Hacker News Reader

Publishing surgeon performances wouldn't really lead to better surgeries by any particular surgeon - most of them are doing their best already. It would enable you to choose a better one (provided you can afford it and he/she can take you). Since you can not choose military commanders, how useful is that for you?

View on HN

> Since you can not choose military commanders, how useful is that for you?

Huh?

http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=45870

I may not be able to sit in and vote for a commander but every appointment has the backing of an elected official that can be replaced.

As a civilian everything the military does is of interest to me and should be made open - your argument of "you may not understand it" is irrelevant. I want to know everything from how much they spend on toothpaste to how many civilians have died.

I know why civilians control the military. But I think you have wrong idea about it. Politicians control top generals, but they do not control details of every military operation, and neither do you - so knowing the details of the specific operational planning of the army would not be very useful to you, unless you want you politician to intervene in specific operation planning - which would not be very good, as neither you nor your politician have the relevant knowledge. There can be situations where common knowledge is enough - e.g. if certain commander plans to kill all civilians in the city, you don't have to be in the military to know it's wrong and such commander should be removed - but such cases are very rare. Usually mass-casualty tragedies result from a set of very complex circumstances and varied set of coincidences and mistakes, and I'm not sure your politician will be qualified to figure it out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com