In the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush said, “The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home. As we make progress on the ground and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels. But those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.” This statement is supposed to be a post-Vietnam War reassurance that military decisions will be made by military commanders, not made by politicians for political purposes.

This statement is an example of learning the wrong lesson from Vetnam. If the president wanted to take a lesson from Vietnam and apply it to Iraq, he might give Colin Powell a call. Remember him? The Vietnam vet, the advisor to many presidents, the name-sake of the Powell Doctrine which said, among other things, we should never go to war without a clear exit strategy?

While the president has his former secretary of state on the phone, he might ask him about this whole notion of leaving decision making about the Iraq war to the generals. Mr. Powell would have to tell the president what he learned in officers’ training – what all military officers learn.

You see, there is a bible, if you will, at the war colleges, and a prophet, so to speak. The bible is On War and the prophet, the author, is Carl von Clausewitz. There isn’t a military officer who cannot quote Clausewitz, “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means.” That is, war is politics by other means, but war is still about politics, about policy.

Clausewitz cautioned – and untold numbers of US military officers have taken it to heart – that “War can never be separated from political intercourse.” Further, “War belongs to policy, it will naturally take its character from thence. If policy is grand and powerful, so also will be the War…” And, “the political is to remain the ruling point of view and the military to be considered subordinate to it.”

Mr. Powell might tell the president, with all due respect, that he is wrong to insist that decision making about the war should stay in the hands of the generals. Details about troop movements here or there, about what units might be rotated to which sectors for maximum impact, and so on, are rightfully left to the military commanders. But the grand conduct of the war – why we embark on a war, what we learn as a war drags on, how we modify our policies to fit reality on the ground, and what our exit strategy should involve – involves political decisions rightfully made by civilian leaders.

When the president insists that he (or the secretary of defense) isn’t responsible for overall troop levels in Iraq, I wonder why not? The president was elected to make these grand decisions of strategy. The president decided to engage in war, he had a plan – didn’t he have an endpoint in mind? What leader would send the military into a war and then tell the generals that they are responsible for the outcome? Is this a failure to plan? Is this a failure to accept responsibility for the ultimate political act – that of ordering our soldiers and marines to kill and to die?

The president might learn something from a phone call with the former secretary of state. He might learn something from those generals that he claims are the ones making the calls about Iraq. He might learn that he should be the one making the calls and taking the responsibility. If Mr. Bush were able to recognize the weight of such responsibility, there might not have been a war in Iraq in the first place.

Let’s end this on a note from Clausewitz: “To leave a great military enterprise or the plan for one, to a purely military judgment and decision is a distinction which cannot be allowed, and is even prejudicial; indeed it is an irrational proceeding to consult professional soldiers on the plan of a War, that they may give a purely military opinion upon what the Cabinet ought to do.” It is time, Mr. President, for you and the vice president and the secretary of defense and the entire Cabinet to accept responsibility for your political decisions.

Laura Neack is Rejai Professor of Political Science at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She is the author of the forthcoming book, "Elusive Security", and a member of the Foreign Policy Leadership Council of Greater Cincinnati. Email to: neacklj@muohio.edu

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