Combat vet Duckworth worried Congress is ignoring importance of civilian-run military

Personally, I am getting a little annoyed at the second guessing going on with the fact that some of the choices for the Cabinet are former retired officers. I am a retired officer and I am quite capable of performing the tasks required of me in a civilian world, promoting the goals and objectives of any organization I choose to work for.

The Washington Post led with this article today (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-hires-a-third-general-raising-concerns-about-heavy-military-influence/2016/12/07/a6273fbc-bca0-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.b0fb1a330aa2) and I am deeply disturbed about this specific quote from the article made by Sen. Chris Murphy: "Each of these individuals may have great merit in their own right, but what we’ve learned over the past 15 years is that when we view problems in the world through a military lens, we make big mistakes.”

How did we learn this lesson? What decisions were made from a "military lens" that have resulted in mistakes? I would really like Sen. Murphy to elaborate on that. In the last 15 years our Presidents were either Bush or Obama, neither of which had a recent military retiree serving as the Secretary of Defense. Neither of them based their decisions solely on the words of military advisers or retirees either. In fact, I would even go as far as to say the lesson we should have learned in the last 8 years is that we need a little more perspectives from a military lens influencing the decisions made by our President.

Bottom line here is, with all the due respect to Congresswoman Duckworth,our military is STILL about to be civilian led. Our President is a life long civilian, Gen Mattis has been a civilian for 3 1/2 years, and interestingly enough, 7/10ths of our Secretary's of Defense have served. In one case, Gen of the Army Marshall was tapped by President Truman (who also served by the way) to not only serve as the Secretary of Defense, but to redeploy and restore our military's confidence and morale post-WWII. What should be noted about this was THEY came together to discuss Gen MacArthur's contradictory statements against President Truman, and ultimately agreed he should be relieved of duty. Some of the reasoning for this included reasserting the tenet of civilian control of the military. Even former military members understand and promote this tenant.

The leadership is civilian. This is a non-issue that is only coming up because they are Trump picks.

I think her point is valid, and we should continue civilian leadership of the military. But I think she's over-worried in this case. No one is proposing a change to the structure of government here, or that a sitting Combatant Commander take the helm as SECDEF. A retiree is a civilian, and the SECDEF serves at the discretion of the President, and Congress still declares war and authorizes funding (or not) for the DoD. I think most in congress recognize this, and Mattis will receive his 7-year waiver.