i ntroduction 7authority, especially as it encroaches upon venerated civil liberties, has
prompted many lawyers and academics to repudiate the exercise of uni-
lateral presidential power. Bush administration decisions to detain
suspected terrorists, al-Qaeda operatives, and captured non-Afghan
Taliban fi ghters without trial at Guantánamo provoked widespread
domestic and international condemnation. Controversy also swirled
around other administration policies, such as extraordinary rendition,
the practice of sending certain terror suspects to other countries where
they might be subjected to extreme methods of interrogation and brutal
incarceration. The disputes over post-9/11 presidential power recall
those of the Vietnam era, when critics took issue with many presidential
actions, including the secret bombing of Cambodia and increased
domestic surveillance of antiwar activists during the Nixon adminis-
tration. But presidents have their defenders, too, who insist that emer-
gencies force presidents to extend their reach to keep the nation safe,
and that their actions are therefore constitutional.
For the most part, these debates address the legitimacy of presidential
action. Lost in their heat is the fi rst puzzle of wartime presidential lead-
ership: in a constitutional system designed to check the unilateral exer-
cise of power, how is it that presidents have been able to send American
armed forces into battle nearly anywhere in the world with no eff ective
political restraint?
Other arguments have raged over not whether but how a president
should exercise wartime leadership. Contemporary views divide into
two broad schools. One side follows the work of Samuel Huntington,
who explored the relationship between politicians and the military in his
influential post–World War II study, The Soldier and the State. The
advent of military professionalism in the later nineteenth century, he
suggests, allowed a division of responsibility in wartime between political
and military leaders that would make best use of their respective exper-
tise. Huntington endorses a system he terms “objective control”: civilians
should establish broad national goals and guide the allocation of
resources, while military commanders should be given full control over
the execution of strategy. When soldiers are encouraged to make political
decisions, he cautions, mistakes occur. Mistakes also may happen when
civilian leaders abdicate their responsibilities or trespass on matters more
properly seen as military. At certain times, Huntington’s model has