The weaponization of our legal system has led only to an increasing distrust of the American People of our Department of Justice (DOJ) and our Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). More importantly the American People’s trust in the “process of justice” has made the jobs of thousands of people at all levels of government who are involved in law enforcement more difficult. It is not unlike Catholic Priests who wore Roman Collars in public during the terrible revelations that became public about the less than 0,1% of Priests who abused children and the disabled. My Closest friend in life who is a Catholic Priest told me that even today people look at him with suspicion when he wears his Roman Collar in public. Such damage takes several lifetimes to repair.
Calling for accountability does not need to always be a call for civil or criminal retribution. Sometimes as we seek the truth, the punishment of a lost reputation is all that is needed to remind future leaders that they are in fact accountable—just ask General Petraeus. On the other side of that discussion is that if our leaders, especially in the military, aren’t held to moral and ethical standards publicly, mistakes will be repeated.
One extreme of the accountability equation is what we have seen with our surrender—called by the Biden crew a (withdrawal), from Afghanistan. There has been little accountability for the mistakes made on what actually became a battlefield, because of the obvious incompetence of those who planned the withdrawal.
I believe the evolving modern lack of accountability in the military, but also at all levels of government began with the investigation of the Beirut Marine Corps Barracks bombing in 1983 on Ronald Regan’s watch. Reagan remains my favorite modern-day president so far, but heads needed to roll and didn’t. Just maybe that gave Al Queda terrorists license to bomb the USS Cole in 2000 under Bill Clinton.
History gives us an example in the extreme of accountability in the British Navy. The Story is encapsulated in a History Channel Publication:
“In 1756 British admiral John Byng failed ‘to use all possible means’ to stop the French from taking Minorca. He paid for it with his life.”
On March 14, 1757, Admiral John Byng was shot by a firing squad of Royal Marines on the quarterdeck of HMS Monarch, then lying at anchor in Spithead, England. Byng was the last British admiral executed by sentence of court-martial, and his case has influenced military law, naval command doctrine, and even literary satire. He was shot not for what he had done but for what he had failed to do—engage the enemy according to Lord North the Sr. who also failed to commute his sentence as recommended by the Court Martial Pannel.
“At the time of his death Byng was a naval officer of nearly 40 years’ service, with 12 years’ experience at flag rank. He was a capable administrator, having held such posts as governor general of Newfoundland and commander in chief of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet. He was not, however, a dynamic combat commander—in fact, his career up to the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756 was noteworthy for the relatively few combat actions he had seen”.
In my sixteen years of military service, I never faced live fire or had a command of battlefield responsibility. I was never accused of being “a capable administrator”. I was happy to serve brave men and women who had been under fire, and I was honored to just be a good doctor and surgeon. That being said the last quoted paragraph above sounds eerily familiar to me. One could even say” Milleyingly familiar”.
The ranks of many in our Senior Officer Corps may even be able to identify with the words, again from above, of not being “dynamic combat commander(s)”. According to the military blog GUN ZONE:
“There are approximately 900 Active-duty general/flag officers (GO/FOs) today of 1.3 million troops. This is a ratio of 1 GO/FO for every 1,400 troops. During World War II, an admittedly different era, there were more than 2,000 GO/FOs for a little more than 12 million Active troops (1:6,000). Why the “rank creep”? How many of those officers have more real combat experience than Pete Hegseth? Or maybe me?
I am not calling for anyone to be shot by firing squad. I just think we need to hold people like General Milley accountable so that future leaders will always feel the “yoke of accountability”—a quote attributed but never proven to come from General Eisenhauer, “tightly around their necks”. I know that Navy Captains at Sea always “feel the yoke” being responsible for thousands of men and women in an inhospitable environment. I don’t know that Admirals and Generals with a sociology or journalism degree who have always sat behind a desk, or a computer screen and who have never had such a command, are capable of understanding the responsibilities being on a battlefield.
Things that need to be reviewed so the “yoke of command always remains in place”:
Marine Barracks
- Battleship Cole
- Benghazi
- Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Afghan Surrender
- General Milley’s conversation with CCP counterparts during the Trump-Biden transition
- Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s being AWOL for 7 days for a “prostate condition”. If a Seaman First Class were AWOL for that amount of time, they would be subject to discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
No firing squads—just accountability please.
