Not naive, Richie. Naive would be people who haven't informed themselves on the nature of the American system and the Constitutional linkage between the people and our army.
From Harry Summers' excellent "
On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War":
Yes, that is unique in history - so appealling that our 18th century design has been copied by just about everybody except Russia and China.
It also points up the problems we had in Vietnam. It points up the problems I personally have with things like the Bush Doctrine (which, to be fair, is merely the Woodrow Wilson/FDR doctrine taken to a new level), Wolfowitz's philosophy of military expansion as adopted by the GOP, the abuse of the 1973 War Powers Act, and the failure of Bush to seriously ponder the effects that a loss of public support would have on his war in Iraq.
Just because those things are happening/have happened doesn't make them the 'norm', they're certainly not in keeping with the way our system was designed, and one major reason I'm voting Obama this year is because I'm hoping he and his party will redress that situation and bring us back closer to keeping the power over the military in the hands of the people through our surrogates, the Congress.
I'm of the belief that we can still effectively fight terrorism without making the President into a military dictator.
War Powers Resolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia