Honor, Courage, Commitment - Will They Survive?

      Most service people would hold that their military careers are not about them they are about those they serve:  their country, their fellow citizens, their families, the mission.  This concept is part of the foundation of military ethics.       According to Professor James H. Toner of the Air War College: Military ethics based upon "me-ism" or "egotism" cannot function. Military ethics is about knowing whom and what we owe.  . . . (Service men and women) must understand that they owe a debt of gratitude to their country, families, services, chain of command, and comrades. That is exactly what is meant by "service before self" (in the Air Force), "selfless service" (in the Army), or "commitment" (in the Navy and Marine Corps). Military ethics cannot properly exist without the concept of owing. If we know why we owe what we do, we are able to recognize the obligation, responsibility, and duty which give rise to moral thinking an...

Washington Post Online,  July 18, 2024   https://wapo.st/4fbOiwW

         Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale was a true naval hero.   A naval aviator who was shot down over North Vietnam, he spent 7 and 1/2 years in prison during which he was tortured 15 times, spent four years in solitary confinement and spent two years in leg irons.   Despite these challenges, Stockdale became one of the military commanders of the prisoners of war (POW's), successfully establishing a chain of command, a means of communication and clearly defined goals that were instrumental to maintaining the sanity and moral courage of those under his command.        During his captivity, Stockdale developed and refined his philosophy of living which was founded on the ancient philosophy of stoicism.   In Stockdale's words, the goal of stoicism is not a good society but a good man.   Stockdale spent the remainder of his life after his release teaching military officers "how to be good men".   This was not done ou...

      The Iraq War had been going badly for a couple of years when President George W. Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld and appointed Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and General David Petraeus as Commander, Multi-National Force – Iraq.  Both men were known not only for professional expertise but also for a willingness to speak truth to power.  Bush deliberately selected who he believed were the best men to solve the problem in Iraq.  He did not choose people who were slavishly devoted to him.  He then approved their new strategy, called “The Surge,” and placed his entire support behind it.       Shortly after this, President Bush gave a speech at the U.S. Naval War College at which he laid out the new strategy.  I was in the audience at that speech.  Prior to it, I had been strongly in opposition to Bush’s Iraq War as much because of the arrogance of the President and his assistants as because of the flaws in his strat...

         Since President Obama’s administration, the United States has been attempting to place greater strategic emphasis on the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean region.   The reason is obvious.   China, as the United States’ newest near-peer competitor, has made no secret about its strategic objectives to reunify with Taiwan, monopolize the natural resources of the South China Sea, and undermine American power and influence in the Western Pacific.         Unfortunately, the United States has been distracted by crises in Europe (Ukraine) and the middle east, making it difficult, in a resource-constrained environment, to move forward in the Indian Ocean-Pacific Ocean (INDOPAC) region.   Still, under President Biden and his first-rate national security team, progress has been made.   Will it continue in a Trump administration?      The most important first step was to reorganize the historically import...

       Military alliances are important because they promote their members’ military effectiveness.   Military effectiveness is a measure of the application of military means and ways, to achieve the goal of peace, at least a peace that is beneficial to the victor.   A successful alliance promotes mutual security by aggregating each member’s military effectiveness into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.   This permits the alliance to better use military power in the service of its strategic objectives.         Alliances of democratic nations also promote the practice of lawful, restrained, warfare.   It should be no surprise that the original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty also led the international effort to define, through the Nuremburg Principles of 1943, and codify, through the Geneva Convention of 1949, International Humanitarian Law (IHL).   As defined by the International Commi...

        In 1973 in Valencia Spain, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) stated the following to a group of Jesuit high school alumni:   Education for justice has become in recent years one of the chief concerns of the Church. Why? Because there is a new awareness in the Church that participation in the promotion of justice and the liberation of the oppressed is a constitutive element of the mission which Our Lord has entrusted to her. Impelled by this awareness, the Church is now engaged in a massive effort to education – or rather to re-educate – herself, her children, and all men and women so that we may all “lead our life in its entirety… in accord with the evangelical principles of personal and social morality to be expressed in a living Christian witness.   Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-for-others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ – for the God-m...

       My favorite work of fiction is Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny .   It is, without a doubt, the great novel of the United States Navy and a contender for the title of “great American novel.”   It won the Pulitzer Prize and was subsequently made into a Broadway play ( The Caine Mutiny Court Martial ) and a seven Academy Award nominated feature film.   You can find a detailed summary of the novel here: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caine_Mutiny ).        The book tells the story of the coming of age of Willie Kieth during his service as a junior officer onboard U.S.S. Caine , a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during the Second World War.   Willie’s most important experience during his time in the Caine is his service under the martinet and apparently cowardly commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Queeg, culminating in the captain’s unprecedented relief during the crisis of a typhoon at sea by his executive o...

Something so few Americans, especially Trump and his supporters, understand. Video: West Point cadet’s answer makes pollster emotional | CNN

        Many in the chattering class are obsessing over President Biden and questions about his fitness for office.  At the White House Press Secretary’s briefing yesterday, Karine Jean-Pierre fielded an hour of questions such as, “Does the President need a nap every day?”  “Why hasn’t he released ALL of his medical records?”  “Why has it taken him SOOO long to speak to Congressional leaders, hold a press conference, or waited so long to participate in an unscripted interview?”       Dissatisfied with the administration’s answers, the chattering class and democratic members of Congress are increasingly calling for Biden to step down so that … what?   They are not very clear on the “what”.   Meanwhile, they forget that President Biden has already been “out there” during a very successful Presidency.   They forget that his legislative accomplishments could not have come about without significant public ...

Leonard Berstein offers us hope and a way forward in these troubled times. Bernstein "Make Our Garden Grow" from "Candide" - YouTube CANDIDE You've been a fool And so have I, But come and be my wife. And let us try, Before we die, To make some sense of life. We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good We'll do the best we know. We'll build our house and chop our wood And make our garden grow... And make our garden grow. CUNEGONDE I thought the world Was sugar cake For so our master said. But, now I'll teach My hands to bake Our loaf of daily bread. CANDIDE AND CUNEGONDE We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good We'll do the best we know. We'll build our house and chop our wood And make our garden grow... And make our garden grow. (ensemble enters in gardening gear and a cow walks on) CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, MAXIMILLIAN, PAQUETTE, OLD LADY, DR. PANGLOSS Let dreamers dream What worlds they please Those Edens can't be found. The sweetest flowers...

   

         The Constitution’s First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.       The first two clauses (Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses) guarantee to all Americans the right to practice their chosen faith in a society free of pressure to practice a government-approved faith.   This was the vision of the Founders, most of whom were Deists or Unitarians rather than Christians.   They believed in God but embraced a secular political philosophy that   taught that God had little impact on human affairs.   This secular philosophy had a long-standing influence on American life at the time the Constitution was written.       Donald Trump...

         As Captain of a United States Navy ship, I had my share of bad days.   These were days in which I made bad decisions, diminished my image as a leader, or let my temper get the best of me.   I am not proud of any of these days.   They loom larger in my memories of command than my good days.   I did not serve my crew, my ship, the Navy, or my country well.   In spite of these bad days, however, the Navy did not fire me or abandon me.   The Navy left me in command, expected me to learn from my mistakes, and expected me to not repeat them.          There were a handful of mistakes that would have forced the Navy to relieve me of command.   These involved the fundamental requirement of any naval commanding officer to accomplish the mission and bring the crew home safe.   Had I failed to live up to these expectations, the Navy would not have hesitated to relieve me.   Fortunately for me, ...

        The Washington punditocracy, represented by the likes of Joe Scarborough, Claire McCaskill, most of the MSNBC and CNN regulars (with the notable exception of Mika Brzezinski and Lawrence O’Donnell), and the New York Times Editorial Board are having a field day expressing personal sorrow while throwing President Joe Biden under the bus less than twenty-four hours after Biden’s poor debate performance.   Their logic seems to be that a second Trump administration is so unthinkable that we need to shoot the, admittedly imperfect, messenger Joe Biden to solve the problem.          The problem, however, is Donald Trump, not Joe Biden.   And yet, the punditocracy consistently goes easy on Trump pleading that his crimes, his immorality, and his lack of veracity are so widely recognized that we just take them for granted.   Biden, however, should have risen above that and called out Trump’s every lie and act of malf...

         Donald Trump promises to, “make America great again.”   But what is it that makes America great?   The simple answer is power.   Economic power.   Military power.   Since the Second World War, the United States has been the world’s greatest nation because it has, without question, dominated the world with its unmatched power.   America’s rivals have or are failing because they cannot create and sustain such power.   The Soviet Union collapsed because it couldn’t compete with America in the exercise of military power.   China is weakening because it cannot match America’s economic power.   Vladimir Putin’s Russia can’t even subdue a much weaker country, Ukraine, in part because of the sustaining support of American power.          Not only is the United States building and sustaining its power, other nations are as well.   These include India and the European Union which ar...