Military Ethics

I went into the Army because I had an ROTC scholarship that paid for college. My father encouraged this, and I liked the idea when I was 18. I was offered Army, Air Force, Navy, & Marine scholarships, because in 1981 the memory of Viet Nam was fresh enough that recruiting was not easy. The scholarships were generous and easy to get. I was determined to go to Kansas State University because of family tradition, and because it was a good engineering school with plenty of women and a drinking age of 18. I wanted to be a jet pilot, but was told (erroneously, as it turns out) that I could not be a pilot and a scholarship recipient because that was too much money spend on one person. So that left Army ROTC.

I signed up after my application was accepted. Men's hair was still pretty long, a leftover from the 70's and mine was no exception, completely covering my ears, but not to my shoulders. I knew the Army would eventually make me get it cut short, but surprisingly, the standards were not strictly enforced and I was able to adopt a style that did not mark me or make me stand out.

LTC McCann was the Professor of Military Science (PMS - everything in the Army has acronyms, you soon learn). The Kansas State University (KSU - some things in the civilian world have acronyms, too) ROTC program had a outdoor adventure fun time image it was trying to project, so things were fun and lax for the first two years. We repelled off the side of the Old Stadium and learned map reading skills complete with weekend jaunts out to nearby Fort Riley to tromp around on the range doing the military equivalent of an Easter Egg hunt. It was in my Junior year that I finally had a Military Science core class, Leadership and Leaders, and finally saw LTC McCann as someone other than the "old man" that sat in his office smoking a pipe (or was it a cigar? MAJ Piper smoked the pipe).

Embedded in the leadership course was an ethics class. I can't remember whether LTC McCann taught the class or was a guest lecturer. As you can see, some of my memories are sketchy about this era. My memory of LTC McCann's story in this class is still crystal clear after all these years.

Young 2LT McCann served in Viet Nam when he entered the Army. He was in an Armor unit on the front line, in heavy combat. They occasionally lost equipment, either through normal wear and tear maintenance issues or in combat. His unit's inventory of tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) had dwindled to the point that they were having difficulty completing missions, soldiers were fighting unprotected, they did not have the heavy support they wanted, and people were dying. They needed new vehicles, which finally arrived in country at some depot and had to be picked up. Their requisitions and paperwork in hand, young LT McCann went to the depot and presented his paperwork to them to pick up his new tanks and APCs. Unfortunately, the paperwork listed vehicles specifically by their serial numbers, and they were not in the depot. Feeling despondent, he left the offices and wandered out to the new equipment lined up in the yard. He saw all the tanks and APC styles they were due represented in the yard, and it occurred to him that it wasn't right or fair.

He went around and took down some serial numbers of vehicles that were parked in the yard, awaiting distribution or pick-up. He took his requisition paperwork and erased the serial numbers on them and put the numbers he found in the blanks. He must have waited for the personnel to change out before going back and submitting his new paperwork. He picked up all the equipment and moved the vehicles out of the depot and back to his unit.

He knew that taking those vehicles meant that other units that those tanks and APCs were meant to go to would probably struggle like they had been struggling. He even knew that his actions probably resulted in the deaths of people in those other units. He knew that by the book, by the letter of the rules, he had done something not permitted and wrong. He could probably have been reprimanded at the least, possibly court martialed at the worst. He knew he was wrong, but he told us that he never lost a night's sleep over his actions.

Whichever unit came up short of equipment would probably suffer additional casualties because of those shortages. In his mind, he said it wasn't a dilemma because if someone had to die, it was better that it was people in the other units rather than his. Was he playing God? Did he think his people were worth more than the others? That wasn't it. The difference between his soldiers and the soldiers in another unit is that he didn't have to watch them die.

Military Industrial Complex

You want to think you live in a rational world, where people play by the rules and good triumphs over evil. But sometimes you have to wonder.

I just listened to the speech on a podcast called Great Speeches in History (available at learnoutloud.com). This was the speech Dwight D. Eisenhower gave 3 days before he left the Presidency. It's the famous one you may recognize where he warns about the power of the Military Industrial Complex. Listening to it made me realize there are scary parallels with Viet Nam & Iraq, and that much of what DDE warned against was accurate and prophetic.

He was talking about communism, how we were threatened by a “hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This is when I started thinking about the parallels with today’s “War on Terror” that the Bush Administration has sprung on us. DDE goes on to say, “unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.” This is what we are being told about terrorism, it’s going to be a long fight and it’s going to be here for a long time. We paint Muslims in general, not just fanatic fundamentalists, as somehow “godless”. We do not recognize or accept the fact that they think they are on god’s side in this struggle and that they think we are the ones who are godless.

The difference between the cold war and the war on terror is how it’s being waged. Eisenhower goes on to say that his success, while not “winning” the struggle against communism, was in not breaking out into a shooting war. It’s true that in that era they believed that war meant nuclear war and thus the clear, swift, and permanent destruction of both sides in the conflict. While the use of wide scale nuclear weapons is not at issue now, there are other parallels, like the sense of impending doom and threat of loss of life, liberty, and happiness. My point is that not being goaded into rash action is what ultimately won us the cold war. Going to war in Iraq cannot win for us the war on terror.

Eisenhower talked about how each crisis would provoke the “temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” What do you call the Iraq War, if not the costly solution to terror proposed by the Bush administration? Eisenhower said that we would be told these costly solutions would be the only way to solve our problems. Then he urged caution and balance, and a need to look at the broader considerations. That has been sorely lacking in this administration, and conservative rhetoric has asserted that to even try to see the point of the people we are in opposition to is treasonous.

Eisenhower sensed that powerful forces, once entrenched, would continue to try to bring about conflict, or scare society into thinking one was inevitable or imminent. This is how they would perpetuate themselves and continue to grow and prosper. Only through constant vigilance could we avoid this pitfall. If you buy the premise, you have to wonder if these forces, those that stand to profit from war are working toward war, and putting those sympathetic to war in power. Then you look at the current President, and his Vice President with ties to Halliburton - a company that has profited enormously from this war, and you have to wonder about cause and effect. You have to wonder about a President that is clearly going to “stay the course” despite the obvious failure of his policies, the growing opposition of the public, and the feeble efforts of Congress to finally provide some oversight and restraint.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. “

What about our liberties? Look at the Patriot Act, Warrantless wiretaps, data mining, the detention without trial of people accused of terrorism, the deportation of people to be tortured by other governments overseas, the shifting around of people in secret CIA prisons, the failure to clearly exclude torture from our national policy, and the quasi-legal justifications for maintaining the prison in Guantanamo. It has already happened. What about democratic processes? Look at the razor thin election margins in 2000 & 2004, the questionable electronic voting machines with no paper trail that are made by Diebold (a company that contributed heavily to the Bush reelection campaign), the recess appointments of judges and a UN Secretary General that cannot be confirmed by the Senate, and the removal of US Attorneys for a failure to pursue partisan political objectives in their selection of caseloads. What Eisenhower cautioned against has already happened.

Eisenhower goes on to say that the ultimate goal is to have all humans live in peace and have their freedoms and security not threatened by other nations, peoples, or hostile ideologies. His vision of the future was a world where we cared about what happened to everyone in the world and we strived to make life better for everyone in the world. Indeed, he called upon God and his religion as demanding this of him. I believe Eisenhower had it right. The way to “drain the swamp” of terrorism is to drain the world of its recruits. The way to do this is to make the world so equitable and just that no one sees any sense or benefit in struggling against anything. That’s the way out of this mess. That’s the way to win the war on terror and make the world a better place in the process. I’m not saying it would be easy or could be done quickly. Like the cold war, it would take time, but in the end, we would have a lasting peace we could be proud of.