- As further details emerge about the alleged
massacre by U.S. troops of some two dozen civilians in the Iraqi town of
Haditha, the largely unacknowledged crisis that afflicts U.S. civil-military
relations today assumes growing proportions.
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- To anyone who rightly expects the military
to be a model of propriety answerable to the public it serves, it would
be a mistake to dismiss this episode as a mere aberration brought on by
combat stress or to write it off as the fault of something so nebulous
as the fog of war.
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- It would be no less a mistake to blame
the press for unpatriotically reporting the story or "liberal"
critics for blowing it out of proportion and overzealously rushing to judgment.
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- It would even be a mistake simply to
blame the troops who perpetrated the massacre--if that is what it was--even
though they clearly must be held accountable and brought to justice for
their actions.
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- In the final analysis, blame ultimately
belongs on the shoulders of those who wear stars: the generals who, consistent
with the supreme canon of their profession, bear final responsibility for
all that does or doesn't happen under their command.
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- Military officers crave command--especially
combat command. It is the most deeply ingrained aspirational imperative
of their culture. It is what gets them promoted, brings them rewards and
decorations, affords them recognition and adulation, gives them tentative
hope of someday entering the pantheon of Great Captains, empowers them
to dispense unassailable orders to dutifully obedient subordinates, feeds
their sense of self-importance and accomplishment, distinguishes successful
from unsuccessful careers. But privilege, prestige and prerogative isn't
what command is--or ought to be--about. Command is about what justifies
conflating it with leadership in the first place: the willingness to assume
responsibility.
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- Recall the movie depiction of Gen. George
Patton's rousing World War II speech to his Third Army, when he says: "The
Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the
belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before
was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do."
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- That was then--when knowing what to do,
even under extreme duress, was relatively straightforward; when enemies
were whom they appeared to be; when Marquis of Queensberry rules tended
to govern war's conduct.
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- This is now--when knowing what to do,
even under routine conditions, isn't always obvious; when formally prescribed
rules of engagement leave ample room for confusion and interpretation;
when it is frequently unclear who is friend or foe, combatant or non-combatant.
Yet mistaking the one for the other, under the microscope of media-age
transparency, all too often produces instantaneous, strategically deleterious
consequences. Precisely for this reason, military troops today must be
more disciplined, mature, emotionally stable, morally sound and intellectually
astute than ever before.
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- Unfortunately, these are traits the military
fails to nurture or reward adequately. Instead, an unsettlingly pervasive
drumbeat of Pattonesque, chest-thumping, rabble-rousing rhetoric about
the virtues of "warfighting," "warfighters" and "warriors"
fosters a climate far more conducive to intolerant aggression than to the
stoic self-discipline that urban warfare in hostile foreign lands demands.
This testosterone-laced climate provides tacit, subliminal license for
troops to choose the undisciplined moral low road in the face of stress,
fear and fatigue. For this, commanders who otherwise could claim to have
neither ordered nor condoned heinous acts must assume responsibility.
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- It is long past time to test whether
the military's self-image of the heroic commander is myth or reality.
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- First, we must confront our own sadly
diminished standards of moral courage, exemplified by the half dozen retired
generals who, their pensions secure, recently called for Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. While on active duty, they said nothing
publicly, much less tendered their resignations, over the strategic and
operational shortcomings of our Iraq folly.
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- More to the point in reflecting our diminished
standards of moral courage is the military's long-standing practice of
scapegoating--especially lower ranking enlisted personnel and junior officers--in
response to all manner of transgressions and catastrophes. Consider My
Lai and Abu Ghraib.
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- The American public is itself morally
suspect if we continue such scapegoating in the Haditha case. What we must
demand, and have a right to expect, is that senior general officers stand
up to be counted. Here is their script: "I take full responsibility
for this execrable act of indiscipline, illegality and immorality; for
failing to ensure that the troops under my command were adequately prepared;
for creating a climate that inadvertently encouraged such behavior. Accordingly,
I hereby relinquish my command and stand ready to face the consequences
for my subordinates' actions."
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- Nothing less should suffice if the military
is to be worthy of the public trust reposed in it.
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- Gregory D. Foster, a West Point graduate,
was a decorated infantry company commander in the Vietnam War, serving
in the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division, the unit responsible for
the My Lai massacre.
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