Did You Know - Undermining the Mission

The following is from Joe Klein, Time, 2/19/2007

Mission is a sacred word in the military. When you are given a mission, you are trained to complete it, to keep on trying new tac­tics until the objective is achieved. It is a matter of duty and honor. And so, when politicians criticise a mission, the reflexive military reaction is to assume they are acting dishonorably, putting poli­tics above duty. This is a common attitude in the uniformed milltary, and it deserves a serious response.

And my response is that politicians have sacred missions too. Their duty is threefold: to be judicious about sending the troops off to war, to give the military everything it needs to complete the mission and, if it ap­pears the mission is futile or compromised, to change it or end it. "You have to ask who is really undermining this mission?" says Sen­ator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point graduate. "Didn't the Bush Adminis­tration undermine it from the start by going to war without sufficient cause, without suf­ficient planning, without sufficient equipment for our troops? Even now, I would argue dial the Bush Administration is undermining this surge by focusing merely on the military part of the mission, ignoring the need to reform the Iraqi government, to find a regional diplomat­ic solution and, of course, ignoring the real facts on the ground."