US Military and Honor

I grew up in the military of the fifties and sixties. Born overseas, I spent the early years of my life enveloped in military culture. We always lived on base, or a few times base adjacent. I always trusted the officer class based on many things. There were things I didn't quite understand as a young person that I do now, but there was a basic commitment to honor and integrity that I don't see demonstrated in contemporary culture.

Let's start with: "The code of honor; know it, embrace it" at the US Army website. www.army.mil...

Of all the Army values, honor is the one that embodies all the others. Honor is a matter of carrying out, acting, and living the values of respect, duty, loyalty, selfless service, integrity and personal courage in everything you do, according to the Army.

Then on to an article I read recently at Tom Dispatch: Something Is Rotten in the U.S. Military - tomdispatch.com...

And I will share three paragraphs from though recommend reading the entire thought provoking article. I would like to know your thoughts on this issue.

When I was an Air Force engineer, for instance, I focused more on analysis and quantification than on synthesis and qualification. Reducing everything to numbers, I realize now, helps provide an illusion of clarity, even mastery. It becomes another form of lying, encouraging us to meddle in things we don’t understand.

John Keegan, the esteemed military historian, cites an epigram from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as being essential to thinking about militaries and their wars. “Goods gone, something gone; honor gone, much gone; courage gone, all gone.”

And finally:

The U.S. military has no shortage of goods, given its whopping expenditures on weaponry and equipment of all sorts; among the troops, it doesn’t lack for courage or fighting spirit, not yet, anyway. But it does lack honor, especially at the top. Much is gone when a military ceases to tell the truth to itself and especially to the people from whom its forces are drawn. And courage is wasted when in the service of lies.[/colot]

Recently, there has been substantial reporting on retired Generals working for foreign interests.

Here is a link to a secondary report of the original POGO and Washington Post reporting:

www.businessinsider.com...

This is basically illegal and these Generals can only take these jobs after receiving a waver.

From the above referenced article:

Under the Emoluments Clause Restrictions, the Consitution states that retired US military personnel, which generally applies to those who served at least 20 years in uniform and are eligible to receive a pension, cannot receive consulting fees, gifts, jobs, or titles from foreign governments without expressed approval from Congress.

Here's a link to the Washington Post article.

If you find this matter interesting, I'd like to hear your thinking. I'm a bit conflicted and tend towards thinking the Emoluments clause should now include international business and/or non-state interests as well.

But it all comes down to Honor. Are these people selling out their country which would signal a lack of honor. Or perhaps, just greedy. Should the intent of the actor rather then the action be restricted.

When my father retired he went to work for the State of California rather than McDonald Douglass for multiple reasons and I wish could ask him how this issue affected his decision. The pay was certainly better in the private sector and retired military often took employment at US defense contractors. A simpler time.

Happy Monday!

a reply to: FyreByrd

Sounds like your father chose to honor his commitment to serve his fellow citizens above serving his personal wealth.

An Honorable man, indeed.

Back in the days of WWII there was a lot worth fighting for with the way places like Germany and Japan where going about things. It was a tough fight where many died. As for more current times, with 9/11 self inflicted the fight moved to keeping the military machine running.

When we cannot be honest about why we invade a country how can we hope to fix the problems going on? When looking at the rules of war, deception is one tactic that can change outcomes.

a reply to: FyreByrd

g,day sport. alas, not as many replies to your op as i thought you would get.
i seem to remember, that when barry was el-goob-a-roo in washington, he fired/
retired more than 2000 middle ranking officers.
they would have by now been the leaders and example setters for the troops of today.
do you remember why they got shafted out.
please correct me if i'm wrong here. but as i remember it.
seems, they were supporters of the constitution and their oath .
not the dictates /whims of the office holder enthroned in the white house.
i figured then, that this would be the long term outcome.
keep yer powder dry sport.

a reply to: FyreByrd

PM for @FyreByrd

Cheers

a reply to: FyreByrd

I am just a citizen trying to understand all things war and I'm getting nowhere.

As for those high brass generals working in N. Africa, Saudi Arabia etc. perhaps it is from financial necessity, just how well does the U.S. government take care of it's veterans?

What's interesting about honor is anyone can claim honor: "One reason for this is that military honor has a rather dark history in some countries, such as Germany, where the SS official motto was ‘My Honor is Loyalty’ (‘Meine Ehre heißt Treue’)."

From the source below:

Within the specialized literature on military ethics, scholars like Paul Robinson point out the difference between ‘internal honor’ (i.e., a sense of integrity stemming from acting according to one’s own conscience) and ‘external honor’ (i.e., social prestige and reputation). Robinson posits that the virtues of prowess, courage, loyalty, and truthfulness ‘form the unchanging core of military honour’. For other authors, like Sidney Axinn and Michael Ignatieff, military honor involves not just honesty and selflessness, but also showing restraint and respect towards civilians and even the enemy. Further, according to Shannon French and Larry May, a sense of honor is what separates the military from mere killers, as the former are proudly held to a higher ethical standard of behavior than the rest of society.

Admittedly, in a highly traditional environment such as the military, some might say that a quaint concept like military honor is simply not equipped to harbor modern notions of justice and equality, including accountability for war crimes and human rights violations or the prevention and prosecution of sexual violence – honor being, after all, but a simple word, ‘una parola’. But I believe that societies can adopt what Ronald Dworkin called an ‘interpretive attitude’ toward honor, in particular military honor. Dworkin used the concept of ‘courtesy’ to illustrate how social values evolve on account of an interpretive attitude that develops around a given practice, meaning that participants in the practice assume that it has some value or point and that what the practice requires is actually sensitive to that point or purpose. Thus, the recipients of our courtesy may evolve from nobility, the elderly, women, and so forth, depending on what we believe better advances the purpose of the practice.

www.e-ir.info...

So if military honor has no concrete definition then it seems to me that each soldier has a conscious responsibility to decide what honor should look like for him or her.

a reply to: FyreByrd

to me the military will always have honor, most of the people who sign up are good people and want to serve the country and no matter what they say when they are out, they know they did a good thing.

i think that sending our weapons all over the world to play with matches around the WWIII fuse.

According to underground Ukrainian fighters are saying that ATACMS have already been in theater at least a week


The us is a mighty nation but sometime we overstep our role on the world stage we are NOT the worlds police at the cost of us blood and treasure, but mostly blood.

also honor is different for every person. Take a sniper doing a look out over his team as they are in the tight urban streets somewhere and your the only ones wearing a uniform. Is it morally wrong for that sniper to take out a woman holding a child but is strapped with a visible bomb vest and running to intercept your team,

would you shoot?

i would.

so a normally socking act, the murder of a mother holding a baby turned into the defense of the baby and the 7 other US men on the ground and other civilians so in this case killing her was the honrable thing to do.

at the end of the day the only honor in the military you should care about is you battle buddies and your commanders and most of all SSgts.


here is the video





if you can leave your time with a clear conscience knowing you did your best, i think that's all anyone outside that members situation directly we cant judge them on normal standards,

my buddy came back after the Fallujah time in Iraq and he kicking in doors and getting shot at all that stuff so he had a super bad case of PTSD

it numbed himself out in all the typical ways and to the point i told him he was going to die went to the VA(we have the same doc there) for help but none came for him until one night he snapped after being up for days melting white rocks of a kind and chasing the demon Hero----in.

we all went and spoke to them and his parents and family even more so, but i knew he was in a case of what i have started to call terminal addiction.

he died alone, in mental and spiritual weakness taken from him by an uncaring system, a system that used to take care of every need of yours but once you times up they just ship you out essentially to the new world.

i think the Us military is an honrable one because the people on the ground are really trying to help people.


try giving out vaccines with a room full of men with AK;s watching your every movement.

a reply to: pronto

First off - you numbers are horribly skewed:

"Obama's Military Coup Purges 197 Officers In Five Years"

from the conservative: www.investors.com...

You will like the article on other points.

Obama didn't have a good relationship with the military. It's an area where he lacked any kind of experience and didn't trust the recommendations of those serviing him.



Honor - to Country and Constitution - prelude financial considerations. To quote a founder "If we don't hang together surely we will hang separately. " They put up not only their fortunes by their lives on the line.

There are many jobs available to retired Officers.

They won't make you rich - but the benefits are substantive.

he died alone, in mental and spiritual weakness taken from him by an uncaring system, a system that used to take care of every need of yours but once you times up they just ship you out essentially to the new world.

So many times..Im so grateful, even for the shi& that sucks..Thats another stat that most can't really wrap their head around..Maybe some of those officers just can't fade out, and doing some consult stuff is the only thing that keeps them from eating a bullet..who knows..maybe some are greedy, but its probably fewer than You'd think.

"In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the Army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side." ~ Major General Smedley Butler, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, War is Racket (1935)

Military 'honor' is propaganda. How many dead soldiers are burning in hell right now for killing in the name of God and country?

Matthew 23:15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are."

We've had a number of generals in recent years taking up government positions very soon after leaving. Honestly, I think there should be a 7 year "cook off" period before they can re-enter civilian government service.

a reply to: Skadi_the_Evil_Elf

The business distinctions between private/public/corporate entities is too blurred for individual responsibility to add up in the cost/benefit ratio of profit. Getting into the history of the corporation, the Vatican started it to protect their missionaries as they raped, pillaged and plundered the good word of the Bible through out the world. We would not have the world we have today without it. It ain't all bad, but there is a dark side to it.