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
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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.