The unadmitable oxymoron.
I've been following the "news" about how the current administration awaits the report from Gen Patreus, head of the US Forces in Iraq, to report whether he's accomplishing the mission there or not.
What. A. Joke.
Please raise your hand if you think for a moment that he would, under any circumstances, say anything like, "Well, no. No progress, really. I've failed to accomplish the mission."
Can someone in the know please explain to me (1) why we so anxiously await a general to report that he's doing his job and making progress (as if he'd say anything else), and/or (2) why The Person With The Most Possible Self-Interest--with the possible exception of the President himself--is in charge of such a (presumably) momentous report? From a scientific point of view, the report is rubbish before it is released. Even if we assume he has impeccable integrity that overrides his personal desire to show himself in the best possible light--"impeccable integrity" being simultaneously compulsory and unforgivable within military culture--basic psychology dictates that confirmation bias will also skew results.
I just read a conservative rant in the Washington Times in which the author reported that "his September progress report may be far more positive than what the far left expects." Um...what? Someone expects Patreus to politically shoot himself in the foot? He didn't get where he is by pointing out that the outlook isn't brilliant for the Mudville nine, unless the Powers That Be want the Mudville nine to founder.
I've been thinking about this problem for a few days now--the clash of "integrity first!" and repeated demonstration within the military of integrity being punished when it runs counter to the status quo. Saturday morning, I read a piece from the New York Times called "Challenging the Generals" (26 Aug 07)--a somewhat lengthy but excellent read, BTW--in which Fred Kaplan points out one of the Great Unspoken Facts of military life: we are expected to be "officers of moral courage," but we are punished severely if we dare imply that those above us are incompetent, self-serving, or spineless yes-men. Even when everyone sees the truth of the accusation, no one dares say it.
On that note, I've been thinking further about my focus in advanced studies. I decided to begin with a point of fascination with me. Right now, I'm seriously considering exploring integrity in military culture via literature.
I have personal experiences with this problem, as you might imagine. I was punished--in a way which may yet cost me my career--for making jokes about OPR and award bullets being rewritten by those who don't really know what happened, which made it possible for them to innocently rewrite them until the thread of truth was no longer distinguishable. (This was a blog entry I wrote in Iraq, in case you're wondering. By all accounts, it was highly amusing to all but one who read it, who happened to be my immediate supervisor; she was writing my OPR at the time, and after reading my blog entry, she altered certain required contents so as to "send a message" that perhaps I shouldn't be promoted after all. Also, despite the military requirement for frequent and timely feedback, she never spoke to me about it. I discovered long after the fact what she'd done and spoke with the other persons involved, who filled in the details for me.) Of course, the blog entry itself was a minor hit, considered quite amusing by military folk who read it, BECAUSE IT WAS TRUE. I spoke the unspeakable. I laughed at routine stretching of the truth and honestly questioned where an "altered" bullet became a lie. In doing so, I suspect I called my boss' own cognitive dissonance into the spotlight. She didn't appreciate having to look upon the stark reality of the clash of "playing the military game" and "sacrificing integrity," and so...I was punished for provoking her discomfort.
And it worked. It shut me up. I will never again point out that bullets on OPRs are less concerned with truth than they are with "trying to make officer X competitive with his peers for his next promotion board."
Speaking of which, Lt Col Hanley, one of my colleagues in the department who (incidentally) got his MA and PhD from Oxford, wrote a scathing essay on military stupidity of this sort and published it in Proceedings, the official magazine of the US Naval Institute. In words and examples far more eloquent than any I could ever utter, he said that America is digging its grave through its own arrogance and its ignorance of history and the cultures it presumes to dominate. Our National Military Strategy is muddy but sounds nice because it's interested in marketing and essentially patting ourselves on the back instead of actual strategy.
He had a Works In Progress meeting Thursday (even though his piece had already been published) in which he frequently returned to the idea that we're too married to our own promotions anymore and no longer concerned, as we should be, with truth and integrity. He pointed out that promotion boards, peopled by officers we don't know, look at us and decide whether to promote us: "Worse--they look at papers. They read our OPRS...and BELIEVE them!"
No. It isn't just me making these comments. But then, I'm not a lieutenant colonel with an Oxford education who teaches liberal arts, either. He can say things I cannot.
So right now, I'm quite juiced by the idea of finding the medium to research this strange disparity through literature (which is simply the study of humanity, is it not?). It may fall under cultural studies of some sort; we are talking about the military culture in particular here. I don't know. I do know that the theme of integrity strikes me as worthy of extended research, and what I learn will be relevant to the military and to my life--regardless of the period or genre of literature I choose to specialize in.
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