[smc]

Originally Posted by tslust

True! Granted as smc points out, those are just snippets of those speaches. However one can not deny that there is a lot of, at the least, distrust between obama and the military. I have spoken with quite a number of military personnel, including dozens of officers. Almost all of them were extremely concerned and distrustful about having to serve under obama. obama has repeatedly promised to slash the military budget (Now mind you, I believe there is a lot of overspending in the military.) also he has shown blatant disregard to military decessions - for example, he wouldn't give the order for the Navy SEAL snipers to shoot the Somali pirates and it took obama about three months of "study" to approve a fraction of the requested troop increase.

A lot of the rank and file I've spoken to are concerned about the possibility of being ordered to engage in oerations against US civilians (hence NDAA). I have always refered them to the decesion that was passed down from the Nurrenberg Trials, that a soldier does not have to follow an order which is illegal.

Hearsay evidence of a "distrustful" military aside, it seems to me that independent of whether it is Obama or someone else, having a president who does not routinely say or imply (as Bush did, and as Romney does) that he will simply go along with whatever the "commanders on the ground" advise is not only what the Founding Fathers intended by having a civilian-led military, but a good system of checks and balances. I state that without taking a particular side on shooting Somali pirates or increasing troop sizes, which are certainly questions about which thoughtful consideration could certainly be given.

As for operations against U.S. civilians and the NDAA, I think it's safe to say that Obama is simply continuing George W. Bush's terrible policies. For instance, the the Obama administration argues that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution permits the detentions of United States citizens. Bush and Obama applied AUMF to authorize their use of indefinite detentions around the world. The difference today? NDAA codifies this into law.