A question of responsibility and duty for our infallible generals

This is something that we'll here a lot about in connection with the Iraq War: The new definition of military valour - saying no to politicians by Max Hastings Guardian 04/03/06.

Intelligence and predictive analysis can never be more useful than the political and service chiefs to whom they are submitted. In Afghanistan today, almost all the smart diplomats, soldiers, journalists and intelligence-gatherers agree that Nato plans to deploy a few thousand troops to support reconstruction amount to gesture strategy of the worst sort. The policy survives only because it represents the highest common factor of Nato nations' willingness to act, a pitiful political figleaf rather than a coherent military operation.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that senior soldiers on both sides of the Atlantic should be braver about saying no. Armed forces are the servants of democratic governments. But their commanders should recognise a constitutional duty to dig in their heels when invited by politicians to undertake operations they perceive as militarily unsound. This the 2003 Iraq invasion emphatically was, because of the US government's refusal meaningfully to address "phase IV" occupation planning.

Cobra II, the new book by Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, which was serialised in this newspaper, makes plain that much of America's military leadership was uncomfortable with the operation, and thought the terms set by defence secretary Rumsfeld quite unrealistic. Yet the doubters stifled their feelings, and the dissenters were sidelined. There was enough ambitious, heedless top brass in the mould of General Tommy Franks to do the business.

A couple of quick comments on this. One is that in theory this is one of the "lessons of Vietnam" that became orthodox truth for the US officer corps. The Iraq War exposed that "lesson" for what it was for our infallible generals: a way to blame the whole Vietnam fiasco on civilian officials like Robert McNamara. Another is, we have to recognize that if a senior officer responsible for commanding some part of a war feels strongly that's it's wrong, misguided or unjust, and feels the need to express those reservations publicly, in practice that means they are either going to be sidelined or resign from the military.

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