Tarnished Stars

 How much is that doggie in the window
The one with the waggly tail
How much is that doggie in the window
I do hope that doggie's for sale 
--Doggy in the Window, Patti Page 

The dame made a curtsey,
The dog made a bow;
The dame said, "Your servant,"
The dog said, "Bow-wow"
 --Old Mother Hubbard 

Say, a doggy is nuttin'
 if he don' have a bone 
All doggy, hold ya' bone, 
all doggy, hold it 
--Who Let the Dogs Out? 
Baha Men
 ________________

The image is from the cover of this week's The Week magazine, "Intelligence Failure: How Could CIA Chief David Petraeus Be So Dumb?", the implication being, Petraeus should have been more circumspect either in his choice of mistress or his execution of the affair.  To ask how he failed (how was he so DUMB) implies the CIA head conducted himself with aplomb in other matters -- that he was not ordinarily such a dim, nitwit doofus.

However, the question should be, "How could David Petraeus be so immature?", and the answer can be found in the cosseted cult of higher echelon military corps.  The elect "have spent much of their professional lives in cloistered military bubbles," and may have a sense of infallibility not the privilege of the average soldier (Petraeus Scandal puts four-star General Lifestyle under scrutiny).  Maturity, not intelligence, is what is found wanting. The same lack was found in General Stanley McChrystal and now General Allen, et. al.

These Generals exhibited the maturity of a green 0-1 rather than an 0-10, a fault built into our immature soldier state of existence.  The selection criteria for admittance to our service academies, like West Point, rewards immature behavior.  Independent or rebellious thinkers are quickly eliminated. The cadet mentality is carried through many a West Point officer's career -- a mindset of entitlement and privilege.

Our selection and reward system need examination and review.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced an ethics review Thursday, something said to be in the pipeline prior to Petraeus's resignation, due to a number of recent ethical lapses among other General Officers.

Since the military has now re-branded itself as warriors, this sacred cow will be hard to attack.  However, the arrested development which allows for such poor behavior must be tackled lest we continue to be shocked over such predictable disappointments.

Army Wrong

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line 
--I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash

We're pitiful, self-indulgent cowards
that can't connect with reality
and are ashamed of ourselves 
Scenes From a Marriage (1973)

The rules of fair play
do not apply in love and war 
--Euphueus, John Lyly

 ____________________

[Lisa’s got the 3,000 yr. pop cultural perspective soon. Today, Ranger's effort at Maxim meets SOF -- no sop to feminists.]

As military men, we see everything as mission and objective.  As a result, it is natural to objectify women and subsequent sexual encounters.   The infusion of women into the military fosters and enables this thinking.

The military objectives of warfare and those of sex are similar in many respects, hence this discursion.

What is the purpose of the objective in combat operations?  We attack, defend and delay in order to facilitate future operations.  CGSC teaches us, never plan an operation that does not facilitate future operations.

In short, every military objective serves a purpose; nothing is done just for giggles.  Can or should the same be said about sexual objectives?  Is the latter as logical and coldly calculating as are military objectives?  Or, have military objective post-1963 (post-Vietnam War) become as emotional, haphazard and illogical as the selection of a sex partner at a juke joint's closing time?

Our major religions espouse sex as a divine gift from god for the purpose of procreation; some more radical priests will allow that the act itself can be the consecration (but not all).  The point here is that sex is a contradicted act, both sacred and profane, whereas military objectives are (should be) as clearly-delineated and identifiable as a computer program.

Both activities share the aspect of subterfuge: In combat, it is the ruse or diversionary attack employed to further one's objective; in sex, the ruse is employed to gain any number of advantages, both short- and long-term. Attack, defend, delay, retreat or retrograde, done as a planned or hasty operation for clearly understood and defined reasons.  Both arenas of activity employ similar tactics. 

It gets fuzzy when we act without clear objectives.

We fight a war without military objectives, but no one seems to object; there is little discussion, even when Presidential administrations change.  Strangely, slavering over David Petraeus's sex life has garnered more ink in the popular press than did both the Iraq and Afghanistan surges, including the battles of Fallujah, Kandahar, etc.

Nobody questioned why or how we chose to attack and destroy Fallujah, or the purpose of the brutal combat.  Was this just foreplay for a United States Marine Corps Division?  Was it a platform to win a key objective, or was it merely an act of frustration prompted by hubris and single-minded vengeance -- just to prove we could destroy a city and break the will of the insurgents?

Fallujah and all the battles of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) are as meaningless as a back seat coupling of drunken fools.  What is gained in either instance?    When our military objectives become as random as sexual encounters then we are rendered impotent.  All of our technology and fancy gadgets are as meaningless as a hand job on prom night, as impressive as an 80-year-old hoping for some Levitra action at the expense of a stroke.

From the military perspective of the expenditure of assets to achieve objectives, the PWOT again fails.  Too many recent battles turn into meat grinders chewing up friendly assets, the final impotent movement, to abandon the fought-for objective; witness Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, Dak To, LZ X-Ray, Wanat, Waygul, Marjah, et. al.  This is because there is no military value to the event beyond the flash and gash.

It is the same equation with Petraeus's unfortunate dalliance with Mrs. Broadwell: Petraeus expended his assets breaching an expendable asset. One should never expend assets or attack objectives that have  no value.  Unfortunately, this has been the template for the PWOT.  Ditto indiscriminate, objectiveless couplings that foster or facilitate no present or future benefits (= operations).  It is easy to see the genesis of DP's moral lassitude.

When analogizing sexual liaisons to military operations one must wonder why some objectives are chosen for exploitation and others are bypassed: What factors determine the engagement (consummation?)  After all, the selection of objectives is the key to successful military operations.  Faulty selection leads to catastrophe (= military failure; divorce; nuts in a vice, etc.)

The objective of a successful operation should not be to reach a local penetration but to reach deep targets, which will ensure the commander's control of his battle assets. (In the PWOT, we have never experienced such a deep battle, nor will we.)  The ultimate goal of one's objectives is to force the enemy to surrender, withdraw or be defeated [take a DIP (Die in Place)].

By performing a local penetration which could not be further exploited, Petraeus was flanked.  He thought he was controlling the battle area, but he was ultimately denied Command and Control of his assets.

General Petraeus obtained shallow objectives that facilitated no future benefit, on both battlefields.

Arabian Knights

  
If you're down and confused 
And you don't remember who you're talking to 
Concentration slips away 
Because your baby is so far away 
--Love the One You're With, 
Crosby, Stills and Nash

Well, what am I supposed to do? 
You won't answer my calls,
 you change your number.
 I mean, I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan!   
--Fatal Attraction (1987)
_______________________ 

Military leadership is not always about success:

• The March of the 10,000
• Thermopylae
• Little Big Horn
• The Confederates at Petersburg
• The Lost Battalion of World War I
• Wainwright at Corregidor
• The U.S. Marines at the Chosin (with U.S. Army support ☺)
• The U.S Special Forces at Lang Vei
• Lt. Murphy in Afghanistan

We are taught that physical courage is the factor that makes us soldiers (err, New Age Warriors), but this only part of the equation. A recent discussion about Shackleton's fraught Antarctic expedition motivated this thinking.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton led his crew with fierce loyalty after the loss of their ship (The Endurance).  He set up Camp Optimism in the most unhospiaible climate, and tirelessly motivated his crew to labor and to keep hope alive. Shackleton believed that character and temperament were as important as technical ability, and lived by the motto, "Optimism is true moral courage." 

While physical courage is the hallmark of soldiering, it is not the gold standard for leadership.  Moral courage is supreme, and it the U.S. Army seems weak in this area.  We accepted General MacArthur's vacating his command, leaving General Wainwright and his Army in the lurch.  Contrast this with the loyalty of Luftwaffe Group Commander Erich Hartmann who refused a direct order to avoid Soviet capture by flying to safety in the British sector, as it would have meant the abandonment of his men.

After capture and spending 10 1/2 years in a Soviet gulag, Hartmann said in a later interview, "I could not leave my men.  That would have been bad leadership."  He and many others like him show a moral strength which reaches beyond the physical.  Think of John McCain refusing an offer of early release by the North Vietnamese command -- that is moral courage.

Transition now to the lavish lifestyles of men like Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus -- the plush lodgings and planes in which they traveled were more befitting of the Arabian 1001 Nights.  Their sumptuous offices at CENTCOM and all the other HQs, the limousines, the private command airship companies and all the other bling that kits out the 0-8 through 0-10 caste are far-removed from the lifestyles of their predecessors.

Instead of leadership we now have commanders steeped in West Point Honor Codes, Infantry Creeds, Ranger Creeds and a plethora of feel-good buzz words that are as meaningless as a mouthful of grits.  Witness Petraeus's vaunted "12 Rules for Living": "The only thing better than a little com­petition is a lot of competition. Set chal­lenges for your subordinates to encourage them to excel." The rules are generally insipid pop platitudes not likely to give Tony Robbins a run for his money on the motivational talk circuit any time soon.

Contrast present leadership with that of Chesty Puller at the Chosin Reservoir retrograde.  He gave his Jeep to the weak and wounded and marched out as a simple Infantryman (despite heart problems). On Guadalcanal his Regimental Command Post was in the forward reaches of the battlefield within rifle shot of the enemy.  Compare this with the fights at Waygul and Wanat, when the senior commanders were physically absent.

Leadership has both physical and moral aspects.  None of the U.S. senior officers refused to preemptively invade Iraq; First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is the only junior officer to officially protest the Iraq War by attempting to resign his commission (he was Court-martialed and ultimately discharged from service.)  Did any of our leaders even murmer the word, "Aggressive War"?

It is possible that ethics professor Colonel Ted Westhusing gave protest via suicide during his Iraq posting six years ago.  The Los Angeles Times reported, "In emails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the US had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military" (General Petraeus's Link to a Troubling Suicide in Iraq: The Ted Westhusing Story). In his suicide note, he wrote, "I didn't volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves." 

If elective invasions, bombing, Predators and Reapers, secret prisons, torture, open-ended detention and more do not raise any hackles amongst the General Officer class, then a penile thrombosis is very little thing in comparison, which is not to say it is nothing.  It is just a logical outgrowth of a corrupt and entitled mindset.

Amidst moral cowardice on such a scale, how do we even discuss Petraeus's moral lapse?  We have divorced morality from the equation when we adopted elective warfare and assumed the mantle of warriorhood.  Petraeus did what warrior-kings do: he took an Amazon concubine.

--Jim and Lisa