Lost in the general haze of stupid/evil that hangs over Sarah Palin was a grace note in her recent speech supporting indictment-in-waiting Joe Miller, her cherished anti-Murkowski senatorial candidate.
In a sparsely attended rally for the fading Teabagger senatorial candidate, Palin recalled Miller’s military background, and asked “are we even fit to tie his combat boots?”
Are we fit?
Seriously?
Well yes – and what makes this so dangerous is not just that Palin is once again being Palin, but that after a decade of warrior worship, this kind of nonsense is staining more and more of our national fabric.
The end point of such hagiography is pretty well mapped out. If people persuade themselves that the military offers a unique reservoir of virtue — and especially if the uniformed officer corps come to believe it…then the next move is obvious.
…which brings me to an article published last month that I don’t think got enough attention.
Writing in the National Defense University’s Joint Force Quarterly, United States Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Andrew Milburn found within himself the courage to say exactly what he thinks:
“There are circumstances under which a military officer is not only justified but also obligated to disobey a legal order. [italics added]
And there you have it: a claim that the US military should take the hard duty of deciding national policy when – in the view of the officer corps – the civil powers are incapable of doing so properly.
Most important, note that Milburn is not asserting that military personnel must refuse illegal orders. This is already an obligation, and there are at formal safeguards to protect those who meet it. (Though not those who frivolously invoke this duty – see the fate of the birthers who sought to deny President Obama’s authority as Commander in Chief.)
No, here Milburn argues that officers, especially senior ones, have a moral responsibility to refuse perfectly legal orders from their civilian superiors. His criteria are simple: the uniformed services should reject orders that are – in the sole judgment of the officers concerned — “likely to harm the institution writ large—the Nation, military, and subordinates…”
As expansive a claim of uniformed autonomy as that may be, Milburn does not stop there. He goes on to claim that military autonomy should extend not just to weighing decisions taken in the midst of war, but also over
“judgments that fall within the realm of jus ad bellum, [criteria for initiating a war] especially if Congress appears to have neglected its responsibilities in this regard.”
That is: Milburn sees the military, or at least its senior officer corps as something approaching a fourth branch of government. He even uses the core vocabulary of Constitutional interpretation to emphasize the point:
“The military professional plays a key role as a check and balance at the indistinct juncture between policy and military strategy. He should not try to exclude himself from this role, even on issues that appear to involve policy.”
But mightn’t such an expansive view of military authority lead to overreach? Not to worry, says Milburn, exercising Hollywood’s conventional euphemism* for the phrase f**k you:
“Human nature, as well as professionalism, provides a bulwark against such an eventuality. It is fair to assume that generals like being generals, and thus would select judiciously those causes for which they were prepared to sacrifice their careers.”
For all that this may seem reasonable — shouldn’t officers resign when they face demands they cannot accept? – it’s almost impossible to overstate how radical a break this is with American traditions of civil-military relations, a shift made all the more parlous because it is an view not limited to this one officer. [Warning – Freeper link].
Thankfully, there has been some significant push back from within the officer corps that captures the essential wrongness of Milburn’s argument. Here, I’ll turn the floor over to USA Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, writing in the invaluable Small Wars Journal blog.
Yingling takes Milburn apart step by step. The best thing to do is read his whole post, but for just a taste, here’s how he eviscerates the Milburn’s core view of the bounden duty of an officer. Consider the oath each officer in the US military takes, Yingling writes, a commitment that reads, in part:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.
As Yingling notes, there is nothing here the resembles Milburn’s view of the officer’s obligation to defy civilian authority:
“the military officer’s oath prescribed by the US Code says nothing about the health of the military institution or the welfare of subordinates. However important these goals may be, no act of law makes them co-equal with the preservation of the Constitution.
Yingling similarly demolishes the rest of Milburn’s case, leaving the obvious unspoken. Even if Milburn doesn’t get this, the rest of us can reasonably grasp that the top brass are, of course, no more a unique repository of rigor or virtue than any other self-selecting powerful in-group. That doesn’t mean that general officer corps is devoid of virtue, of course — just that they are no more immune to realities of human experience than the rest of us
At the same time, Yingling recognized the debt of gratitude that I agree we owe Milburn. He is as wrongheaded as it is possible to be, but he appears to be an almost comically naïve honest man. And so, Yingling writes:
However regrettable Milburn’s arguments may be, we ought to thank him for making these views public. Many others who apparently share his views lack his candor. Anonymous military officers’ bitter condemnations of civil authorities have become standard fare in many media outlets. These are the officers we should truly fear – those who skulk sullenly in corners with like-minded victims of alleged civilian malfeasance, drawing their wages while condemning the society that pays them.
Which brings me back to Palin, and other such mindless hagiographers of the uniform and the gun.
I don’t actually think that the US is in any proximate danger of a military coup. But as Yingling recognizes, Milburn’s article – published, remember, by a journal from one of the military’s own graduate schools — is just one of many examples of the pressure that military and its fans put on any civilian leadership. This is yet another warning shot aimed at driving upstarts like President Obama and his administration out of the rooms where real men make decisions.
And if I’m even close to right in my reading of this, then let me end on a bit of pre-Godwinization
In January, 1919, long before Hitler found his way to his first Nazi Party meeting – while he was still in bed, recovering from a gas attack he endured near the end of World War – the new Social Democratic government struck a devil’s bargain with the German General Staff. Defend the nascent republic, the new defense minister, Gustav Noske, said, and the civilian socialists would leave military matters to the autonomous authority of the high command.
The deal paid off, at least in the short term, as the generals suppressed the communist uprising known as Sparticist week, using both regular army units and the first of the right-wing militias called Freikorps.
In the long run? It did not, as we all know, turn out that well.**
*Old joke: how does a Hollywood producer suggest you should be intercoursed?
A: “Trust me”
**See Peter Gay’s Weimar Culture for an excellet brief overview of the lows, highs, and deeper lows that flowed through that post “Great” War Germany.
Images: Constantino Brumidi, “The Apotheosis of Washington” (detail), fresco in the US Capitol rotunda, 1865.
Beham, (Hans) Sebald, “Three Soldiers and a Dog,” c. 1540.
Captured British tank, used by troops to suppress the Spartacist uprising, Berlin, 1919.
Mark-NC
You are leaving out something.
This only applies to Republicans. There is NO respect for the military if you are John Kerry, or Wesley Clark, or the man running for the Senate in Pennsylvania Joe Sestak.
So, it is not really worship of the military – just another ploy to get Republicans elected but playing the “I’m more patriotic than you card” – IMHO.
Janus Daniels
“There are circumstances under which a military officer is not only justified but also obligated to disobey a legal order.”
And the officer should instantly resign.
Baud
Surprised this wasn’t mentioned:
Superluminar
You know who else gave the Officer Corps too much powe…oh wait…
Omnes Omnibus
@Janus Daniels:If you can’t bring yourself to obey a legal order, you should resign your commission. It really is that simple.
Joe Buck
Careful. In the last days of Richard Nixon’s presidency, he was drunken, raving, and talking about surrounding the White House with troops. Fortunately for American democracy, the DoD secretary and the top brass would have none of it. An order went out from the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Upon receipt of this message you will no longer carry out any orders from the White House. Acknowledge receipt.”
See
this article for details.
Notice that they did not say “illegal orders”, they said “any orders”, because preparations for a coup would include many steps, most of which are completely legal. So we need to find out more of what this officer means before condemning him: just what kinds of orders is he thinking of?
Bnut
I never understood why John Kerry was not absolutely livid when people began to question his service. Or why Max Cleland didn’t kill Saxby Chambliss with his good arm.
hilzoy
Andy Olmsted:
“Asking people to support the troops within reason is a nice thing to do. Demanding that people support the troops by requiring them to blindly support whatever the troops do is a recipe for disaster. Soldiers exist to support the people, not the other way around, and the people must decide what it is they require of their soldiers. If the people decide to make war, it is the job of soldiers to make war. And if the people decide to make peace, then it is the job of soldiers to make peace. Other than the opportunity to vote when the time comes, and for generals to offer honest, candid advice on what is and is not possible in war, it is the job of soldiers to salute and get about the business of supporting what the people want, not the reverse.
Can it be frustrating for troops in a combat zone to hear some of the debates and questions over what they are doing? Absolutely. And that is unfortunate. But to truly support the troops, people need to ask the right questions to ensure that what they are asking of the troops is feasible, reasonable, and desirable, and to do that hard questions must be asked. If that makes the troops unhappy, it is a small price to pay. It would be most unfortunate if America were to forget which is the whip hand in the relationship between civilians and the military.”
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re protecting the country from itself.
Is there any higher calling than that?
Two words: Dreyfus Affair.
Oui, cela peut arriver ici. Vraiment.
Martin
@Mark-NC: This entirely. Volunteered for an unpopular war, 3 purple hearts, a silver star, a bronze star? Oh, here, let me put this little bandaid on my chin and mock you as too weak to have ever honorably served your country.
Took 5 deferments from the same conflict? Oh, you are a military superhero to whom we will cede all civilian authority.
soonergrunt
I don’t think anyone whose served for any length of time is under any kind of illusion such as thinking that members of the officer corps are more honest or are better Americans than anyone else. One need only read the Military Times each week to see the officers of various branches of the military undergoing courts-martial for various crimes from adultery to murder to know that.
The Yinglings far outnumber the Milburns in the military service, but it wasn’t conservatives who wanted the military to disregard lawful orders in 2003. The pages of DailyKOS and other lefty blogs were full of people calling on the military to, or hoping that the military would refused to carry out the orders of the Commander in Chief that had support from the Congress in the form of the Authorization to Use Military Force.
It’s my opinion that the last thing any thinking Liberal, or ANY ‘small d’ democrat should ever want is for the people with the best guns to think that they have some moral or legal imperative to disobey the President when the orders are clearly legal or for there to ever be anything approaching precedence for such.
Backbencher
The Palin quote is a direct allusion to John the Baptist’s words about Jesus as found in Mark 1:7
brent
@Mark-NC:
I don’t think this point van be emphasized enough. All of this obsequious “respect” for the military is really only respect for a particular hawkish mindset. The moment that any military personnel advises against aggressive action, all of this swell respect evaporates.
PurpleGirl
This post brings to mind the novel and movie Seven Days in May.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
morzer
This sounds like a variant of the standard right wing lust for “the man on horseback”. It’s more an indictment of ignorance of the Constitution among those who claim to revere it and have sworn to uphold it than anything else.
Cat Lady
If you’re in the military and you believe that America is a Christian nation that has lost its way due to liberal secularism, like most of the Air Force does, then you’re acting on behalf of a higher power than the Constitution, and fulfilling God’s mission on earth. QED.
I worry about all those wingnuts in their planes having nothing better to do with their time than stewing over how to overthrow this government, since they’ve by and large not had much of a role in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can’t we find something for them to do other than bombing brown people?
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, fulfilling the oath one took when one joined.
El Cid
The Founding Fathers really intended the military to be the last check on the Constitution.
morzer
@Backbencher:
Combat boots?
Martin
@PurpleGirl: Was just on TCM the other day, in fact.
El Cid
Do any ordinary grunts and non-com’s also have the duty and obligation to disobey legal orders, just like the military aristocrats known as “officers”?
Tom Levenson
@Janus Daniels: To be fair to Milburn — he does assert that the officers rejecting civilian orders should resign.
But (a) I don’t think a culture of uniformed independence of civilian authority remains satisfied with mere resignation for long, (which is to say, Milburn is either naive — which is what I think — or duplicitous)…
and (b) a campaign of resignation and public dissent by top military officers leads inevitably to serious challenges to civilian authority. You can get military vetos over legal orders, or you can get military subordination to the civil power, but you can’t, I think, get both in any stable way.
TXSMR
I am so sick of the military types who either got a lobotomy in basic training or completely turned off their thinking caps (or both).
Here’s a link to the the Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans group’s congressional report card:
http://iavaaction.org/report-card
It never ever ceases to amaze me how many military folks and other “patriots” who pretend to worship the military folks cannot *&^%ing figure out which party votes to ensure that they have proper health coverage, proper pay, proper benefits, and cannot be used as cannon-fodder for any crazy rash war that the GOP can dream up in their fantasies.
We had neighbors in Alaska who actually said (post-Obama-election) to me “It’s the Republicans who pay our paychecks.” These were educated people who loved nothing better than to sit around smoking dope having been retired from the military.
And palin’s combat vet son that she’s been touting? You mean the one who was forced into the service in lieu of serving time in the pokey because he’d been busted for cutting brake lines on school buses in Wasilla? That one? If he saw any combat I’d like some proof. Seems to me I recall hearing that he was given a cushy job pushing papers because he would have been considered a mega-target because of his mommy.
I’d gladly print out copies of the IAVA document and hand them out to “patriots” here in TX, but it’s an exercise in futility. Too many people here are just interested in hating & being angry.
Anyway, speaking of the crazy joe miller in Alaska — I like the recent stuff re: child porn on computers, palin’s crazy rant about the corrupt bastards trying to find child molesters at their rally, and the video that miller’s camp supposedly has of that. That lady is totally going into self-destruct mode over this joe miller shit. Of course he probably has dirt on her (having been party to her attempted ouster of Reudrich and troopergate issues, and AIP stuff on the first dud), so she is pretty heavily invested in his winning for many reasons, and it’s not looking good.
I am looking for some karma in this one. Let’s have some what comes around goes around.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus: But they’ll maintain they are fulfilling their oath, and that’s the problem.
The French Army went right down the anti-Dreyfusard line, perjuring, fabricating evidence, blackmailing cabinet members, endangering real national security, in a much more dangerous world — Germany’s right there, in Alsace, better armed, more numerous — because they were defending la France profonde. They were in their minds La France profonde.
All the recent talk about ‘real America’ sounds strangely familiar, and very depressing.
Backbencher
@morzer:
Almost. John the Baptist said he was not worthy to untie the straps of Jesus’ sandals
soonergrunt
@El Cid: You meant that as snark, right?
Because they really believed that the military should be the very last governmental organ used for just about every single conceivable purpose, especially including international relations, and that the actual ‘professional’ military should be too small to campaign unless the nation was actually at war.
Bnut
As much time as you spend at boot camp/OCS learning history of the service and organization, mayhaps a sprinkling of civics would not be so bad? Instead of standing in the chow line screaming out a list of famous Marines, we could be yelling out parts of the Constitution?
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: I understand, but that does not make them correct.
JD Rhoades
@Bnut:
That was the whole problem. Kerry didn’t get livid over it, and it made him look weak.
WereBear
Inside every wingnut is a deep and sincere longing to be told what to do.
This is the root of their military reverence, wherein everyone is told what to do!
I, too, have noticed this only applies to military people who say things they agree with; it applies to every category of human endeavor as they see it.
I continue to believe that what we have here, writ large, is the stark delineation of the most dysfunctional, abused, and oblivious of our fellow Americans. One political party courts it, and reflects it.
Then, there’s the rest of us. It’s only the relentless propaganda of our corporate “news” outlets that lets anyone think otherwise.
Library Grape
isnt this basically the only reason why a mean, petty shell of a man like john mccain still has a job in politics?
Dennis SGMM
@El Cid:
Only if they want to face disciplinary action. I was a Navy NCO, we could refuse to obey an illegal order and that was it.
SIde note: I only had to do so once. A young LTJG ordered me to do something that would have killed him in the spot. Fortunately, a senior officer heard the JG ranting and stepped in to explain things to him. The JG did apologize to me.
soonergrunt
@El Cid:
There is not now, nor has their ever been a duty to disobey a lawful order. The reverse is in fact true. Lawful orders must be obeyed and carried out to the best of the Servicemember’s ability, regardless of one’s political, philosophical, or other beliefs. Conscientious Objection, under military law has nothing to do with whether or not an order is lawful, but that’s another issue.
If a Servicemember believes that an order is unlawful, it is that Servicemember’s burden to prove that to be the case.
Certain orders are unlawful on their face, such as “kill everybody you find in the village and burn it down,” or “take the property of the enemy civilians as a war trophy” while other orders, such as the order to deploy to a combat zone, are not facially unlawful and are assumed to be lawful orders.
kay
@Backbencher:
Well. That figures.
What’s fascinating to me about Joe Miller is that he’s an absolute ethical train wreck. This is an amazing statement:
2008. He then lied about the lies. 2010.
No freaking way any Senatorial candidate other than a member of a Tea Party would have lasted this long with his numerous, documented ethical transgressions. He wasn’t asked, because national media have decided to afford members of the Tea Party a complete pass, and when he was asked, he refused to answer. It took a court order, and that may have come too late.
Murkowski (the reckless coward) described him as “unfit” in a debate, and she’s right. Too bad she couldn’t find the courage to call out the Tea Party before she was targeted. As far as I’m concerned, that spectacular cowardice makes her unfit.
Bnut
@Dennis SGMM:
Open thread with stories about butter bars almost killing themselves please? I have a few good ones.
russ
When those in charge of our military have the mindset that they work for those doing the fighting and dieing and are there to keep them as safe as possible. Provide them with whatever is needed to make the odds of them dying as low as possible and not fodder for the MIC’s profit machine.
Then we’ll have a military that makes sense.
asiangrrlMN
@soonergrunt: Yes, he did. El Cid is famous for his very dry wit.
@WereBear: I agree with you. It’s actually comforting, I think, to not have to think about what is right and wrong, good and bad, etc. It’s one lure of fundamentalist religion. Everything is cut and dry. Follow orders or be thrown out. You are right that this also sums up the military and why so many on the right are comforted by the idea (even if many of them assiduously avoid serving).
It’s hard for me to fathom the mentality that just because someone is a four-star general, s/he is a morally better person than someone who is not. Then again, I am wary of worshiping power in and of itself.
Splendid One
@Mark-NC – I served in Vietnam, three times. I was transported by Swift Boats. John Kerry was correct in everything he had to say about how bad things were there. Those lying swiftboaters in 2004 made me want to puke.
I know who the politicians are who really support the troops – they’re the ones who support them in all ways, including through the VA and with a beefed up GI Bill; not just in finding stupid ways to get more of them killed, like lying our way into Iraq.
Twenty-two senators voted against the new GI Bill. Want to guess how many of those were troop-supporting Republicans?
Dennis SGMM
@Bnut:
LOL!
“You don’t want to do that, sir.”
AxelFoley
Lolwut? Is this bitch serious?
Fuck her, Joe Miller, his boots and change (the annoying new poster here).
JPL
Do the wingnuts know that Mexicans are allowed to serve in our army? Correct me if I’m wrong but early during the Iraq war, a Latino was given citizenship after his death in combat.
Can we tie their boots also?
soonergrunt
@kay: Not only that, but he still won’t say what it is that gave him the disability from military service that he claims to be receiving.
His DD214 doesn’t give disability as the reason for his transfer from the Active Component to the Reserve Component two years prior to the completion of his service obligation. The specific code is for “miscellaneous reasons (unqualified resignation)”.
Not having experience with officer management or accessions, I couldn’t tell you what that would signify.
However, it clearly does NOT reference a service-ending disability, which would be DER or GFN or GFT.
Citizen_X
@Davis X. Machina:
Similarly, the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War–an officer’s coup that turned into a war because the population and government resisted–did not refer to themselves as Nacionalistas, as the common translation “Nationalists” suggests. They referred to themselves as los Nacionales, i.e. the the heart of the nation; the “true” Spaniards.
This attitude was a common characteristic of the military in 20th century right-wing dictatorships of Latin America, as well.
Lolis
Well, supposedly, St. Sarah has thrown Joe Miller under the bus already. She probably blames the 350 people showing up at her rally debacle on him. I bet Obama could hold a rally in Anchorage with 7 K. Sarah’s star is hitched to Joe Miller’s defeat. We can’t let the MSM forget it.
WereBear
It’s true a lot of people think that way; there is a lure in the bare fact that by so doing, one does not have to take any responsibility whatsoever.
I remain astonished that there are so many people who will accept their lives being screwed up as long as it is not their fault. I blame authoritarian child rearing; it’s how authoritarians are created.
JGabriel
Lt. Col. Andrew Milburn:
I haven’t read USA Lt. Col. Yingling’s response, but what immediately jumps out to me is how absolutely anti-constitutional this view is. The Founding Fathers were largely against maintaining a full-time professional military, preferring to rely on local, volunteer militias (which is one reason why the Second Amendment refers to militias instead of an army), and required Congress to never fund the military for more than two years at time — such that Congress could defund military expenditures with relatively short notice.
The military was never designed to be any kind of check or balance. Its constitutional role is strictly as a tool of the executive branch, for the defense of the nation.
I feel reasonably sure that Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and maybe even Adams, would all be appalled by Milburn’s reasoning.
.
El Cid
@soonergrunt: Yes, that was not serious.
morzer
@kay:
Yes, but in wingnut world, two wrongs make it right!
JPL
@Lolis: Yeah right! The media anointed Sarah and they won’t back down.
@soonergrunt: The specific code is for “miscellaneous reasons (unqualified resignation)”.
Sounds like Bush I left early cuz excuse. Hopefully someone clarifies the comment.
stuckinred
@Splendid One:River Rat huh? I drove trucks on the Dong Tam, Vihn Long, Sa Dec, Can Tho roads 68-69. Dudes runnin up and down those narrow ass canals we pullin nasty duty.
El Cid
@Dennis SGMM: What I meant was that the quote in this post had military officers with the obligation to perhaps disobey legal orders.
I simply wondered if this only applied to the elite of the officer corps, or if some private or sergeant got to do the same. Goose, gander.
asiangrrlMN
@WereBear: That is true, too. I was just following orders! I should amend that I don’t find it comforting to mindlessly follow someone else, though I sometimes wish I did. And, I have always been bemused by people who demand their rights as they simultaneously eschew the responsibilities that accompany those rights.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel:
This is precisely the case. The original purpose of the Military Academy at West Point was more for the production of engineers who would go out and build the roads and bridges and canals and such like that the growing country needed more than it was the production of combat leaders.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: @soonergrunt: IIRC Miller left the Army in the early 90s. During the post-Cold War drawdown of troops, many officers were allowed to resign their commissions prior to the expiration of their initial service obligation. Officers 0-3 and above qualified, in some cases for good sized cash bonuses. I have a friend who paid for business school with his separation bonus. As a 1LT whose initial service obligation ended in 1992, I was not able to get out early nor did I get sweet, sweet cash. In any case, it seems to me as though Miller left early under those circumstances.
soonergrunt
@JPL: Note that an unqualified resignation means that the Army was essentially releasing him from all service commitments, including the contracted term of service.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: They were fresh out of bubble gum huh?
jwb
@Cat Lady: The good news is that if we have to have a wingnut military service, the air force is by far the best place for it to located. It’s almost impossible for that group to run a coup on its own. Of course, it would be much better not to have a wingnut military service at all…
JGabriel
@Bnut:
Because it had never been questioned before. Kerry probably couldn’t comprehend that so many people would wilfully believe such an obvious pack of lies. So, tactically, he shrugged it off, rather than give the lies any more traction by responding to them.
Obviously that was a mistake. But it’s a mistake I, and many of us here, would likely make too — at least, initially.
.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: It may not mean anything at all. The real tell would be his OERs, but we know we’ll never see those.
As far as his claim to be a disabled vet, it’s not illegal to claim to be such when one isn’t, so long as one does not attempt to defraud the government or anyone else by such claim.
On a side note, I once had occasion to read the Relief For Cause OER for a LTC. (long story, don’t ask) and after the rater’s near total evisceration of the rated officer, there was only one bullet in the Senior Rater’s block:
“The Senior Rater can forsee no national emergency so grave as to warrant the recall of LTC (Name) to active service.”
At which I thought “well, Okaaaaaaaay.”
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred:Hell, the day I outprocessed at Ft. Dix, they were out of the little lapel pins.
liberal
@soonergrunt:
You’re flat-out wrong.
First, as for procedure, only Congress has the power to declare war. You can argue that the AUMF against Iraq was a war declaration, but it wasn’t.
Second, even if the Iraq war was legal in terms of the procedures outlined in the Constitution and other US documents, it was clearly illegal because it was a war of aggression.
morzer
@soonergrunt:
It’s ironic that for so much of US history the army and navy were deliberately kept low in numbers and funded lightly – and yet now the reverse is the case.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: He could be disabled and a vet, rather than a disabled vet.
Davis X. Machina
@soonergrunt:The inspiration for West Point IIRC was the École national des ponts et chausées. (Sandhurst was established in the same year as West Point, and didn’t make much of an impression on the British officer corps for a long while.)
kay
@soonergrunt:
I didn’t see that, but I’m not surprised.
I saw he had an issue with his former employer over taking leave under the FMLA.
He didn’t reveal property held in trust when he was (incredibly!) a federal magistrate, and then there’s this oddly phrased statement from his former law firm:
The NYTimes spent three weeks investigating the long-serving Democratic attorney general in Connecticut because he made some unclear statements regarding his military service.
Last week, I watched CNN “investigate” the Reid staffer who had a phony marriage in 1993, for two full days.
Yet this guy was exposed by a blogger.
National media are aware that each and every Senator has one vote out of 100, right?
sven
I hadn’t realized that Moses wrote the United States Constitution. I learn something new every day.
No surprise, the folks pushing this viewpoint, the NCCS, are right here in the state of Idaho.
Why is it that the people most fixated by the constitution have no interest in it’s actual history?
Downpuppy
Nice dance around the rim of indelicate language, Tom, but utterly unfuckingnecessary.
stuckinred
@JGabriel: I don’t know. Three of us that were in the VVAW and with Kerry at Operation Dewey Canyon III (and laughed at him when he tried to act like he was in charge with his bullhorn) called each other up as soon as he got nominated and said “here it comes”. If we knew it he damn sure should of. I respect what he did in the Nam and in the VVAW but there was a calculation about his political future in all of it. Those of us who were lowly enlisted pukes wanted to stop the fucking war period.
Cassidy
@Bnut: “Danger fucking close, asshole”
Basilisc
Reverence for the military directly reflects the (largely justified) fall in reverence for virtually every other US institution: all levels of government, the judiciary, corporations, the financial world, academe, the media …
Everyone in all of these once respected institutions has been shown, quite clearly, to be out for themselves and quite ready to f–k the rest of us as and when needed.
The same applies, of course, to the military. Only it’s slightly obscured by the aura of uniforms, “duty”, and “professionalism”. And many folks in the heartland know someone in the military personally, or know someone who knows someone, while all of these other institutions are populated by (to them) aliens.
So it’s not too surprising that people cling (you should pardon the expression) so closely to the “heroes” in uniform in these troubled times. But it is, as you say, unfortunate, and it is very very sad.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: But they had hard dick for ya! A commercial for Nathan Deal just played and the weasel shit motherfucker talked about, “as a veteran I fought for. . . “. He was a jag officer and never left the states. He ain’t fought for shit.
soonergrunt
@liberal: Nice rethinking of history there. Say, why don’t you go and find some of the refuseniks from the Iraq war and ask them what kind of discharges they got? Ask the ones who sought legal action in the civilian courts what the civilian courts said when their cases were thrown out in the civilian courts. To a person they were all either discharged dishonorably secondary to conviction at Court-Martial for violating Article 92, UCMJ and/or Article 134, UCMJ, or they received discharges or releases under AR 635-200 Chapter 10, Discharge in Lieu of Trial by Court-Martial or their analogues from the other services. Many of those who were convicted at Court-Martial did time in confinement.
Not a single one of these cases has ever been successfully appealed and the grounds that the orders were unlawful.
Having just given everyone here the legal authorities for the war in Iraq being lawful from the perspective of the US military, (the US Constitution and US law) do please tell us all under what authority is an individual servicemember held liable for the nation’s possible violation of international law? Because there is no such authority under US law or international law, and there never has been. We didn’t put members of the Wehrmacht or the Japanese Army in prison camps after WWII was over. We didn’t put North Korean or Chinese servicemembers into a war crimes tribunal even as the DPRK’s invasion of ROK and the subsequent Chinese invasion were clearly in violation of international law as expressed by both Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. We didn’t indict individual personnel from Cambodian Khmer Rouge. We didn’t put individual Yugoslavian Army personnel into the Hague for any of the Yugoslavian civil wars for that matter. No Russian/Soviet personnel have ever been indicted or charged with engaging in a war of aggression against Czechoslovakia for the Prague Spring, or the ‘intervention’ in Hungary.
Please try harder. Your assertion does not equate to fact.
soonergrunt
@Basilisc: I wouldn’t disagree with a word of this.
The Boss
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
soonergrunt
@soonergrunt: And I’ll extend, because there’s bound to be some splitting of frog hairs:
We didn’t put people in jail or indict people or ship them to the Hague or whatever the fuck have you, without evidence of personal violations of the laws of land warfare or international law.
dadanarchist
This is why we need to resurrect the ancient Athenian practice of ostracism, in which each year some number of important public figures are voted into exile for a ten year period.
Sure, some certain number of Democrats would be exiled, but imagine if Sarah Palin was forced to live in Europe for ten years. Hilarity would ensue.
jwb
@sven: These are the same people, I’m sure, who believe that the King James version is the original version of the Bible.
Bnut
@Cassidy:
“Sir, that’s our own position…” The F-18 pilots read the grid back to him 3 times, and yet he persisted….
colleeniem
@soonergrunt: I can tell you what it would signify…this guy is a serious fuck-up. You don’t let academy officers go before their time is up without medical reasons (so much has been invested) unless everyone, I mean everyone, believes that the person could cause serious damage by being in the service. This could either by being ethically under suspicion, or just ridiculously incompetent. And NCOs know what incompetent looks like, I know ;), having been exposed to more than one green academy grad.@Omnes Omnibus: How did miller make that rank in 3 years, and still be allowed to separate? That doesn’t make sense.
ETA: Fix’d retire to separate.
Steaming Pile
@JGabriel: I saw the SBVFT’s website and dismissed them as some lunatic fringe group, not worthy of my concern. The site was cheesy, amateurishly designed, and indistinguishable from the myriad other fringe sites with active readers numbering in the low dozens at best. Boy, was I wrong.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@jwb:
My father spent a year teaching econ at the Air Force Academy (1969-70). His opinion is that it’s almost impossible for that group to run the Air Force.
colleeniem
@soonergrunt: That is seriously awesome.
Mark-NC
@JGabriel:
“Kerry probably couldn’t comprehend that so many people would willfully believe such an obvious pack of lies”
I think a better explanation is that Kerry couldn’t comprehend that the MSLM would willfully allow this narrative to continue without correcting the record.
Sorry, still wrong!
I think a better explanation is that Kerry couldn’t comprehend that the MSLM would willfully JOIN this narrative as if it were a game!
kay
@colleeniem:
All good questions, colleeniem, but no one was interested in pursuing them.
Major media were concentrating on what the attorney general of Connecticut said at a campaign rally. That was the ethical transgression national media decided to pursue.
The only reason Joe Miller got any scrutiny at all was because his private police force handcuffed a reporter.
fasteddie9318
@Joe Buck:
That’s probably the last thing we should care about, actually. It doesn’t matter whether Milburn’s intentions are pure, because the next high-ranking officer who decides he’s got the moral authority to contravene a legal order won’t have pure intentions. This is a path that cannot lead to a good outcome, regardless of the motives for starting on it.
soonergrunt
@fasteddie9318:
THIS x5.
Fuzz
Andrew Bacevich is a good read for this subject. His theory is that a lot of the worship of the military comes from the fact that while this is ostensibly a good, just war (and absolutely is to Republicans/TPers) hardly anyone is willing (or able, given the amount of young people with diabetes, asthma, depression, add, etc.) to serve. Of the military aged people in the USA something like 2% have either served or are serving. We’re basically just trying to alleviate some of our collective guilt with the reverence of our soldiers.
Delia
Tom,
Gordon Craig’s history of modern Germany, which you cited the other day, is excellent on how the German High Command really took over not only the war but the entire country during WWI. The outside world was focused on the villainies of Kaiser Willi, but he was just a weak minded Dubya type. Hindenburg and Ludendorff took on dictatorial powers and got entranced by dreams of a German empire in the East long before Hitler popularized the notion. The over-dependence on the military went back a long way.
LosGatosCA
@Joe Buck:
I believe the instruction was to not execute orders outside the normal chain of command. Not the same exact thing as disobey orders from the White House.
“Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had “kept a close watch to make certain that no orders were given to military units outside the normal chain of command.”
That’s just due diligence under stress.
The Republic of Stupidity
@fasteddie9318:
This whole scenario reminds me of a movie I saw once…
What was it… what was it…?
Oh yeah…
***snaps fingers…***
“Dr Strangelove…”
Karen
@PurpleGirl:
It also brings to mind “Z”
Steeplejack (phone)
@Martin:
It will be on TCM at 6:00 p.m. EDT Tuesday.
thomas Levenson
@Delia: You are exactly right — which is why it is so interesting that Ludendorff wrote a bitter letter to Hindenburg in 1933, complaining that in handing the Chancellorship to Hitler, his old co-dictator had made a terrible error.
PonB
This is all I can think of when I read this:
Oh yeah, there’s also this – my idiot neighbor who thinks everything that comes out of his mouth is correct just because he’s in the Army Reserves…
– PonB
Omnes Omnibus
@colleeniem: He left active duty as a 1LT. Nothing weird about it. At that time, it was 24 months as a 2LT and then almost automatic promotion to 1LT. The man is an ass and liar, but I don’t see anything weird about how he left active duty.
Bnut
@PonB:
Tell him a service branch without combat arms is like an Olympics without track and field.
Cheryl from Maryland
My museum was lending a jeep to a transportation museum (not military). But the person I had to talk to was military. He kept calling at 6:00 am and leaving irate messages on my telephone. The messages included the term “you civilians” with references to me being lazy and sleeping in. His director (non-ex-military) told him to apologize to me. While I am certain many veterans do well in civilian life, the sheer contempt and entitlement of that man has left me concerned about too much hero worship.
Ken Lovell
I’m not so sure about this. I’ve sometimes speculated that the failure to convert the Cheney/AEI bellicosity towards Iran into military action owed more than a little to quiet messages that the military would not co-operate. If so, that is an excellent outcome.
It’s one thing to resign over an issue of principle but if the officer concerned knows the only practical consequence will be the appointment of some more compliant individual, the resignation does nothing to change the government’s intended actions. Refusal to obey, followed by disciplinary action and a public controversy, may be much more effective. Note that Milburn is not proposing soldiers take up arms to resist the lawful government, or engage in proactive policy-making; only that officers sometimes have a moral duty that over-rides their constitutional obligation to obey orders.
Many historians have condemned the German officer class (with some notable exceptions) for not refusing to go along with Hitler’s wars of aggression. If they had declined en masse to co-operate, the argument goes, untold death and suffering might have been avoided. To my mind they had a moral obligation to refuse to participate in wars of aggression even though they had a clear lawful duty to obey the Fuhrer, to whom they had sworn a personal oath of fealty. This was also the opinion of the Nuremberg tribunal.
It’s not quite as clear-cut as the post suggests, in other words. I find Milburn’s argument persuasive. It would be different if authority to make war was the preserve solely of Congress but as Milburn argues, that is no longer the case. When the constitution effectively obliges soldiers to make war at the whim of one individual, even an idiot like George W Bush, it is perfectly proper for them to consider the moral implications of their orders and resist in some limited circumstances.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@fasteddie9318:
Agreed. Now, balloonbaggers, make a microscopically tiny conceptual leap and apply this unassailable logic to the actions of the Executive of the United States. I knows you can do it!
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken Lovell:
First, US soldiers do not swear an oath to a person. They swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Second, it is impossible to run a military if each member gets to decide whether a war is or is not a war of aggression. If policy makers make a decision, soldiers carry it out unless it falls into a few very clear categories of illegal acts.
colleeniem
@Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, I got my nautical service ranks confused with Army, so I thought you meant he had to make O-3.
I stand corrected. Sorry you missed out on that timing.
soonergrunt
@PonB:
I try to stay away from such people. If there’s anything that time outside the wire will teach a person, it’s that many of things that you took for granted are wrong. Even worse, they may get you killed.
soonergrunt
@Ken Lovell:
I would submit to you that the real controversy in that case is Congress’ ceding of authority to the President. That is an area for the Congress and the President to work out, not for some middle management O-5 to decide. It’s not even for an O-10 to decide.
Ken Lovell
@ 100 don’t you think that’s one feature of an authoritarian state? Surely each individual’s sense of personal morality and ethical conduct as a human being should ultimately over-ride any abstract duty to something as ill-defined as the state. To accept that one must always and in all circumstances follow the instructions of the state a necessary (although not sufficient of course) condition of totalitarian rule.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Cat Lady:
The Air Force Academy != the entirety of the US Air Force. This shit happens in all of the branches, as much fun as it is for some of us on the left to want to destroy the USAF’s ability to fight a modern power and concentrate on fucking COIN.
Delia
The German officer corps in general didn’t like Hitler and his Nazi party because, well, they were common and the military elite had always been aristocratic. But by and large they knuckled under to the party after they became the government, especially after the SA purge. And of course Hitler had incorporated the fantasy of a drive to the East from the Ludendorff crowd.
One interesting note (and I can’t recall where I picked this up): in the 1944 plot to overthrow Hitler, which was based in the military, the leaders made desperate overtures to the Brits and the Americans for support, which, if it had come, might well have led to its success. But the Allies declined, on the grounds that if the plot succeeded, the Prussian military reputation would be rehabilitated, and they thought it was absolutely necessary that it be disgraced and destroyed for all time.
Bnut
@Amanda in the South Bay:
The problem being the vast majority of the AF who engage in active combat are officers. You have the occasional combat controller in SF units, and a few enlisted pressed into convoy security. By and large, in the Army and Marine Corps, those doing the “prosecuting” are E1-5, not commissioned people.
soonergrunt
@Delia:
I’ve never heard that the German staff officers involved in the plot to overthrow Hitler asked the Brits or the US for support. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just that this is the first I’ve heard of that.
Note that while the coup plotters intended to negotiate a cease-fire and eventual treaty on the western front, they fully intended to continue the war against the Soviet Union. The fact that ‘unconditional surrender’ was the stated policy of the Allies seemed lost under the impression that the Germans had that the west would gladly accept a continued war by Germany against the Bolshevik menace. There was never any serious consideration at the political level for this, although Patton supposedly advocated keeping German units intact and then using them under US command against the Russians.
As far as the Prussian reputation, when the Bundeswehr was created in 1955, it was specifically organized along the prussian model with a service oath very similar to the Prussian Officers’ oath, and the prussian tradition of an officer asking himself before carrying out an order “is this good for Germany and is it morally correct?”
Honus
@soonergrunt: True. I know Lee, and I think Grant and most other civil war generals were trained as civil engineers. They still have his compass (the circle drawing kind) and other drafting instruments in Lee Chapel at Washington & Lee.
Bnut
@Honus:
Or Artillery. Smarties needed for all those pre-computer calculations.
Honus
@Bnut: Except the Merchant Marine had the highest casualty rate of any service in WWII.
Chris G
@kay: Miller makes my skin crawl. He is, I think, the absolute bottom of the tea party barrel, which is saying quite a lot. Sleaze so pure it can’t even imagine why it would want to pretend to be anything else.
Bnut
@Honus:
I think WWII is sort of an adoration when it comes to statistics. The AF gas men and window washers in CONUS are in no danger of hostile fire unless Russia rolls through the Fulda Gap, or Dubya rolls a coup.
Tom Levenson
BTW — sorry to all for not being that present in the discussion; halloween night w. a ten year old takes precedence, but this has been a fine thread.
@Ken Lovell: I w. Omnes Omnibus on this, and not with you. Milburn does not call for officers to defy and face discipline; he calls on them to resign and publically encourage others to do so. Whatever Milburn’s own motivations, this works to weaken the capacity of the civil authority to exercise command over the uniformed services.
There is no question that the individual officers should leave the service if they cannot abide the uses to which they are being put. But if you look at what Milburn actually advocates, as Lt. Col Yingling does, and realize that Milburn asserts that an individual officer’s judgment of the good of the service or of subordinates trumps the chain of command that ends in civilian hands — then you have the underlying ethos that leads to colonels coups.
The Hitler/1944/Nuremburg examples are striking, and FSM knows I can’t call Godwin on anyone, but it’s important to remember that German generals were found guilty at Nuremburg of specific war crimes, not the crime of making war. That you and I both think that the General Staff failed in a human duty to find some way to block Hitler is off point; to me the real lesson of the German experience between the wars is exactly how dangerous it is to venerate the military in the ways that both Palin and Milburn do here. If there hadn’t been such deference to the General Staff in 1919 (and if the SPD had been cleverer about getting access to the state’s notional monopoly on violence) much that followed might have been avoided. It was the deference to the generals that made the generals transfer of allegiance to the person of the Fuhrer so dangerous.
We aren’t in that position, but if we accept the notion that the uniformed services are the one national institution in which virtue and the absence of interests resides, then we head some way down a similarly perilous path.
mclaren
At this point you’re going up directly against the kooks and cranks and crackpots who make up the Balloon-Juice commentariat. Show the Balloon-Juice crew a man in uniform — whether military or police — and they fall all over themselves to lick his boots even as he stamps in their faces.
The Balloon-Juice crew offers a good cross-section of the American public…which is to say, the most servile crew of serfs and goose-steppers ever seen since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Suggest that we should stop worshiping people in uniform (either police or military) and you’ll engender real fury from the Balloon-Juice commentariat.
America, courtesy of the kooks and cranks and pathetic wannabe-slaves of the commenters infesting Balloon-Juice, is getting the government we deserve: government of the taser, by the taser, and for the taser.
soonergrunt
I like pie too, mclaren, but I don’t get this fascination of yours for strawberry-rhubarb. To each his own, I guess.
You know, you shouldn’t wait until the thread is several-hours-dead to post about your favorite pie. It looks like you’re trying to say something profound or harsh and not get slapped for it. You know, so that it looks like no one would argue with you because you were so right that you ended the thread.
That’s pretty pathetic. Especially when all you ever post about is pie.
liberal
@soonergrunt:
LOL. So what? You expect courts conducted by criminals to be fair and just?
liberal
@soonergrunt:
Doesn’t matter what the history says. The fact is that wars of aggression are illegal under the UN Charter and other aspects of international law.
You want to make excuses for war criminals? Be my guest.
Members of the military are either moral agents, or they’re not. If they’re moral agents, they have an obvious moral obligation not to participate in wars of aggression. If they’re not moral agents, they’re just jackbooted thugs who mindlessly follow orders and should be accorded no respect.
soonergrunt
@liberal: More fair and just than anything you’d come up with. You’ve already convicted anybody who served of crimes that don’t actually exist. The difference here is that those fora prosecute crimes that actually exist while you’re going on about something you wish were illegal.
Since you’re making it up as you go along, there being no legal history or legislation at any level to support your assertion, why don’t you take it all the way and let us know your desired punishment? After all, since the crime is fictional, the sentence might as well be fictional too.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wrong. You have to look at the balance of what I guess I’d call moral hazard.
If members of the military question “too much,” then the military wouldn’t function even in “necessary” conflicts—necessary, meaning defensive.
If members of the military question too little, then they’re apt to become pawns of the state as it conducts immoral, aggressive wars.
Given the long record of aggressive US actions and the extreme paucity and lack of recent examples of defensive actions, clearly the notion that there’s a risk of the military not functioning even in conflicts where the US was right is laughable.
liberal
@soonergrunt:
Yawn. The US invasion of Iraq was clearly illegal. Go ahead and continue to make excuses for it. You’re just making yourself look stupid and thuggish.
At least in the Vietnamese conflict, where the US military murdered millions of Indochinese, they at least had the excuse that many of them were conscripted and (despite the pining of many for the good old days) there was a lack of access to good information.
Fact is, you’re either a moral agent or a thug. Sounds like you’re the latter.
liberal
@Tom Levenson:
Yes, but also note that “The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war ‘essentially an evil thing…to initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.'”
liberal
@soonergrunt:
Well, (s)he did say something true, which is that people here and elsewhere have undue deference towards the military.
soonergrunt
Again, “liberal,” you are making shit up as you go. I don’t know where the U.N. resolution from either the Security Council or from the General Assembly (the body the US can’t veto) is that says that Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. I did find a couple of UN Security Council resolutions that, while highly dubious, would seem to give authority to the US government to invade Iraq.
Things cannot be illegal just because you want them to be so. I’m sorry that you’re so disappointed that you can’t have your way but all of your caterwauling and whining will not make it so.
And as for mclaren’s assertion or whatever it was, it was most likely way off the mark if his posting history is any guide at all. You say “which is that people here and elsewhere have undue deference towards the military” which this very thread, including statements made by veterans, would seem to oppose any such idea. Other postings on Balloon-Juice routinely disparage the military as an institution and military personnel as individuals and members of that institution. Any claim that there is undue deference towards the military here is utterly farcical. The fact that nobody but me has taken your stupid shit to task would also seem to go against such an argument. So mclaren, if that’s what he was saying, was, per usual, wrong. Most likely, he was, per usual, also highly offensive, overly broad, and arguing by assertion.
Just as your argument buy assertion is wrong. Not only is the assertion wrong factually, but it’s an improper argument technique. In that respect, you are just like mclaren, and therefore are now my 3rd entry into the pie filter. I expect to hear a lot about how you like peach pie.
Socraticsilence
@Bnut:
The Kerry thing still bugs me- let’s just say this if John Kerry had the same temparment of his fellow Presidential Canidate/VW vet John McCain- he would have been the first major party canidate indicted for a on-air murder.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: You have a minimum 8 year service commitment when you are commissioned out of the academy. Leaving after 3 means you either lost a leg or you’re a total fuckup or you’re gay ;-)