On page 246 of The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein narrate the following:
"When
you make a suggestion or proposal to the American military, [President
Richard Nixon] explained, they say no, they say they can't do it. He
cited the 1970 invasion of Cambodia as an example. The military had
wanted to hold back, he said; they had thought the operation was too
risky and of limited value. He was the driving force, Nixon said, the
one who had to say, 'Do it.'"
One would think that military people
are the most hawkish people around, the first who would support using
military force to solve the world problems. There are cases in which
that is probably accurate. Not long ago, I was watching the American
Experience documentary about President John F. Kennedy, and it said that
General Curtis LeMay wanted to use nuclear weapons to solve the Cuban
Missile Crisis. I got a similar impression when I saw the movie Thirteen Days,
which was about the Cuban Missile Crisis: that there were military
people who thought that Kennedy was too soft and should use strong
military force.
But it's not always the case that military people
are trigger-happy----if that is the right word. Because they know quite
well the loss of life that war brings, there are plenty of times when
some military people might be hesitant to support the government
approaching a problem with military force, when they might not be
particularly hawkish, when they might be especially sensitive to whether
the exercise of military force accomplishes enough to merit the loss of
life. I vaguely recall Nixon making that sort of point in one of his
books, but I forget where.