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It should be noted…
…that the oath one takes upon entering the Armed Forces of the United States is to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” not to “provide political cover for the President of the United States.”
Not all bravery is exhibited on the battlefield, and not all difficult choices involve death.
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Cross-posted to Random Fate.
8 Responses to “It should be noted…”
I thought the Republicians believed in a meritocracy not a plutocracy.
Let’s see Cmdr. Swift gets “Swiftboated” – Cheney’s daughters are Coors Spookswoman and DoState high level official, Karen “teachers pet” Hughes is our spokeman in the ME. Tell em Brownie, they’re doin’ a heck of a job. King George and the Evil Prince Cheney are lookig after their peasents, let them eat Neil Bush’s cake, Babba is serving at the Houston Convention Center. Excuse the rant.
Asked whether he thought politics might have played a role in Swift being bypassed for promotion, Gunn focused on Swift’s atypical career as a military lawyer. “Charlie has spent a lot of time as a litigator, a trial advocate. That’s really unusual in the JAG. You find that people in the more senior ranks have moved around and proved themselves in a variety of settings.”
Most of Swift’s career has been spent in the courtroom.
“While Charlie is a brilliant guy, a tenacious litigator, he does not have all the blocks checked like some other folks have,” Gunn said. He called it a “breadth-of-experience” issue.
If he is not promoted, this is the reason. You don’t make higher ranks in the military without a variety of positions and responsibilities, including some type of command. If he spent all his time as a trial lawyer then he has missed many of the promotion opportunities available to him and thus he doesn’t havell all the “blocks checked.”
Don’t cry for him – he will land a high-paying job as a civilian attorney somewhere.
Have to agree with the above note. A lot of otherwise brilliant people in the military don’t go forward simply because we’ve got a mandated list. If you aren’t stationed around DC for a couple of years, for example, there’s not much chance of you getting past a certain rank. If you don’t do a year licking the boots of a general (there’s a specific term for it, but licking boots is pretty much the easiest way to say it), no way.
A lot of those boxes are hard to fill. The above noted “Licking Boots” position is a killer, since you’re playing 24/7 access to a very high-energy and high-importance individual. It’s ugly at best. Another, bringing around a bad program and fixing it, sometimes isn’t even possible to attempt for some people.
More attention is paid to those checks than to actual record in some cases (largely because records are hard to quantify).
It’s possible some of the military won’t want him moving forward, but I don’t really see that at the top of the tree. Getting high enough to give a performance review means you have to move carefully in political circles. They should know better, at this point, saying they even care.
…that the oath one takes upon entering the Armed Forces of the United States is to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States (from enemies both foreign and domestic),”… not to “provide political cover for the President of the United States.”…
This is the same basic oath presidents take too…with one exception…the president IS the commander and chief of all our military branches…and a president’s orders are to be obeyed.
Those that don’t obey or dare to pubically dissent, at the very least are fired from position, forced into retirement, or find themselves in charge of counting paperclips at some lonely spot on the north shore, Berring Sea side of an Aleutian Island.
Military personnel don’t have to obey an “unlawful” order, even an unlawful order given by a president…but ya think anyone or but damned few are going to challange an oral or written order coming from the oval office and declare the order unlawful….not in this REAL world U S Military where having just one more stripe, a different colored bar or oakleaf, or one more star on their shoulder than some other guy that makes you that much higher up on the food chain and a god. This especially true of flag officers and especially in the combined Joint Chiefs of Staff that have to buck orders up to the SECDEF first, or they better had. The JCoS boys didn’t politic and ass kiss their way up the chain of command ladder for thirty years to get where they are and then buck presidential orders..you can take that to the bank.
Its the difference between ideally what should be and the reality of what actually is done after taking that sober solomn oath.
An order is not unlawful simply because one might disagree with it.
A professional in any field would live up to the highest standards of professional calling. There is a challenge, joy and satisfaction in meeting professional requirements. No amount of money or promotions can compensate for that!!! This only a real professional can understand!
David said:
An order is not unlawful simply because one might disagree with it…
…and its not left up to the determination of the military people being issued orders to decide whether or not an order issued is lawful or unlawful.
The “military” professional(s) Swaraaj refers to as “living up to the highest standards of professional calling,” and ethics, if they have the guts, would present their challange to the branch JAG Corps for determination as to whether or not an order is lawful or unlawful under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
More than few times during the Viet Nam Conflict Era, challanges passed to the JAG Corps requiring decision making at that level were passed back down with the wrong decision. Ordinarily when that happened it resulted in an OOPS, put on the bottom of the jetsam pile
and forgotten until some paper shuffling weenie ten or more years came across it, long after statutes of limitations to file charges had run out. The U S military officer corps may not have invented COVER YOUR ASS, CYA, but they improved on it to near perfection.
Its clear as a bell to me that few if any of the folks commenting on military items have ever served in the military, and for sure not in the officer corps and had their butts on the line for following and carrying out, to the letter a “legally” issued combat order that turned sour like at Mi Lai 4 I Corps Viet Nam.
Once again I recommend reading Col. John Paul Vann’s book “Bright Shining Lie.” Vann a highly decorated officer and one of the most honorable men I ever knew, was one of Swaraaj’s “There is a challenge, joy and satisfaction in meeting professional requirements. No amount of money or promotions can compensate for that!!!” and Vann was crucified for taking up the challange and bucking the chain of command.
I don’t know about the other commenters but I am an Air Force vet. And I was an officer to boot.