Military Review English Edition September-October 2013 | Page 57

THE APOLITICAL MYTH opportunities. Just as a select few captains and majors immerse themselves in the American legislative process on Capitol Hill through the Army Congressional Fellowship Program, so too ought we send such liaisons to the legislatures of our closest allies, certainly to the Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand Parliaments. The same could be done at the state level with National Guard officers completing fellowships in a state legislature or governor’s office. Likewise, the Army should expand its Interagency Fellowship and create similar programs with allies’ counterpart civilian agencies. Just as a U.S. Army interagency fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development gains a greater appreciation for the complexities of working across departments, so too would a multinational fellow learn the difficulties of working across national boundaries in the British government’s Stabilisation Unit or Department for International Development. Finally, for regionally aligned brigades, senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and officers should habitually rotate and embed as one-year liaisons in the units of the countries alongside which those brigades would likely deploy on contingency operations, developing an understanding of the domestic context in which those troops serve and bringing such expertise back to the liaisons’ home-station brigades. This exhortation for political understanding must come with caveats. “To reject Huntington’s ideas of sequestering issues of policy from those of military administration and operations is to open the way to a military that is politicized and, by virtue of its size and discipline, a potentially dominant actor in the conduct of foreign and international affairs.”35 Cohen’s warning, though, returns to the term “political,” and this is where the distinction between political understanding and political involvement is crucial. In no way does this essay argue for anything that undermines the norm of civilian control of the military inherent in the American political system. The legal limits on free speech for service members have been upheld in courts of law and the degree of permissible participation in domestic politics must remain sacrosanct if elected civilian leaders are to be able to trust the military as an institution following a change of administration. Just as a subordinate officer salutes and follows orders once a decision has been made regardless of personal opinion about the order (so long as it is a legal order), so too must the military salute and obey its civilian leadership, regardless of the outcome of an election. But equally, just as a commander must understand the higher commander’s intent, the military must understand ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????@????????????????????????????m??????????????????????t????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????e??????????????????????1????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????t??=?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????T?L??????????????????????????5H()9=QL(??Q??????T?L?? ?????M???????????????????????A??????????@????Q?????]????????? ??T?L?????????A??????=??????mA=t?M????????????????????????????%??????????????????????????????????I????????A??????????I@?????? ???????????1??????????]????????? ??A