The Army Chief of Staff on civilian gun control

General Raymond Odierno is the chief of staff of the United States Army.  As such he is the institutional head of the army.  He is not the political head of the army.  That vestigial role is fulfilled by the civilian Secretary of the Army who is normally a politician of some sort.  It is long understood in the United States that active duty army officers, and especially the chief of staff will scrupulously eschew any intervention in political matters.

Odierno appeared today on "Morning Joe" the New York City chat show that reflects the mentality of that most prominent of American "fantasy islands."  He had clearly been dispatched there to rail against the sequester, much as Susan Rice was sent to her doom on the morning Sunday newsies.  His appearance against the sequester was unfortunate.  The resolution for sequestration is a political matter.  The chief of staff should not be appearing on national TV (well, MSNBC) seeking to influence a civilian political decision, but he did so.  This is a sadly degenerate time in US national life, and any sense of what is appropriate seems to have been lost. 

To make matters worse, Zbig's daughter, Mika, pressed Odierno for his views on gun control legislation for the general civilian public.  She wanted to know if he favored registration, banning of "assault weapons,"  etc

The appropriate response for him would have been to say that he had no role in such civilian political matters and would not comment.   Instead, he seemed to become confused between 1 - gun control for private ownership within the army and 2 - civilian gun control generally.  As a result he ended by seeming to endorse Mika's obsessions.

This man sits in George Marshall's chair?  pl

 

Comments

[Hank Foresman]

Pat, the Army's loss was the joint force gain when Gen Dempsey was elevated to CJCS. Big Ray is a lightweight and I have it on good authority that he does not understand he is the CSA and not the Commander of the Army...moreover I am not sure he understands the SECARMY is the one who is responsible. Of course most in uniform have never bothered to read Title 10, that is why they stupidly write it as Title X.

[turcopolier]

Hank

It was noticeable that he kept talking about "my this" and "my that." pl

[Medicine Man]

Words fail me. How does that response make any sense? Just to have a "response"? That just sounds like a way to generate pissed off people for the infantry and marines to watch out for on the next patrol.

[turcopolier]

MM

I am trying to compare this stupidity to VN. Its a long time now but I do not remember our firing into a population center unless there was ongoing fighting in the place and the fire support was need for troops in contact. That doesn't mean that some dumb f---k door gunner didn't occasionally do something stupid. I remember telling one kid that if he dropped another can of coke into a village he would go with it. pl

[Tyler]

It didn't but there you go. He was totally against any sort of COIN until he saw Petraues' star rise, and then he was all about it. The man is a gloryhound & rank seeker, plain and simple.

[Oofda]

Kimberly Kagan wrote a haigoraphy on Odierno. This is what Philip Giraldi said about it:

For the Weekly Standard she wrote a hagiography of the plodding General Raymond Odierno called “The Patton of Counterinsurgency” which might well be considered a comedy piece but for the fact that it was serious.

[Alba Etie]

Oofda
The Kagan clan are nothing but paid propagandist for the neocons 'forever wars " . I skimmed that piece Kimberly wrote re Odeierno -it read like a Firesign Theater bit.

[Alba Etie]

Hi Tyler
Good to see you back here. Are you all being affected by the sequester yet ? And what is your take on the detainees released recently because of budget constraints - and will more be released ?

[oofda]

Alba Etie,
Right, that was Mr. Giraldi's point. Just check the title "The Patton of Counterinsurgency". What have the Kagans ever done to be considered 'military experts' is beyond me. Neither served in the military or the intel services. Fred taught Napoleonic strategy at West Point, and somehow I have a hard time connecting that to being accorded an expert on modern military strategy. While both might be fine academics and historians, they have no background or experience in modern military life. Plus, as far as I know, neigher speake Arabic, Pushtu, or Dari, so I question their being accorded expert status on Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Medicine Man]

One would think that a general should know better than a door gunner but I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.

I have to ask though: what is a "can of coke"?

[turcopolier]

MM

You are familiar with Coca Cola? pl

[Tyler]

Thank you for the regards, Alba.

Right now we're looking at a 30% pay cut between our avaliability pay being looted and taking a mandatory furlough day. I've already started the paperwork to take up part time work as a boxing trainer, as well as selling the goods from the homesteading I've been doing to make up the pay.

The cuts are totally political in nature: our office is taking a $210 million dollar haircut, while the sister agencies are getting $30 million and $19 million dollar cuts, respectively. The release of illegals is so much bullshit I can't think of it without my blood pressure spiking. We're catching them and King Janet is releasing them.

I believe they call it the "Washington Monument Syndrome" in DC, because the minute someone talks about budget cuts the first thing some genius screams is WELL THEN WE NEED TO CLOSE ALL THE PARKS instead of defunding stupidity like cigarette smoking machines or the "virtual fence" nonsense (10 billion and nothing to show).

Whatever. I'm just hoping I can buy this ranch before my VA loan gets affected.

[Tyler]

You would think, but the officer corps has funny ideas about things nowadays. I should really finish my Tal Afar story.

[Alba Etie]

"virtual fence " thats an oxymoron ..

[Alba Etie]

oofda
I would be very interested to know how much the clan Kagan actually influenced command decisions in Afghanistan.

[Medicine Man]

Apologies -- thought it was a figure of speech.

[oofda]

Offda in reply to Alva Etie

I have read that in Aghanistan they went down to subordinate units and provided 'suggestions' to the unit commanders that were not in accord with orders from their superiors. As reported in the Post:
"They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses."

[kao_hsien_chih]

The most visible programs get first cut when there is a fight over the budget in Washington, in apparent effort to convince the voters that the problems are "really" serious. Of course, much of the alleged budget problem is actually more fictitious than real (the closest thing Cheney ever said to the honest truth is "deficits don't matter," b/c a lot of current US debts are really on paper only. This is not to say that the problems in the long run aren't real, but they don't need to be addressed so urgently.). Of course, both Republicans and the Democrats are in on this con together and they want to convince us that we need to swallow cuts in gov't services and/or tax hikes...