A Blind Alley
Loyalty is a fine quality,
but in excess it fills political graveyards
--Neil Kinnock
My Honor is my loyalty
--Heinrich Himmler
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil
is that good men do nothing
--Edmund Burke
Yuppies don't have loyalty.
They have useful relationships and meaningful encounters
--William Kristol
_________________
but in excess it fills political graveyards
--Neil Kinnock
My Honor is my loyalty
--Heinrich Himmler
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil
is that good men do nothing
--Edmund Burke
Yuppies don't have loyalty.
They have useful relationships and meaningful encounters
--William Kristol
_________________
Ranger's thinking loyalty today.
Consider what loyalty has purchased in politics. Aberrant things like Robert McNamara's loyalty to President Johnson, which allowed him to continue in his capacity as Secretary of Defense to defend the war in Vietnam as winnable, despite his knowledge to the contrary. Or Colin Powell's loyalty to President Bush which caused him to lie before the United Nations regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities, allowing an unjustified invasion to occur.
The run-up to Iraq rested squarely on his integrity and soldierly honesty. Colin Powell alone could have put the kibosh on George Bush's war plans IF he had gone public with his objections. Instead, Powell failed in his oath the U.S. and in his loyalty to the American people. His catastrophic failure was his loyalty to a false prophet. As a result, he is fully shamed.
The first bloc of instruction at Basic and Advanced Officer Infantry Courses was leadership, which emphasized the usual Boy Scout attributes of honesty, integrity and loyalty. But loyalty led the list as the most important leadership trait.
In the military, loyalty is said to go both up and down the chain of command. But of course, the loyalty that is sacrosanct is that rendered in a religious zeal to one's boss. Whistleblowers are hacks who end up cashiered or dead. The saying is, "You work for your boss's boss."
This means everything you do or fail to do affects your boss's Officer Efficiency Reports, directly impacting upon his career. So, loyalty will also benefit your OER, which is your bread and butter. If the boss is happy, everyone is happy. Loyalty has become a form of servitude, and obscures truth-telling. This sort of loyalty, which is actually fealty to one's lord, is screwing the nation.
In governmental institutions, loyalty should not be conferred solely upon in an individual. Unfortunately, because advancement is the name of the game, most officers act as bondmen to their lords. This muzzles effective dialog.
Loyalty is not an absolute good. One can be positively loyal to bankrupt policies, disreputable individuals and false memories. How does one decide these things? Memory can be an impostor and individuals can lie through a smile. Because you are a good nationalist, you may fail to swerve from corrupt behavior in the service of your state. "Mom, apple pie and Ford trucks"? What if mom's a bootlegger, your apples are covered in Alar and Ford stocks go belly up? What then?
The hard answer is that loyalty to an individual should never be absolute. Behavior and policies should be checked against the best facts available, and loyalty may be suspended if the facts bear that action out. The concept of loyalty is perverted when the Secretary of Defense is loyal to a flawed president implementing flawed policy.
The Secretary of Defense works for the American people, and his loyalty is to the tenets of the Constitution and the national well-being.
Consider what loyalty has purchased in politics. Aberrant things like Robert McNamara's loyalty to President Johnson, which allowed him to continue in his capacity as Secretary of Defense to defend the war in Vietnam as winnable, despite his knowledge to the contrary. Or Colin Powell's loyalty to President Bush which caused him to lie before the United Nations regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities, allowing an unjustified invasion to occur.
The run-up to Iraq rested squarely on his integrity and soldierly honesty. Colin Powell alone could have put the kibosh on George Bush's war plans IF he had gone public with his objections. Instead, Powell failed in his oath the U.S. and in his loyalty to the American people. His catastrophic failure was his loyalty to a false prophet. As a result, he is fully shamed.
The first bloc of instruction at Basic and Advanced Officer Infantry Courses was leadership, which emphasized the usual Boy Scout attributes of honesty, integrity and loyalty. But loyalty led the list as the most important leadership trait.
In the military, loyalty is said to go both up and down the chain of command. But of course, the loyalty that is sacrosanct is that rendered in a religious zeal to one's boss. Whistleblowers are hacks who end up cashiered or dead. The saying is, "You work for your boss's boss."
This means everything you do or fail to do affects your boss's Officer Efficiency Reports, directly impacting upon his career. So, loyalty will also benefit your OER, which is your bread and butter. If the boss is happy, everyone is happy. Loyalty has become a form of servitude, and obscures truth-telling. This sort of loyalty, which is actually fealty to one's lord, is screwing the nation.
In governmental institutions, loyalty should not be conferred solely upon in an individual. Unfortunately, because advancement is the name of the game, most officers act as bondmen to their lords. This muzzles effective dialog.
Loyalty is not an absolute good. One can be positively loyal to bankrupt policies, disreputable individuals and false memories. How does one decide these things? Memory can be an impostor and individuals can lie through a smile. Because you are a good nationalist, you may fail to swerve from corrupt behavior in the service of your state. "Mom, apple pie and Ford trucks"? What if mom's a bootlegger, your apples are covered in Alar and Ford stocks go belly up? What then?
The hard answer is that loyalty to an individual should never be absolute. Behavior and policies should be checked against the best facts available, and loyalty may be suspended if the facts bear that action out. The concept of loyalty is perverted when the Secretary of Defense is loyal to a flawed president implementing flawed policy.
The Secretary of Defense works for the American people, and his loyalty is to the tenets of the Constitution and the national well-being.
posted by rangeragainstwar at 7:15 AM
10 Comments:
I didn't advance at a stellar rate in the army due to my tendency to note the flaws in the leaders plan rather than loudly voice one of the standard platitudes deemed appropriate after being told the plan. Never could understand how people could knowingly make false statements of approval when they knew the probable outcome. That's the army culture and look where it's taken us.
Exit, voice, and loyalty
i've always felt that loyalty should be placed in concepts, or things, rather than human beings.
misplaced loyalties can cause incredible damage. loyalty, as you pointed out superbly, with gen. powell, when misplaced can rebound drastically. unfortunately, powell has often had that problem. one of the big things, a career making move if you will, that he left completely out of his autobiography, was his leading the coverup team for the my lai massacre. "nope, nothing to see here folks, just move right along."
that garnered him a trip back to the world early from his second tour to go get himself a masters at george washington university. from there it was all staff puke gigs and chilled champagne.
his continuing to misplace his loyalty (choosing to protect murderers for "the good of the service" is vile on way too many levels) by deciding to remain loyal to the president rather than remain loyal to the american people.
many of the bush appointees had that same problem. ashcroft, gonzales, and now mukasy seem to feel that the attorney general's portfolio is to represent the president and his interests. many fine lawyers, john adams, hamilton, marshall, and jay, believed that the client of the attorney general is the constitution and through that document, the nation.
the main theme of the iliad is loyalty.
hector, even knowing that his city and his family is in the wrong, remains loyal to them. disasterously.
achilles is loyal only to himself.
agamemnon is not loyal to a unified greece, he is loyal only to his own kingdom.
menalous, while condemning his errant wife helen for infidelity does not return to her the same standard of loyalty that he demands from a wife and queen.
ajax, and achilles show dogged loyalty to both their comrades and to a corrupt cause. they die for it. glorious, dramatic deaths, but still dead dead dead.
loyalty, its misplacement, its consequence is an eternal question for all fighting men.
Well said, Jim.
MB,
This is such an important question, that of right loyalty. As you say, Achilles is loyal only to himself. In life, one might follow Shakespeare's admonition: to thine own self be true.
Now, how that self-honesty intertwines with service obligations is the question.
jaydenver,
Hirschman is provocative in his suggestions for action (protest) within an organization. He sees exit and voice as the options, which are both mediated by loyalty. He also recognizes the existential possibility of "mentally and emotionally exiting," as people living under a repressive regime might do.
In addition, he acknowledges how the conservatives attack protest of the status quo as being "perverse and futile," thereby jeopardizing the integrity of the system.
These are reasonable observations, but the question reamins: When are voice/exit and loyalty to be employed?
Can one live by a certain code of honor or loyalty in all undertakings, or is it a different thing in business or industry?
Lisa:
My experience leads me to believe that every arena of life requires these kinds of decisions at some point along the way.
They don't come every day, but when they do, one had better be ready to make a choice.
The only way to be prepared is to test oneself on smaller but similar decisions beforehand.
Kind of like studying for and taking the quizzes before the big exam.
Even so, not everyone passes. No one said it would be easy.
Thank you, Jay.
I agree that we cannot escape making these decisions. I am guessing you hew to the Shakespearean standard of action. Therefore, the determinative basis for action would result from a core set of beliefs and standards, and that those do not vary.
They may arise from adherence to some codified body of rules, or they may be generated from some inner moral compass. But ultimately, the responsibility for the decision of when to confer loyalty and when to rescind it resides within the individual, right?
Rick98,
Ref. your comment: Ranger shared the same problem. The Army calls that the "rebel" style of leadership, which was duly noted in our academic reports. It is doubtful that any rebel-type leaders made general officer.
You are discussing the climate of leadership in a particular unit, which did not encourage discussion of the leader's plans. This is indicative of a weak leader who does not encourage input for operational planning. One of the bedrock rules of the Spec. Op. community is that the person carrying out the plan must agree with it.
I've always accepted the Prussian standard: every soldier has the right to discuss and disagree with the plans, until such time as the commander makes the decision.
you shouldn't be loyal to somebody who's an idiot...... unless of course you're an idiot and pretty much a aficionado of fine idiocy........
i rediscovered Warren Zevon while reading this blog...... not sure why...... i always thought valuing ideological purity and party loyalty above all else was the hallmark of the Communists and Fascists....... but at some point in the last decade i realized it had become the most valued trait of individuals associated with the Republican Party....... part of why i suddenly realized that Americans were highly unlikely to wake-up one day to a Communist or even a Socialist regime..... but there was a better than even chance that an undercurrent of fascist predispositions would eventually do-in America as we know it.......
it is interesting that most of you think that we're headed that way regardless of Democratic or Republican Party hegemony....... maybe so...... maybe so....... we'll see i'm sure.
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