[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 107 (Friday, June 29, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8733-S8734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CONFIRMATION OF GENERAL LUTE

  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, yesterday, this body confirmed General Lute 
of the U.S. Army to be a Deputy National Security Adviser to cover the 
operations that are ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. I voted against 
General Lute.
  I will explain why I voted against General Lute because I believe 
there is a pretty important principle at stake

[[Page S8734]]

with respect to civil-military relations that I think has been ignored 
over the past 20 years or so. I have no problems with General Lute's 
qualifications. There was a letter from White House counsel on the 
issue of constitutionality, which indicated there is no constitutional 
preclusion from a uniformed officer serving as a political adviser to 
the President. I found that legal opinion incomplete.
  We should understand that the legal opinion came from the counsel to 
the President. We could not exactly have expected that he would have 
said anything otherwise. But I find it incomplete in the sense that it 
did not address the true dangers if we continue to do this as we have 
been over the past 20 years.
  The danger to our system is this: The U.S. military is a decidedly 
nonpolitical organization. I grew up in the military. At the time I was 
growing up, my father would not even tell me how he voted because he 
believed it violated his duty in terms of being a nonpolitical arm of 
the U.S. Government.
  The difficulty, when a President brings an Active-Duty military 
officer inside the room, in an area where they are giving political 
advice--not military advice but political advice--unavoidably is that 
this particular individual then becomes a part of a political 
administration. If they keep the uniform on, when their tour is done 
and they go back into the military, they are inseparable from the 
political administration in which they served, particularly in the eyes 
of other military people.
  So two things happen: One is you have a political entity inside the 
U.S. military that, in some ways, threatens open dialog inside the 
military because now you have a former member of a particular 
administration inside the uniformed circle.
  Here is a good parallel. I was Assistant Secretary of Defense and 
then I was Secretary of the Navy. Let's say we allow military people 
who become Secretaries of the Navy to go back into uniform and compete 
for promotion among other uniformed people. It is a very difficult 
thing in terms of how it affects the neutrality of the American 
military, and also it creates, in many military people, the notion that 
they have to become political in order to succeed. We don't want that.
  I would have voted in opposition to the other individuals who were 
named by Senator Warner yesterday as people who have served in 
administrations and then returned to the military, including Colin 
Powell, whom I respect personally; General Scowcroft, whom I admire 
greatly; and, quite frankly, the sitting Director of the Central 
Intelligence Agency today.
  I believe any uniformed officer who agrees to serve as a policy 
adviser inside an administration, with political implications to that 
job, should agree to take the uniform off and not return to the active 
military. I intend to pursue this over the coming years. This isn't 
related directly to General Lute. It is a principle that I think we 
need to establish here in the Congress.

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