Left Flank, March!

Duty. Honor. Country.

A famous credo.  And it used to be standard operating procedure, more or less, at least for old fashioned commanders like Douglas MacArthur. But too many of our modern military leaders seem to have ingested less of the spirit of the bayonet and more of the spirit of the office manager. The chain of command seems surfeited at times with beribboned bureaucrats who have substituted sycophancy, political correctness, and blind ambition for the time honored virtues of a MacArthur; with generals like Martin Dempsey, Barack Obama’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose ideals of service are often at odds with those of the men he commands:

The chairman told reporters that he and his fellow commanders are “the stewards of the profession of arms, and must ensure service members don’t cross an important line.”

Sadly, none of the reporters asked Gen. Dempsey why he never spoke up during the Bush years when former generals and high-ranking officers were trotted out by the news media to condemn President George W. Bush’s war policies and activities. (Joint Chiefs chairman to retired military: Stop slamming Obama! | Examiner.com)

Scott Taylor, founder of the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, responded:

“Well, I have nothing but respect for the general. He’s active duty; we are not. We’re now citizens and we have a First Amendment right to be able to speak out and we feel as though we’re doing the right thing.”

 General Dempsey can insist all he wants how he’s as apolitical as Donald Duck, but he’s quacked the Obama line since the day he was appointed, supporting everything from the drastic downsizing of our military capabilities and nuclear arsenal, to the ongoing feminization and homosexualization of the armed forces, policies with which 74% of his colleagues say they disagree.

There’s a reason why Barack Obama is mistrusted in the ranks of the military services. He doesn’t smell of the hive, and it shows. Bees recognize a hostile intruder when they see one, and so do soldiers, sailors and Marines.

Many of these soldiers, sailors and Marines feel betrayed by the senior officers of the services, beginning with the commander in chief. The old customs and traditions that have held the services together through war and peace have been scorned and trashed, replaced with the politically correct attitudes and regulations that gag real men. Even saying so is a sure way for an officer to ruin a career. The men in the ranks understand this, too.

The Army’s Center for Army Leadership at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., asked 16,800 commissioned and non-commissioned officers whether they think “the Army is headed in the right direction to prepare for the challenges of the next 10 years.” Their answers, as reported by CNS.com, ought to be enough to scare a commander in chief straight. His defense chief, too. But it won’t, because they’re exactly the men responsible for the survey results. (PRUDEN: A grim message for the generals | Washington Times)

In a free society, civilian control of the military is fundamental, of course.  But what happens when that control falls into the hands of politicians whose radical ideology recklessly endangers the security of the nation?  Don Feder wondered, “What would have happened if we had fought World War II the way we’re fighting the war on Islamic terrorism? What if political correctness guided America in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor?” (FloydReports)

• On December 8, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have come before a joint session of Congress to apologize for the presence of U.S. Marines in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic earlier in the century, and the Spanish-American War. He would have offered to give the Philippines back to Spain and pay reparations.

• He would have referred to December 7, 1941 as “a day pretty much like any other and let’s not make a big deal of it” and cautioned that, “I think that at a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then fears can surface, suspicions can surface. We have to make sure that we don’t start turning on each other.” To put the emphasis where it properly belonged, the president would have said that anniversaries of Pearl Harbor would be officially designated National Days of Service.

• America’s slogan would have become “Remember, Pearl Harbor was no one’s fault.”

• FDR would have threatened negotiations if Japanese aggression didn’t cease immediately and sought sanctions from the League of Nations.

• Public officials would have taken to referring to Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March (more properly, the Bataan Relocation Program) and the Holocaust as “man-caused disasters.”

• Reports of German or Japanese atrocities would have been accompanied by the requisite recitation of the sins of slavery and Wounded Knee.

• In 1942, a number of Congressmen would have complained that the fighting on Guadalcanal was unwinnable and unnecessary. The Marines would have been withdrawn and the island-hopping campaign discontinued.

• Actor Errol Flynn might have speculated that Pearl Harbor was “an inside job,” and suggested a Zionist conspiracy to push the U.S. into a war with the Axis powers.

• The President would have proclaimed Shintoism “a religion of peace” which had nothing to do with the “man-caused disaster” of Dec. 7th, and explained that “Banzai” pertains to a spiritual struggle.

• Commentators would have urged us to distinguish between ordinary Nazis, who just want to live in peace, and Nazi militants. The later somehow had managed to distort their ideology of brotherhood.

• In his 1941 Holiday Message (which, coincidentally, would have come around December 25th ), FDR would have told the American people, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation,” but that Japanese ancestor worship “has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including my own country.”

• A Shinto shrine would have been erected over the sunken U.S.S. Arizona. Those who objected to this free-exercise of religion would have been excoriated as bigots and racists by the media.

• Teach-ins opposing the U.S. war mobilization would have been held on college campuses across the country. At Columbia University, an assistant professor of anthropology would have said, “The only heroes are those who find ways to help defeat the U.S. military” and “I personally would like to see a million Pearl Harbors.”

• The minister of the church FDR attended in Hyde Park would have said the Day of Infamy was “America’s chickens coming home to roost” and “G-d damn America!”

• Words like “Jap,” “Nip,” Kraut” and “Jerry” would have been banned as hate speech.

• Civil libertarians would have demanded that German saboteurs, captured in June 1942, be tried in civilian courts.

• J. Edgar Hoover would have announced that the FBI would not engage in racial or ethnic profiling in rounding up spies, and that the Bureau was specifically targeting Irish nuns and French pastry chefs.

• The German American Bund would have decried the arrest of German nationals in the wake of Berlin’s declaration of war on the United States and suggested that they were victims of entrapment.

• Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall would have announced plans to have homosexuals serve openly in the Armed Forces. Thereafter, enlistment rates would have plummeted. Chaplains who opposed the policy would have been told to praise the lord and keep their mouths shut.

• Planning for D-Day, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower would have said he didn’t see why 110-lb. women, carrying 45-lbs of equipment and supplies, couldn’t wade ashore in rough surf at Omaha Beach. But, just to be safe, canvas tennis shoes would be issued to the troops in place of combat boots.

• To teach tolerance, American school children would have celebrated Emperor Hirohito’s birthday, and role-played at being kamikaze pilots.

• Republicans would have repeatedly asked Roosevelt where Japan’s weapons of mass destruction were and speculated that the war was FDR’s personal vendetta against Tojo and Hitler.

• On September 2, 1945, the United States would have formally surrendered to the Empire of Japan on the battleship Kongo anchored in New York harbor. Thereafter, we would have had sukiyaki for Thanksgiving.

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