The President of the United States, who is statutorily limited to no more than two terms, or eight years, is per Constitutional law, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces; of that there is no issue, but recognize this, that unlike a given monarch or a dictator, the President of the United States, because of term limits, is functionally only going to be in charge of those armed forces for a relatively short period of time; as opposed to generals, who though seemingly under the President’s command, can literally serve for decades. Further to the point, the United States is a global empire, with a defense budget, which is absolutely gargantuan, so to believe that somehow, the President, is in effect, the Commander in Chief, in any real meaningful sense, is disingenuous.
In point of fact, it would be truer to state, that Presidents, whether a Democrat or a Republican, come and go, but those that run the military-industrial-technology complex, seemingly keep on serving, continuously, irrespective of whether a Democrat or a Republican is elected as President. One would think, that upon election, that a given President, might want to change who and who not were the generals that the President would like to see serve under that Presidency; something more in line with the fact that the President seldom keeps any former cabinet members from the previous party’s administration, but typically appoints their own; yet with a few exceptions, here and there, pretty much generals keep on keeping on, regardless of who the Commander in Chief is.
All this basically signifies that despite the title of Commander in Chief, the military-industrial-technology complex, bows to no President, but rather trains that President in the way that things actually are, as compared to perhaps how things were meant to be. So then, when pliant mass media outlets talk about this President’s war or that President’s war, they are not being forthright, for they know that such wars, engagements, battles, and strikes against foreign enemies and targets are actually determined by that military-industrial-complex without any meaningful input or much debate from the Commander in Chief.
Again, logic tells us that any outsider, such as a President, has absolutely no hope of impressing their demands upon any institution, let alone the biggest and mightiest institution, if that outsider, does not control all the underlings of significance that are necessitated in order to therefore have their specific demands and desires so met. The President is essentially working with career military officers, who know for a certainty that the President simply does not have the working knowledge, let alone the insider secret knowledge, to impact or even to influence much of anything that these generals are involved with. This basically means that the wars and engagements that this nation involves itself in, come almost exclusively from the military-industrial-technology complex, for Congress ceded its power to “declare war” decades ago to that same complex, and hence the President for all intents and purposes, is reduced to the simple role of being the Chief Cheerleader.
Those that wonder why America insists upon being a global empire and thereby putting its nose into everybody else’s business time and time again, are barking up the wrong tree when they blame the President for such; as opposed to blaming the military-industrial-technology complex, though that is an unelected power that answers not to the people.