Posted on 03/28/2016 8:06:59 PM PDT by pboyington
Like many officers in the retired community, I am puzzled as to why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior service leaders are so supine in the face of those Obama administration’s policies that are clearly inimical to maintaining a strong national defense. The most blatant recent example is the policy to assign women to the combat arms. Whatever the prevailing political view may be, the Chairman, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Commandant of the Marine Corps know the policy is deeply flawed. Beyond compromising unit cohesion, morale, and combat effectiveness, the policy contains a ticking time bomb of unintended consequences that will further weaken the combat arms and our national defense.
If the Chief’s know the policy is dangerously flawed, why are they so supine?
Can the cause be that the doctrine of civilian control of the military has become politicized and thus unbalanced beyond that which the doctrine originally intended? Certainly the nation is endangered if the military is left unchecked. But, so too is it endangered when the controlling civilian authority ignores the best judgment of experienced military leaders; particularly wherein it subverts the core elements that make the military uniquely different from civil life.
What then should the Chairman and Chiefs do?
The answer lies in the moral obligation they have to the soldiers and Marines under their command, an obligation equally as profound as their duty to be loyal to the doctrine of civilian control. That obligation includes the responsibility to insure that every soldier and Marine under his command is organized, trained, and equipped to win on the battlefield. If that obligation cannot be faithfully fulfilled, a senior leader has but one moral choice: to resign.
For the Chairman and Chiefs to do less is to invite comparison to the pre-WWII German General Staff who traded their honor, their troops’ welfare, and their nation for loyalty to the “civilian control” of an autocrat.
If a dozen four stars resigned it might fix, or at least address the problem.
But they put their job (and perks) ahead of their country.
Sir, someone achieving your rank knows full-well the political winds that blow as the stars accrue...This is just an “in-your-face” example of the plea we heard 70 odd years ago...”just following orders!”
These flag officers should get this situation into perspective. There was a time in their twenties when they were willing to give their lives for those next to them. Now the only thing asked to demonstrate leadership is to resign and show the way to armed forces members who thought they were part of the ultimate meritocracy. It is time to leave the Armed Forces to the LGBT, feminists, employment bureaucrats and their toadies.
The article below highlights another time the flag officers should have resigned in mass.
Vietnam 1965: The Day It Became the Longest War
http://extendedremarks.blogspot.com/2006/12/vietnam-1965-day-it-became-longest-war.html
Good reference.
Had all 5 JCS members resigned that day, there would have been no Vietnam War, or the war would have been ended by military force like that unleashed by Nixon in the Linebacker II offensive.
Instead, we set the precedence for no-win wars that have cost thousands of young Americans and yet a worse world.
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