Military leaders are beginning to play a more partisan - and potentially more troubling - role in politics, said Richard Kohn, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Wednesday.
"What I'm going to do today is worry out loud with you," Kohn warned a relatively small audience in the Richard White Lecture Hall at the latest lecture in the history department's "Weight of War" lecture series. "I could call it two facts and a worry."
Kohn, a former U.S. Air Force chief historian, said that historically, civilian government has had full control of the military and the military, in turn, has had a neutral, nonpartisan role in policy. He worried that military leaders are now becoming too partisan and unduly influencing the sphere of political decision-making on foreign policy.
"It is messy. It is filled with conflict. It does not work," he said of the shift, which he blamed on "ignorant" presidential administrations that have not considered the role of the military. For example, Kohn said President Bill Clinton contributed to the problem by failing to address it, fearing a loss of political capital.
Yet Kohn shied away from endorsing the current political and military situation and its leaders. "I would not confuse or mistake [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld or his arrogance or his belligerence... with civilian control," Kohn said. "He has failed."
Kohn also criticized the Bush administration for its war on terrorism. He implied that the military has influenced a more antagonistic U.S. foreign policy.
"Our diplomacy now consists of, 'You're either for us or against us,'" he said. "This is not really a war, this war on terrorism."
In particular, he described the Department of Justice as increasingly militaristic under Attorney General John Ashcroft, citing the infringement of civil liberties. "[Ashcroft] altered the role of the justice department and the FBI to counterterrorism the day after Sept. 11," Kohn said.
Several audience members argued that Kohn was overly critical of the military.
"I didn't quite buy the full doomsday scenario, that the erosion of civil military is at the brink," said junior Justin Walker, who hopes to teach a house course next semester called "Great Battles and Generals."
Another listener, Robert Huddleston, a retired World War II P-47 pilot, will teach a class called "European Air War: The Fighters" in the upcoming session of the Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement.
"I think [Kohn] was very hard on the military and should have spent more time talking about Congress," Huddleston said.
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