By Ike Skelton
November 2007
Congressman Ike Skelton (D-Mo) is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He is a graduate of Wentworth Military Academy and the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he received A.B. and L.L.B. degrees. He gave this keynote address at the conference, “Mind the Gap: Post-Iraq Civil Military Relations in America, sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Reserve Officers Association, held October 15, 2007, in Washington, D.C.
Videotapes, a conference report, and other conference papers are available at www.fpri.org/research/nationalsecurity/mindthegap.
Excerpt:
"Still, recently Congress has been the scene of what I consider to be an example of a breakdown in the acceptable roles and norms of civil-military relations. I am referring, of course, to the recent hearings with General David Petraeus on the Iraq War. It is nearly impossible to steer clear of the politics surrounding these hearings, but let us try for a moment to focus on the role the General found himself playing. Congress required the General to report on the progress in Iraq, and Congress required that the report be issued in public. This, I believe, is appropriate.
"However, in the weeks leading up the report, the President indicated that he would wait until the General’s testimony to Congress before he would announce the next phase of his Iraq War policy. The result was that the President largely abdicated his policymaking role and placed the burden of making U.S. war-related policy on the shoulders of a serving military officer. I spoke earlier of the natural constitutional tension that exists between the Legislative and Executive branches. The President should have received General Petraeus’ report in private first, and then issued his policy for the nation. At that time, it would have been more than appropriate to hold a hearing with General Petraeus to determine if that civilian-determined war policy was supportable by the facts presented in his report and his professional military judgment."
Transcript at http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200711.skelton.civilmilitaryrelations.html
