The approval of the American public for the war in Iraq is at new lows. The Commander-in-Chief and his public spokespeople try to assure us that the fact there are difficulties means merely that we have to try harder: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. But the fact is that enough of those voters are against the war, we'll declare victory and bring the boys (and girls) home. Even retired generals lambaste the Secretary of Defense. How do those in uniform prevent morale, and hence effectiveness, from bottoming out?

The question is a good one and has no easy answer. To me, it seems part of the life between a rock and a hard place that people in the military lead. Articulating what the difficulties are doesn't make the situation itself go away any more than talking about the inevitability of natural death means we're not going to die. But it can at least make things easier to deal with, by realizing that others know that things are this way too.

Here's the rock: On one hand, military victories boost morale. You want to achieve your short-term military goals, the ones you and your buddies sacrificed for. It gives you a feeling of invincibility or at least pride that gets rolled into the next engagement. This in turn typically means you have to like and be motivated by the civilians who, in a democracy, run the military. And you have to identify with the specific things your civilian handlers ask you to achieve.

Here's the hard place: if you require victory to keep going, you're prey to collapse when it doesn't happen, or when the civilians don't seem to know what they're doing. Even worse, you turn into a grump: those darn civilians. Such thinking produces a self-destructive "us vs. them" mentality: only the military is good, only the military is pure. For the military, the price of civilian bungling is real. You, or your buddies, come back to Dover AFB in a box. I grew up sixty miles from Dover. I know what flies in there, even if the Bush administration put a moratorium on covering the arrivals.

This "us vs. them" thinking is bad for several reasons. First, if you're blaming everything on the military's civilian bosses, you tend to overlook the military's mistakes. Unfortunately, there is bad leadership in the military, and lots of deaths could have been avoided. Perhaps the worst are those that result from what we call with no apparent irony "friendly fire," such as that of Pat Tillman. (Remember, the Army tried to cover that one up.) In a climate where the relationship of trust with civilian bosses is poisoned, all the animosity goes in one direction, and none is left to fix problems at home. So they don't get fixed.

Few people in America seriously argue against civilian control of the military. We see too clearly the alternative in countless military dictatorships or banana republics the world over. I think even those in the military would agree that its control-freak, "this area belongs to me" way of doing things, while perhaps necessary for battle, would be repressive if applied to the society as a whole. It's a specialized skill that works well on the battlefield but not so well at the local mall -- or for that matter in the family. (Think of the repressive father in Pat Conroy's The Great Santini.)

Yet there are way too many examples of political bungling that drives the career military pros crazy. For instance: a Secretary of Something, in order to further his own political objectives, busts a stellar officer who's (say) opened his mouth, or done something professionally justifiable but politically bad news. Sometimes in their zeal to get re-elected Congress hamstrings the pros that could have brought home the bacon on the battlefield. It's sweet when the Commander-in-Chief really seems to like the military. But it's bitter when his approval ratings go down. All of a sudden the photo ops with the vets stop. People in the military feel used.

Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, has sounded alarm bells along with a number of other commentators about the split in this country between civilians and military. It's a values split to a degree: those in the military sacrifice for others, while the rest of society seems fixated on me-me-me.

I'd argue that the split is more accurately characterized as a politician-military split, or as an amateur-professional, rather than merely civilian-military. The problem isn't that politicians are civilians, it's that they're politicians. They have an eye on their jobs and approval ratings. They can go for cheap effects that play out by the time they're out of office. The military has to clean up the mess.

Traditionally we make a distinction between policy, the bailiwick of the elected politicians, and strategy, what the pros know how to do. But sometimes the distinction blurs. The military's job is not merely to get the politicians what they want. Sometimes they serve their country better by telling the politicians that it can't be gotten, or is a bad idea. If this is what they think, this is what they need to say. And say again.

Of course the military is a tool: its job is to do what it's told to do. Yet at the same time politicians need to listen to the pros in the Pentagon and ask, "Is this doable?" What are the likely effects? Is it worth it? Is it even a good idea? Officers, in the same way, have to ask the senior enlisted folks what they think. They ask not merely to get done some pre-determined job, but (if they're worth their salt as an officer) to discuss whether the project itself is worthwhile. It's rank arrogance not to benefit from their expertise. It's equally arrogant for politicians to overlook the reaction of the career military. And, oh, yes: It can kill people.