-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: The Power Elite C. Wright Mills Oxford University Press©1956 LCCN 56-5427 423 pps. -- Reprint1969-2 -- ----- A Classic. Om K ----- The Constitution of the United States was constructed in fear of a powerful military establishment The President a civilian, was declared commander-in-chief of all the armed forces,, and during war, of the state militia's as well. Only Congress could declare war, or vote funds for military use-and for only two years at a time. The individual states maintained their own militia, separate and apart from the national establishment. There was no provision for a flow of advice from military to civilian chiefs. If there were provisions for violence in the constitution, they were reluctant provisions, and the agents of violence were held to a strictly instrumental role. After the revolutionary generation, the upper classes were not of a military stamp; the American elite did not systematically include among its members high-ranking military figures; it developed no firm tradition of military service; prestige was not rendered to military servants. The ascendancy of economic over military men in the sphere of 'honor' was made quite apparent when, during the Civil War, as indeed up to World War I, the hiring of a substitute for the draft was not looked down upon. Military men, accordingly, on their often isolated posts along the old internal frontier, did not enter the higher circles of the nation. No matter what hardships, and they were often severe, were encountered by those who crossed the hemisphere and no matter how military their expeditions and communities—and in many ways they were for considerable periods definitely camps of war—still those who headed the nation were not stamped with the military mind and the military outlook. And yet, considering the whole of United States history, we are confronted with a rather curious situation: we are told that we have never been and are not a militarist nation, that in fact we distrust the military experience, yet we note that the Revolution led to the ascendancy of General Washington to the Presidency, and that there were bids among certain rejected officers, in the Order of Cincinnati, to form a military council and install a mili-tarist king. Then too, frontier battling and skirmishes had some-thing to do with the political success of Generals Jackson, Harri-son, and Taylor in the Mexican War. And there was also the Civil War, which was long and bloody and split American society across the middle, leaving scars that still remain much in evidence. Civilian authority, on both sides, remained in control through it and after it, but it did lead to the ascendancy of General Grant to the Presidency, which became a convenient front for economic interests. All the Presidents from Grant through McKinley, with the exceptions of Cleveland and Arthur, were Civil War officers, although only Grant was a professional. And again, with the little Spanish-American War, we note that the roughest, toughest of them all-perhaps because he was not a professional-Theodore Roosevelt-emerged in due course in the White House. In fact, about half of the thirty-three men who have been President of the United States have had military experience of some sort; six have been career officers; nine have been generals. >From Shays' Rebellion to the Korean War there has been no period of any length without official violence. Since 1776, in fact, the United States has engaged in seven foreign wars, a four-year Civil War, a century of running battles and skirmishes with Indians, and intermittent displays of violence in China, and in subjugating the Caribbean and parts of Central America.* All of these occurrences may have been generally regarded as nuisances interferring with the more important business at hand, but, at the very least, it must be said that violence as a means and even as a value is just a little bit ambiguous in American life and culture. [* In 1935, the editors of Fortune wrote: "It is generally supposed that the American military ideal is peace. But unfortunately for this highschool classic, the U.S. Army, since 1776, has filched more square miles of the earth by sheer military conquest than any army in the world, except only that of Great Britain. And as between Great Britain and the U.S. it has been a close race, Britain having conquered something over 3,500,000 square miles since that date, and the U.S. (if one includes wresting the Louisiana Purchase from the Indians) something over 3,100,000. The English-speaking people have done themselves proud in this regard.'[4]] The clue to this ambiguity lies in this fact: historically, there has been plenty of violence, but a great deal of it has been directly performed by 'the people! Military force has been decentralized in state militia almost to a feudal point. Military institutions, with few exceptions, have paralleled the scattered means of economic production and the confederate means of political power. Unlike the Cossacks of the Eurasian Steppes, the technical and numerical superiority of the American frontiersman who confronted the American Indian made it unnecessary for a true warrior stratum and a large, disciplined administration of violence to emerge. Virtually every man was a rifleman: given the technical level of the warfare, the means of violence remained decentralized. That simple fact is of the greatest consequence for civilian dominance as well as for the democratic institutions and ethos of earlier times in America. Historically, democracy in America has been underpinned by the militia system of armed citizens at a time when the rifle was the key weapon and one man meant one rifle as well as one vote. Schoolbook historians, accordingly, have not been prone to think about changes in American military institutions and weapons systems as causes of political and economic changes. They bring out military forces for an Indian skirmish and a distant war, and then they tuck them away again. And perhaps the historians are right. But the first armies in Europe based on universal conscription, it ought to be remembered, were revolutionary armies. Other countries armed their populations reluctantly; Metternich at the Congress of Vienna urged the abolition of mass conscription; Prussia adopted it only after her professional army suffered defeats without it; the Tzars, only after the Crimean war; and Austria, only after Bismarck's recruits defeated Franz Josef's troops.[5] The introduction of mass conscript armies in Europe involved the extension of other 'rights' to the conscripts in an effort to strengthen their loyalties. In Prussia, and later in Germany, this was a quite deliberate policy. The abolishment of serfdom and later the development of social-security plans accompanied the establishment of mass conscription. Although the correspondence is not exact, it seems clear that to extend the right to bear arms to the population at large has involved the extension of other rights as well. But in the United States, the right to bear arms was not extended by an arms-bearing stratum to an unarmed population: the population bore arms from the beginning. Up to World War I, military activities did not involve the discipline of permanent military training, nor a monopoly of the tools of violence by the federal government, nor the professional soldier at the top of a large and permanent military establishment. Between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, the army averaged about 25,000 men, organized on a regimental basis, with regiments and companies largely scattered on posts along the internal frontier and farther west. Through the Spanish-American War, the United States Army was militia-organized, which meant decentralized and with an unprofessional officer corps open to much local influence. The small regular army was supplemented by state militias formed into The US Volunteers, the commanders of these troops being appointed by the governors of the, states. In this quite unprofessional situation, regular army men could be and often were jumped to generalship in The Volunteers. Politics—which is also to say civilian control-reigned supreme. At any given time, there were few generals, and the rank of colonel was often even the West Pointer's height of aspiration. 3 Around the old army general of the late nineteenth century, in his neatly disheveled blue uniform, there hang wisps of gun smoke from the Civil War. In the Civil War he had distinguished himself, and between that war and the Spanish-American fracas he had fought Indians in a most adventurous way. The dash of the cavalry has rubbed off on him-even if at times making him something of a dashing imbecile (Remember Custer and the Little Big Horn!). He lives something of the hardy life which Theodore Roosevelt esteemed. He often wears a mustache, and sometimes a beard, and usually he has a certain unshaven look. Grant had worn a private's uniform with unshined buttons and ancient boots and the manner carried on. This old army man has fought up-close: it was not until World War I that an official effort was made 'to conserve trained personnel'; many generals and dozens of colonels were killed in Civil War battles or afterward in Indian skirmishes. He did not earn the respect of his men by logistical planning in the Pentagon; he earned it by better shooting, harder riding, faster improvisation when in trouble. The typical general of 1900[6] was of an old American family and of British ancestry. He was born about 1840 in the northeastern section of the United States and probably grew up either there or in the north central section, in a rural area or perhaps a small town. His father was a professional man, and the chances are fairly good that his father had political connections-which may or may not have aided him in his career. It took him a little more than thirty-eight years to become a major-general from the time he entered the army or West Point. When he came into top command, he was about sixty years old. If he was religious, he probably attended the Episcopal church. He married, sometimes twice, and his father-in-law, also a professional, might also have had some political connections. While in the service, he did not belong to a political party; but after retirement, he may have dabbled a bit in Republican politics. It is as unlikely that be wrote anything as that someone wrote very much about him. Officially, he had to retire at sixty-two; and he died, on the average, at the age of seventy-seven. Only a third of these old army generals had been to West Point and only four others had completed college; the old army did not go to school. But we must remember that many southerners—who had been West Pointers and who had predominated in the old federal army-had gone home to fight in the Confederate army. Sometimes the army general of 1900 had been commissioned during the Civil War, sometimes he had come up through the volunteers of the state militia, sometimes he had personally recruited enough men and then he was a colonel. After he was in the regular army, his promotion was largely by seniority, which was greatly speeded up during wars, as during his jump from colonelcy during the Spanish-American War. At least half of the old army generals had higher connections with generals and politicians. General Leonard Wood, for example, who was a medical captain in 1891, became White House physician, and later, under his friends, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, ended up in 1900 as Chief of Staff. Only three of the top three-dozen army men ever went into business—and two of these were non-regulars. Local merchants in frontier towns often loved this old army; for it fought Indians and cattle thieves and the army post meant money for the local economy. And in larger towns, the army was at times authorized to break strikes. Small boys also loved it. Between the Civil War and the naval expansion under Theodore Roosevelt, the army was more in the public eye and its claims for status were cashed in by the lower classes. But the navy was more like a gentleman's club, which occasionally went on exploring and rescuing expeditions, and the prestige of the navy was among the upper classes. This explains, and is in part explained by, the higher level of origin and more professional training of its officer corps. Apart from the British inheritance of sea power, there was the prestige of Admiral Mahan's theory, linking the greatness of the nation to her sea power, and falling easily upon the ears of Navy Undersecretary Theodore Roosevelt. The higher prestige of the navy, coming to a wider public during the Spanish-American War, has been due to the fact that the skills of the naval officer were more mysterious to laymen than those of the army—few civilians would dare try to command a ship, but many might a brigade. Since there was not, as in the army, a volunteer system—there was the prestige of skill augmented by the prestige of a formal, specialized education at Annapolis. There was also the fact of heavy capital investment, represented by the ships in the naval officer's command. And finally, there was the absolute authority that 'Me Master of a ship exercises—especially in view of the sea tradition of contempt for the deckhand, which, applied to the enlisted sailors, lifted the officers high indeed. The typical admiral of 1900 was born about 1842 of colonial stock and British ancestry. His father had a professional practice of one kind or another; but more important, he was of the upper levels of the northeastern seaboard, more likely than not of an urban center. The future admiral had the academy education plus two years on a receiving ship. He was only fourteen years old when he entered the navy; and if he was religious, he was definitely Protestant. Some forty-three years after he was accepted at the Academy he became a rear admiral. He was then fifty-eight years old. He had married within his own class level. He probably wrote one book, but chances were less that someone wrote a book about him; he may, however, have received an honorary degree after the war of 1898; and he retired from the navy at sixty-two years of age. He had held the rank of rear admiral for only three years; and he died ten years after compulsory retirement at the average age of seventy-two. Even in 1900, the top of the navy was strictly Annapolis, and gentlemanly too. Recruited from higher class levels than the army, residing more in the East, having had better preparatory training and then the Academy, the admiral had also served in the Civil War, after which he slowly rose by avoiding innovation, in personal life or in military duties. Given the meticulous crawl of his career, it was important that he be commissioned early and live long, in order to reach admiralcy before compulsory retirement at sixty-two. It usually took some twenty-five years to become a captain. 'Officers spent so long a time in the lower subordinate grades that they never learned to think for themselves. They usually reached command ranks so late that they bad lost their youth and ambition and had learned only to obey, not to command...'* [*"In December 1906, the age of the youngest captain in the AmerNavy was 55 and the average time spent in that grade was 4.5 years; in Great Britain the youngest captain was 35 and the average time spent in that grade was 11.2 years! The figures for France, Germany, and Japan are similar to the British. 'The same situation was true of the flag officers. In the United States they usually averaged only 1.5 years in that rank before retirement,' but in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, between 6 and 14 years.[7]] >From one-third to one-half of the duty of the top officers was spent at sea, occurring of course mainly while of lower rank. About half of the top thirty-five naval men bad returned at one time or another to Annapolis as instructors or officials. And some took postgraduate work there. But the key to the bureaucratic snafu that has often characterized the navy is that as the ships and the guns and the logistics became more technically complicated, the men who ran them acquired rank less by technical specialty than by seniority. Accordingly, the skipper became somewhat alienated from his ship and had to take responsibility for matters which he did not altogether understand. The bureau heads, who ran the navy, had access to the Secretary, and were often thick with congressmen. But despite the prominent connections, only one adadmiral[sic] of this period went into business, and only two went into (local) politics. Such, in brief, was the civilian controlled military establishment of the United States in the later nineteenth century, with its half-professionalized high officer corps, whose members were not in any important sense of the American elite of businessmen and politicians. But this is not the later nineteenth century, and most of the historical factors which then shaped the military roles within the nation no longer exert the slightest influence on the shape of the higher echelons of America. pps,178-183 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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