Dear Senior US Military Leaders:
You were born in the 1950’s and 1960’s and came of age in a US military wounded internally and psychologically from the effects of the Vietnam War, a war in which US military forces fought bravely and competently, but were betrayed by the country that sent them to Southeast Asia.
Your mentors were all Vietnam veterans, who crawled out of the ashes and vowed to rebuild the military, in what was for many of them, a near holy crusade, a ‘hot blue flame’ that burned inside them every day on active duty.
You had a front row seat in the rebirth of the US military, which rose like a Phoenix in the sands of the Middle East in 1991, and which performed spectacularly, a performance which was a testament to the dedication of the men who led you, men who honored and maintained the military’s traditions – traditions and a way of life that are often juxtaposed to the civilian world.
You know what those traditions are: Duty, Honor, Country…
Your duty – to do everything in your power to ensure that the military focuses on warfighting and nothing else.
Your honor – to do everything in your power to ensure that those who serve under you know that you care about the mission and the troops and not just about you.
You country – to do everything in your power to protect the nation you have sworn to defend, and most importantly, to serve as a buffer against the wayward and often destructive instincts of politicians and Beltway bureaucrats who wish to use the military as a social laboratory.
You know how generals and admirals are supposed to lead. You know what constitutes good leadership at all levels. You know what it takes to make the US military an efficient and lethal fighting force. You saw it rise to a majestic peak and then gradually fall into an abyss of diversity.
You know, and yet you have abandoned all pretense of your duty as senior officers, logic, common sense and intestinal fortitude to placate identity groups and diversity engineers that have never spent one day in uniform, much less one second in combat.
You know and yet you sit like stoic martinets, calculating your promotions, pensions and your future defense contractor salaries.
You have allowed the US military to become a social experiment; a feminized, weakened, PC force that is a shadow of its former toughness and greatness.
You continue to allow the US military to become nothing more than a leftist play land, while betting everything on the hope that our armed forces will never face a real enemy like the Chinese, the Russians or the North Koreans.
You have sold out the nation’s national defense and allowed the military’s operational tempo to decrease, all for the greater good of your careers.
You have allowed policies to be implemented and events to take place that I would have never thought possible while serving on active duty as a US Army officer.
From open homosexuality to transgenders on active duty to Mommy Rangers and breastfeeding support memorandums, you have stuck your heads in the sand as the military became nothing more than just a corporation with uniforms and C4.
You are undoubtedly well educated, and many of you hold multiple degrees.
Many of you served several combat tours and have an array of citations for meritorious service and valor that adorn your finely tailored uniforms.
There is no doubt that some of you have exhibited extraordinary courage in battle.
But, it is more than apparent that many of you left your courage on the battlefield, for you lack that one integral trait that all leaders must possess; moral courage, aka professional courage, aka the ability, as General MacArthur said, ‘to stand up in the storm;’ to say and do what you know is right, your careers and pensions be damned.
For some of you, it is not a matter of just lacking moral courage, but being loyal to a President no longer in office and a candidate who was soundly defeated in the last election. You so-called members of the ‘resistance’ in the Pentagon and across the military are traitors who have violated your oaths.
Others will argue, what could you do, what can you do? You were and are just following orders. But, there is no Fuehrerprinzip in the US military. There is no such thing as an order is an order.
It is your duty as senior officers to defend not only the nation, which you have sworn to serve, but the institutions themselves. It is your duty to question orders which you believe are detrimental and devastating to the military.
When did one member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever resign in the last decade, in personal protest against the Obama administration’s destructive military policies, and the same policies which still linger today?
When did just one senior officer write even an anonymous OPED criticizing current military policy?
When did any of you ever lift a finger or utter one word of protest in what was being done to the US military?
Where were your voices of protest when male ROTC cadets were parading around college campuses in red high heels, when Senator Kirsten Gillibrand questioned you about the value of transgenders serving on active duty and women in combat, when standards disappeared overnight at the Special Forces Qualification Course, when the Marines’ Combat Endurance Test was no longer a graded event for future infantry officers, when army basic training dumped the grenade throw and land navigation…? Where were you when the lactation stations opened up at combat units across the world and male soldiers of the Big Red One conducted physical training in pregnancy simulators?
Where were you when senior leaders were railroaded out of the service for uttering the words, ‘sweetheart’, ‘faggot’ and the term ‘drunker than 10,000 Indians?’
Where were you? You were AWOL mentally and spiritually.
During the Gulf War in 1991, a young soldier told General Fred Franks, commander of VII Corps, ‘Don’t worry general, we trust you.’ Would anyone serving on active duty trust any of you? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t follow any of you into water.
I believe you are the worst generation of American senior military leadership in our long and glorious history, bar none.
Last week, a retired US Army officer and Vietnam veteran asked me, “Isn’t there just one senior leader in uniform who has the guts to say what needs to be said?”
The answer is no.
Ray Starmann
Editor in Chief
US Defense Watch
