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Courage in the Service of Virtue

The Case of General Shinseki's Testimony before the Iraq War

U.S. Air Force Academy, damon.coletta{at}usafa.af.mil

Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee before Operation Iraqi Freedom that several hundred thousand American Army soldiers were needed to occupy Iraq following a successful completion of the war. In hindsight, after many postwar problems occurred during Army and Marine efforts to stabilize Iraq, General Shinseki's action has been almost universally praised as prescient and courageous. This article counters that, from a civil-military relations perspective, Shinseki's testimony was neither sufficiently accurate nor sufficiently respectful of civilian control to serve as a healthy model for future officers. The U.S. civil-military relationship framed by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which preserved the power of individual service chiefs to provide independent testimony, is better served when high-ranking officers adopt a notion of courage in light of military authority delegated to regional combatant commands and in consideration of the political vulnerabilities of their civilian masters.

Key Words: civilian control • Iraq Crisis • Goldwater-Nichols • Joint Chiefs of Staff

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