civilian masters...?

"Civilians" means anyone who is not in the military. The President of the United States is never an actively-serving military man, but he is Commander in Chief of the American armed forces.

Civilians control the military.

The military dilemma is whether or not to follow stupid orders.

As a member of the chain of command, starting with the president and moving down to the newest recruit, a military officer is supposed to obey a superior's orders.

On the other hand, some orders are stupid. Hence the dilemma.

Bravo!
I get it!!!

I'm glad Noddy has cleared that up for you.

Military discipline is essential to an effective fighting force. In the heat of battle there is no time for subordinates to question their orders. They must obey even though the order appears to them stupid. Privates and company grade leaders see only what is happening to them, while the General sees a larger portion of the battle. Sometimes, regrettably, it is necessary to sacrifice the lives of many good soldiers in order to win a battle, or preserve a larger portion of the military formation. A private's primary concern is the survival of his buddies and himself; the General is concerned with many thousands of soldiers and the completion of his mission. Being a General, or field grade officer, is one of the most demanding jobs in the military and not everyone can do it.

Even as officers expect instant and unquestioning obedience, so to must they be willing to unquestioningly obey their own orders. This dedication to obedience at all costs, and placing the mission above lives, exists from the lowest to the highest military ranks.

At the highest ranks in the military, a General is privy to information and strategic plans not available to lower ranking personnel. Additionally, by the time one becomes a very high ranking General, they have become accustomed to having their own way, even when that might be obsolete and no longer fully in tune with current military doctrine. In short, Generals tend to be very conservative, risk averse, and they have more than healthy egos. For a General officer to resist, or disagree with a strategy or orders from those few civilians who direct the military is a very dangerous thing. Military coups are a perpetual danger to stable national governments, and almost always they end up being despotic.

So there is an never-ending moral dilemma for very high ranking officers. That is, at what point is it a General's duty to make his disagreement with civilian superiors known? If after making his objections known, when if ever is it morally proper for the General to disobey an order, or act in some way to defeat what he believes is a civilian blunder?

In the U.S. military, the top generals used to interact pretty directly with the President, their ultimate Commander-in-Chief (CNC). Service Chiefs gave direct advice to the CNC, and when the President gave an order, it was direct. That system resulted in terrible service rivalries, and was very inefficient. Duplications of materials, munitions and missions was costly and sometimes resulted in uncoordinated strategy and tactics. The formation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just after WWII was intended to correct those problems. The Secretary of Defense has subordinate secretaries of each of the three services. The top Generals and Admirals now have two additional grade levels between them and the CNC. The President is primarily briefed and advised by the Secretary of Defense and the Security Council. The service chief's ability to impress their own philosophy and military judgment on their services has been eroded, and so their moral dilemma is accentuated. The faults of one system have been corrected to some extent, but as a result new problems are created.

Asherman

It`s a little bit late for me.I have to go to bed.
And I will print your answer to understand better.

Asherman,
CNC(Commander-in-Chief )--> the Joint Chiefs of Staff( The Secretary of Defense )--->Service Chiefs (The top Generals and Admirals)

I make this sequence by implying from your post,is that correct?

CNC (President) --> Secretary of Defense --> Service Secretaries (Army, Navy and Air Force) --> Joint Chiefs of Staff (rotating chairmanship, including Marine Corps)

Blue text denotes civilians. The President is elected, the Secretary of Defense and Service Secretaries all are appointed by the President and serve at his pleasure.

The President also is advised by his Security Council, which consists of the National Security Adviser, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Head of Homeland Security, and the head of the CIA. The CIA is supposed to gather foreign intelligence from the nation's several intelligence agencies. A whole lot of advisers, many of whom may have never served a single day in the military, and whose expertise may be suspect. This system filters much of the Joint Chief's advice so much that some believe that the President is denied the best military advice from his top military professionals. The military is without question subordinate to the civilian command authority, but that authority greatly complicates communication between the military and their CNC.

Congress (House of Representatives and Senate) control the Executive Branch spending. The President submits a budget to the House of Representatives, who construct their own budget proposals. If the President's Political Party has the necessary majority, he usually gets what he's asked for ... more or less. The budget bill is then sent to the Senate where that body constructs its own budget bill. The two legislative houses then confer and generally come to some compromise. Once the budget is passed by both houses, it goes to the President for signature.

The President can sign the bill, veto the bill, of table the bill. If he signs, the bill is approved as written. If he vetoes the bill it is returned to the House of Representative. The House can modify the bill, or try to pass it with a 2/3 majority. A tabled bill (Pocket Veto) automatically becomes law after 10 days or dies if unsigned by the end of the Congressional Session. See U.S. Constitution Article I, Sec. 5.

The budget approved by Congress almost always funds a great many projects unasked for by the President. These add-ons are called "Pork", and they are intended to make the legislature popular with their constituents. Presidents have long argued for a line-item budget to weed-out the Pork and keep the Federal Budget as near in balance as possible. The line-item veto is probably never going to happen because too many folks benefit from making the President accept the whole budget, or veto the whole budget. When the opposing Political Party has a majority in Congress, the budget becomes even more a political football.

An illuminating brief introduction of some major parts of American politics, Ash.

Lust,

I think maybe you should check up your dictionary for the usage of the word "imply".

JB,

I thought that a brief outline of the Congressional budget process relevant to how in our system civilians exercise control over the military. All those Representatives and Senators are elected competitively. The political power of a party depends upon how many seats they win in the Congress. The Congress is a mix of old and young, military veterans and pacifists, rich and poor. Members of the legislature are always looking toward the next election, so they constantly are seeking funds to get re-elected, pander to their constituents, and work to discredit the opposition.

The Democratic Party tends to be socially liberal, and opposed to military spending. The Republicans tend to be more conservative politically, and believe in maintaining a strong military. Back at the end of the last century, Teddy Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy wanted to send the American fleet to sail around the world. Congress said they wouldn't pay for it. Roosevelt ordered the fleet to sail, and they did. They ran out of money after reaching the South Pacific, and Congress passed an emergency bill to complete the voyage.

More recently, the Democratic Party has been agitating for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The Democratic Congress sent their budget to the President containing a timetable that would have forced the President to withdraw quickly from Iraq. The budget was also many times larger than the President asked for due to the many pork projects included. The President vetoed the Congressional budget, even though funding to support the troops was needed quickly. The primary problem was that by imposing a deadline for military withdrawal, the Congress was infringing on the Executive's Constitutional responsibility as CNC. So the budget went back to the Congress, where the Democrats don't have enough power to over ride the veto by a 2/3 majority. Eventually, the budget is working its way back to the President without the timetable constraints, in the meantime a mixed message is sent to the world, and the troops are operating on diminishing funding.

Our military is under civilian control both from the Executive Branch, and at the mercy of Congress for the money necessary to maintain a strong posture at peace or at war. The threat faced by the nation during the Cold War built a strong strategic military capability, but the difficulties in actually using those capabilities greatly constrained them from being used. BTW, that was a good thing in that it prevented an all out nuclear war, but it also contributed to the Vietnam fiasco. After the Cold War ended, this nation followed its traditional suspicion of maintaining a large and expensive military establishment. Spending cuts were modest, but the size of the military was greatly reduced. Intelligence agencies shifted from HUMINT (human intelligence) to less expensive technical sources. Few in either party believed that the U.S. would face another threat similar to the old Soviet Union for a very long time. They closed their eyes to the increasingly aggressive nature of the Radical Islamic Movement that had been attacking Western interests since the end of the Cold War.

That all changed on 9/11, but no one was really prepared to fight such a different sort of conflict/war. The American Public rightly demanded that those responsible be hunted down and made to pay a heavy price for their cowardly attack.

We are still struggling with how best to defeat the terrorists and their propaganda. Our casualties have been modest, but they are magnified by being on television constantly. The American People tend not to see that the enemy in Iraq IS the same Radical Islamic Movement that conducted the coordinated attacks on 9/11. Al Quida is only one constituent part of the larger Radical Islamic Movement, though it appears more effective and sophisticated than most of the others. We've smoked them out, and every day they are being killed ... but that's the big picture, and most folks only see what is immediately before them.

If Lust can work her way through these slightly off subject posts, she will have additional exercise in English and at the same time be exposed to the American political/military system.