As perfidious as are all these and other transgressions, I regard as most egregious--perhaps because I was part of the military for so many years--the lack of truthfulness, integrity, and honor in the Defense Department among those in uniform. It is the worst because the nation entrusts to the officer corps the lives and well-being of its young men and women in battle--and their care in the aftermath of battle. Such peril demands that those who lead have the absolute trust of those who are led as well as the trust of those who sent them.
Pat Tillman died in the line of duty, killed by fellow Rangers in a tragic accident. That is the simple fact. Unless Congress holds a hearing as the Tillman family wants, the reasons and the "logic" behind the decision to conceal the truth may never emerge.
The family deserves more than apologies; they deserve the full story, all the facts, so they might find some peace. The same consideration applies to the families of every other soldier who dies, whether by enemy or friendly fire or in an accident.
The country deserves more than apologies; it deserves a full accounting from the Army and the officer corps in particular for how standards of truth and morality were permitted to fall so far that they became systemic failures that, like a cancer, spread throughout the ranks and contributed to and "encouraged" the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other military prisons and detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq.
West Point's motto, "Duty, Honor, Country," expresses the humanistic ideal of selfless service to an entity larger than oneself as a reciprocal obligation for the opportunities afforded those who live in this nation. But today there seems to be a corruption of duty such that its first obligation is to self, with country in second place--sometimes a distant second place.
Such a breach in personal and institutional morality all to readily leads to the substitution of careerism for country that is "spun" into the "duty" to climb the ladder to high rank where power and influence rule. This is why "honor" and a sense of what is "honorable" are so important in junior officers, for if these concepts are followed in the formative years at the lower ranks, they will help sustain, however imperfectly, the spirit of selfless idealism in the hardest of times when even our humanness is tempted and challenged by others. And this suggests that the Army might consider re-ordering West Point's motto from "Duty, Honor, Country" to "Honor, Duty, Country."
Similarly, perhaps we as a nation and as a people would do better by placing more emphasis on honor and less on duty. For in being and acting honorably, we are much more likely to discharge our obligations to be ethical--that is, to be human--in dealing with others.
This ideal of the ethical as honorable and human, expressed long ago by Mencius (and others since), was re-iterated less than a year ago near Washington, DC. Judging from events since, it is quite apparent that the occasion was ignored by most people. The date was June 15, 2006, the occasion the Fairfax, Virginia High School graduation ceremony. The unassuming speaker at this unassuming venue--retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell--belied the significance of his closing admonition to the graduates, one which all Americans might do well to ponder:
Col. Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus , a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email at dan@fcnl.org."Live life with virtue and values, have physical and moral courage, build a strong character that emanates in every direction, and always, always have a sense of shame--for shame is that little transistor in your head that will help you know when you are going down the wrong path."
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