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.
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.