[War on the Rocks] Leaders lie "in the routine performance of their duties," and "ethical and moral transgressions [occur] across all levels" of the organization. Leaders have also become "ethically numb," using "justifications and rationalizations" to overcome any ethical doubts. This "tacit acceptance of dishonesty... [facilitates] hypocrisy" among leaders.
These quotations sound like they are ripped from the headlines about some major corporate scandal. But they're not describing Enron before its collapse in 2001, or firms like Lehman Brothers and Countrywide before the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, they describe one of the country's most respected institutions: the U.S. Army.
Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras, who are both professors at the U.S. Army War College, just published a devastating study called Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession. They state up front that indications of ethical and moral problems can be found throughout the entire U.S. military, not just in the Army. These include (but certainly are not limited to) U.S. Air Force personnel cheating on tests about nuclear launch systems, and U.S. Navy admirals and others sharing classified information in exchange for gifts and bribes. Last year, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel appointed a two-star admiral as the first Senior Advisor for Military Professionalism to address mounting concerns about ethical issues throughout the force. Both lengthy and thought provoking.
I've seen this kind of crap permeate too many private business organizations. A "little bit" of dishonesty is, well, "positioning."
Maybe an "All Volunteer" force eventually begets a "go along to get along" mindset? When I was in, everybody was aware of at least one "goat" who screwed up and was made a concrete reminder of the downside. Nowadays this would not fly.
#3
Slippery brown stuff runs downhill. The C-in-C is incapable of putting two sentences together without both of them being a lie. Honesty, professionalism, and integrity will only get you screwed.
Think of this: Every single member of the armed forces, congress, the professional government at every level, has sworn to uphold, support, defend, and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, yet we've had six years where every concept of the Constitution has been trashed, and more than a hundred years where the 9th and 10th amendments have been totally ignored. ALL of them need to be fired. Lead pink slips are authorized.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/12/2015 20:02 Comments ||
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#4
When you see selections for promotion based on gender, race or special connections, and the same special people are more immune from discipline, integrity and performance expectations you quickly see the career path requires gamesmanship, as well as effort if you are not in a protected quota. You get verbose operational planning, but timid execution. Why take risks or responsibility when you can ride the fools who still believe duty, honor, courage. Sad to see the last noble profession slide slowly onto the common miasma of government.
#6
This is relatively simple: we have had 6 years of Obama approved flag officers, who were chosen for their obedience and "moral malleability" to go-along get-along with progressivism at the expense of good military order and particularly merit.
And Bush had somewhat of benign but ultimately weak approach of managing flag officers, allowing the rot to set in before Obama took full advantage of it by weeding out combat proven leaders in favor of blanket folders.
h/t Gates of Vienna
The President celebrated black victimization at his recent speech in Selma, but around the rest of the country, black people were making the successful transition from victim to predator.
Within a few days of the President's Selma speech, black mob violence and black on white crime proceeded apace, much of it on video. None of it acknowledged as racial violence in local media.
#4
There does exist a mind-set among many in the entitlement ranks that the 22nd Amendment should be set aside and the Champ retained for another term. You may draw your own conclusions for the roadmap which might enable this end state.
As the hopelessness of democratic candidates for the upcoming 2016 presidential election becomes more apparent, the likelihood of alternative solution for the dems becomes more real.
[DAWN] SALMAAN TASEER was murdered by an unrepentant Mumtaz Qadri in a deliberate, premeditated and ruthless manner for the vilest and most distorted of reasons. That makes Qadri a murderer who must be punished.
The Islamabad High Court hearing Qadri's appeal did both the legally and morally correct thing in upholding Qadri's conviction on Monday. Where the court appears to have unnecessarily created confusion and caused uncertainty about his ultimate fate is in its decision to set aside his parallel conviction under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
In a single paragraph dealing with the anti-terrorism conviction -- one paragraph among 47 that constitute the overall judgment -- the court found that none of the prosecution witnesses (barring one), and neither the investigating officer nor the prosecution evidence, suggested that Qadri's act amounted to an attempt to create panic, intimidate and terrorise the public, or to create a sense of fear and insecurity among the public. With due respect to the court, that is a very surprising and quite unsustainable finding.
Qadri's killing of then governor of Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Salmaan Taseer is the very definition of terrorism. It was an undisguised political act meant to send an unambiguous message of fear and intimidation to the public.
As the judgment itself notes, Qadri claimed that the murder of Taseer "is a lesson for all the apostates as finally they have to meet the same fate".
In assassinating the Punjab governor, Mumtaz Qadri was not simply killing an individual, he was sending a message to state and society that only the particular version of religion and Pakistain that he and his supporters are in favour of ought to be the one implemented here -- and anyone who deviates from that distorted, horrifying vision is deserving of death.
If that is not religiously inspired terrorism, then what is? Surely, the scores of individuals who have been celebrating Qadri's act and are now welcoming the decision to strike down the terrorism conviction because it will allow them to openly and publicly venerate him and the hateful ideas he stands for only emphasise that the act of murder was not just against an individual, but was meant to distort society itself.
There is a further problem here. If Qadri's murderous act in the name of religion is not terrorism, then what about killings on sectarian grounds and violence targeting non-Moslems?
The court appears to have unnecessarily embarked on a slippery slope with all manner of unpredictable consequences. Has, for example, the court unwittingly provided a 'Qadri defence' to religiously inspired holy warriors who have so blighted this country in recent decades?
Finally, in unnecessarily tampering with the original judgment in such a high-profile case, has the court not reinforced the perception that the criminal justice system favours the accused over the victims? The original conviction should have been allowed to stand in its entirety.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/12/2015 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
