Bret Devereaux

My own take for why this is a problem has to do less with the abilities of any particular SecDef or fears about the increasing politicization of the military and more to do with long-term norms about control and direction. 1/14 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1336308529695760391 …

There is a trap and it is relatively easy to slide into where the normative assumption (among the public and elites) is that civilian leaders ought not interfere with military leaders due to the latter's superior expertise. 2/14

That risk is particularly acute in a society which generally assigns high moral qualities to service personnel and low moral qualities to politicians (as we do). There is already a lot of 'if only the politicians would let the generals do the job' popular discourse. 3/14