There is a drumbeat on the American military front that does not bode well for the future of our military culture and American security. A systematic purging of military leaders in America has begun at the highest levels that appears to hinge on personal loyalty to the President.
The two American conflicts I have most studied are the Civil War and the Second World War. I found that both wars were characterized by a level of unpreparedness on the part of the United States that was among the eventual winners.
During the American Civil War, the South drew the best military talent and was able to prolong the war against the economic power of the North largely due to those superior skills. For three years, President Lincoln kept looking for effective leadership to manage his war machine to no avail.
Finding General Ulysses S. Grant and appointing him on March 9, 1864, as Commander in Chief of the Union Army immediately served to shorten the war. Within little more than a year General Grant defeated the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Civil War went into the history books.
World War II caught a reluctant and unprepared nation facing a two-front war in four continents. Americans rushed to the recruiting stations to fill the ranks of millions to defend the country and its allies against the Japanese Empire in the East and Nazi Germany and its European partners in the West.
A curious thing, in World War II the United States intended to defend democracy and yet, it fought along-side a Communist dictatorship personified by Joseph Stalin. Russia and the Soviet Union along with America’s principal enemies Germany and Japan were absolute dictatorships that fought the war in the name of one person.
For Stalin to achieve this, he purged and killed hundreds of thousands of people including executing the flower of military leadership in his paranoiac effort to stay in power. He paid for that dearly, especially in the first years of a war where the country lost over 11 million soldiers to the German onslaught.
Hitler built his personally loyal military leadership in the vacuum left by the devastation of World War I. For the Japanese, the Emperor was their god and the military fought in his name. The paradigm that features the demand for personal loyalty at the expense of the Constitution is alive and well in the United States today and serves a reminder of how fragile democracy can be and how much work it is to keep us free. We are seeing this play out right before our eyes.
I was only 17 when I joined the United States Air Force. However, I had read enough history to know that when I took a step forward and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic it was a serious intent and responsibility.
When I saw the picture of some eight hundred plus generals and admirals seating in an auditorium and being lectured about changing their cultural outlook, I immediately knew that it was the beginning of an effort to change the intent with regards to the Constitution.
As the general officers sat quietly and listened to a lecture on loyalty, exclusion and permissive violence, I wondered what these brilliant and experienced men and women, White, Black and Brown thought regarding values to country they learned. I wonder if they think that they will be forced to choose between retiring or replaced by something less.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
