by Kurt Schlichter, Townhall:
That Space Force colonel in command in Greenland – well, formerly in command in Greenland – who ran her fool mouth to undermine her commander-in-chief demonstrates an all-too-common problem with today’s senior military officers. We keep seeing these passive-aggressive, and not so passively aggressive, officers acting out and throwing childish tantrums of resistance to the President that the people of the United States elected. It’s inconceivable to those of us from the military who won the Cold War; we stayed the hell out of politics. Somehow, they must have missed that civilian control block of instruction; non-partisanship is a vital principle of our officer corps.
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To be political on duty is a violation of our oaths. It’s a violation of our ethos as officers. And it’s got to be brutally crushed – even Barack Obama understood that when he properly canned General Stanley McChrystal for having a staff that thought it was okay to diss the President to reporters (incredibly, after this massive leadership failure, McChrystal has gone on to sell his leadership insights to eager civilian suckers, but that’s another story).
We simply cannot have a functioning military that tolerates individuals putting their own personal prerogatives ahead of the mission – and that’s exactly what this political posturing is. It brings to mind a story of my continuing dispute with my command sergeant major when I commanded a cavalry squadron. We rarely disagreed on anything; my CSM was that guy whose picture is scowling back at you, judging you, when you look up the definition of a noncommissioned officer. But every chow time in the field, we had a confrontation. One of us would note that the last of the soldiers had eaten, and then the argument would begin.
“Sir, time for you to grab chow.”
“After you, Sergeant Major.”
“After you, Colonel.”
It was the same dispute, every meal. Both of us wanted to eat last. That’s because leaders eat last. That’s because leaders put themselves after their troops. It was a point of pride.
Now, I led this way not because I was some super-duper, awesome exceptional officer. Every senior leader I knew did this, or at least every senior leader who lasted – there’s always a tail-end of the Bell Curve. If I were seen as putting myself before my soldiers or my mission, my peers would have done me in, never mind my commanders. We all understood our role. I was trained by real leaders, so doing something different never occurred to me. It’s not about you. Putting your politics first is a betrayal. That’s what babbling about politics to undermine your bosses’ boss is.
The fact that you are a senior leader, even when you are in a command position, does not make you the main character; save that for the personal psychodrama that is your life. Call it “servant leadership” or just plain leadership, but you never leverage the authority you’ve been entrusted with to pose, posture, or pontificate. That’s because your rank doesn’t belong to you. I get to use the honorific “Colonel” because I retired at that rank, but the silver eagle I wore never belonged to me. It was on loan. You Americans issued that rank to me so that I could do a job for the United States of America. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t about me. It was never about me. And it’s incomprehensible to me and my generation of Soldiers (and Sailors, Marines, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and whatever the hell they’re calling Space Force people now) that many of today’s generation of senior leaders doesn’t seem to understand that basic concept.
