witness to history

I have a duty to report history, and as a US citizen, this is doubly true
when it concerns US history and the wars, which I was paid to fight in by
the taxpayers.

In the Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, on p7, there is this quote,
attributed to Steve Bannon in January 2017:

"The White House right now is like Johnson's White House in 1968, Susan
Rice...is running the campaign against ISIS as a National Security Advisor.
They're picking the targets , she's picking the drone strikes. I mean,
they're running the war with just as much effectiveness as Johnson in
sixty-eight. The Pentagon is totally disengaged from the whole thing.
Intel services are disengaged from the whole thing."

I have fought in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, in various
capacities, since 2003 to the present, minus about three and half years from
2009-2013 during which I was actively training new folks who were heading
directly into combat in these wars.

I can tell you of my experience that never did it seem like the civilian
leaders were holding undue control on military actions. They set the limits
of the war and our military leaders played within those rules as they saw
fit. I've never seen pressure on US pilots to drop bombs from our
leadership, at any level - that decision has always rested with the pilot in
command, at the request of the controller on the ground. If anything, the
military leadership I've seen has been about providing options to the our
pilots, including NOT dropping weapons if they suspected the risk of a
civilian casualty or friend fire was too high. The Pentagon and
intelligence services have always seemed fully engaged.

From George W. Bush's tenure, to Barack Obama's, and now to Trump's, this
hasn't varied, and in fact the tone of the leadership from the strategic
level has never changed very much. The rules of engagement changed, but
never was there direction from the civilian on how to do our jobs, only on
WHAT to accomplish, which was a major lesson learned of Vietnam, one beaten
into most military officer's heads in professional education: give us the
boundaries, and we will know how to do our jobs within them.