from the 2008 senate race.

During the campaign, the constant refrain on Iraq from then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman was that he took his cues from the commanders on the ground. In June 2008, Al decided to call Coleman out for getting backwards the vital question of who's actually in charge. In a conference call covered by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's politics blog, Franken pointed out that "in our country … the generals on the ground execute policy to the best of their considerable ability." The ultimate deciders for questions of the nation's wars are, of course, the people's elected leaders. Civics book stuff, basically.

I'm sure Al is hardly alone in grasping the difference between, on the one hand, respect for the military advice of service members and appreciation for their dedication, and on the other, the sober responsibility for deciding what missions they will be given. This just seemed like a good moment to revisit the underlying principles of policy making. 

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"he 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium brought together public diplomacy and strategic communication practitioners from the State Department, the Defense Department, the Agency for International Development, and other governmental and non-governmental groups, including academia, media, and Congress for a first of its kind discussion. The goal to have a frank and open discussion on the foundation and structure America's global engagement was achieved."

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