Romney had his rearend handed to him when his response to Afghanistan was to “let the Generals on the ground” decide when we pull out, and whoever it was - retorted that this was not ‘leadership’ worthy of a “Commander in Chief”.
Unless you mean what is assumed in the chain of command, namely, that the president always has to make the final decision, I can't agree on this. I am not a Romney fan, but his comment sounds very much like things President Bush said about letting the generals do their jobs.
Unless we have an Eisenhower or someone like him in the White House who has senior military command experience, our presidents must not only listen very carefully to the recommendations of their generals on troop deployment, redeployment and pullout matters but also implement those recommendations in most cases. The generals know what they are doing, but in most (not all) cases, modern political leaders don't have a clue about the military and what it takes to win wars.
I agree that it's a political decision whether to use military force. Once we're committed, we need to let the military do its job, and that usually means getting the politicians out of the way unless they're political leaders who also have competence in military matters.