Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they’ve never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.
I think that this applies to journalists, too. Let me edit that paragraph just a bit:
MoDo snarks on McChrystal's lack of virtues:
It was a product of the warrior-god culture, four-star generals with their own public-relations teams, that came from Gen. David Petraeus. And the towel-snapping was intensified by the fact that McChrystal used to be a tough special-ops, under-cover-of-the-night, rules-don’t-apply-to-us military guy.
It was bad enough to infuriate even the placid president, who had already told McChrystal to keep his head down once after the infamous London speech, and who was left wondering where those military core values of loyalty, commitment and patriotism were.
Patriotism is love of country, MoDo. It's not love of President Obama. It might surprise you, but the oath that military officers take doesn't mention The One:
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; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. (from Wikipedia).
The oath is to the Constitution. Not to Barack Obama, George W. Bush or any other individual, but to the document that codifies what the United States of America is.
Having said that, General McChrystal did indeed screw up and needs to be fired, for the same reasons that Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur: insubordination and blatant disrespect for the office of commander-in-chief. It has nothing to do with loyalty, commitment or patriotism; it has only to do with discretion; McChrystal is apparently lacking in this virtue. It's a common enough fault in humans, not just military officers.
7 comments:
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to equate "insubordination and blatant disrespect" with disloyalty to the superior who is their recipient, do you? And if you break the oath you swore, I'd say that signals a lack of commitment, wouldn't you? Or, if you prefer, the behind-the-scenes ridicule of his commander's policies indicates a lack of commitment to the orders he was given, no? As for patriotism, one definition of a patriotic soldier might be one who loves his country enough to honor its constitution and the oath he took to it.
@wally: I'll reiterate that the oath that McChrystal took was to the Constitution and what it represents, not to Obama as commander-in-chief. As an example, when we refer to Benedict Arnold, we refer to him as a traitor to his country, not a traitor to George Washington. I think that you are confusing loyalty with fealty.
I don't think that McChrystal's intemperate tongue interfered with his duty as a soldier, or caused him to be less than dedicated to his mission; it's the common relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate as seen in any workplace; private disrespect for the supervisor (and McChrystal's opinions weren't public until the Rolling Stone article was released) doesn't mean that McChrystal wasn't doing his job.
Nowhere do I say that he took an oath to Obama, nor did Dowd. When she used the term "loyalty", it wasn't in reference to the oath, it was to military core values. "Fealty", being defined as loyalty to a superior, might be a slightly more precise term to use, but who's being the academic nit-picker here? But to repeat, neither Dowd nor I claimed that McChrystal swore an oath to Obama.
@wally: I think it is strongly implied in this paragraph of Dowd's:
It was bad enough to infuriate even the placid president, who had already told McChrystal to keep his head down once after the infamous London speech, and who was left wondering where those military core values of loyalty, commitment and patriotism were.
As for the oath, I brought it up myself. Dowd doesn't even mention it in her column, since it contradicts her theory that McChrystal was being disloyal in bad-mouthing Obama.
I'm not defending McChrystal, Walt. I just think that believing your bosses to be dolts and yet still being able to do your duty are not mutually exclusive concepts. In a non-emergency situation such as the current one it's not that big a deal; if the US was fighting for its very existence against an implacable and determined enemy, the situation might be different, since stupidity in the leadership would have fatal consequences.
So let me get this straight: Maureen Dowd specifically uses the term "loyalty" in the context of core military values, and you say, oh no, what she really means ("strongly implies") is loyalty in the strict context of the oath, which she never mentions... in which case she's full of shit. Have I got that right?
@wally: don't put words in my mouth, and don't over-nuance my post. I simply think that, as I stated in my post, that Dowd was using the terms loyalty, commitment and patriotism as if they applied more to McChrystal's relationship to Obama and his team, not the Constitution. I summarized this with my comparison of McChrystal to Benedict Arnold: traitor to his country, not to George Washington. Dowd, in my opinion, is accusing McChrystal of being a traitor to Obama. Since Dowd presumably has contempt for military men ("Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are"), I think it's unlikely she's informed on the difference between fealty to a man and loyalty to the Constitution.
It's your blog, so I'll let you have the last word. Don't want to turn this into a mirror image of the endless tennis match I'm watching right now.
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