My civilian friends just don't understand the importance of an effective chain of command. If the chain of command were doing its job, there would not have been an Abu Ghraib, nor would you have the other scandals that have cropped up.
Add to that the presence of the Lavender Mafia within the armed forces. I see it where I work, yet one better not speak of it.
As a Platoon Leader, I was told "everything my unit did, or failed to do, was my responsibility. It appears that our perfumed princes in the Obama/Hagel Pentagon do not live by that credo.
The old d@mned if you do, d@mned if you don't iron fist of authority, selectively enforced.
My suspicion is that a good number of these firings are of ethically-challenged yes men who have had their hands in cookie jars (or cookies) from early on in their careers, but they nonetheless moved up the ranks because "nobody saw a thing".
Yet, these types were too ignorant to know that they were being monitored and groomed for future usefulness as expendable dum@sses - useful idiot placeholders for those who proved to be much more debased (downright malevolent and cunning, i.e. not content with mere personal enrichment and physical satisfaction).
Easy for the PTB to suddenly be "Shocked, shocked!" that adultery, bribery, abuse of authority and what-have-you was standard behavior for the corrupt officers.
More to the point, it would be useful to have a supply of these arrogant Captain Schettinos (Costa Condordia reference) to heave overboard as cover for the purging of 1) the "see no evil" types who finally opened their eyes to the evil (some tossed overboard in their own cement seabag of sins), and 2) the uncorrupted, God-fearing, Constitition-honoring officers who managed to sneak through the cracks without selling their souls to beast.mil.