Again, I think you are too narrowly focused. I was not (and I doubt Scout was either) trying to justify their actions or make excuses. When I read A Scout’s post, I saw an observation from well-trained officers who have been taught to ask tough questions so that mistakes can be corrected in the future. It has been my experience that some of the answers are not liked by the mainstream populations.
For years now the military has seen an increase divorce rate among its troops as well as increased suicide. While most of the studies that I have seen have been confined to the junior level troops (E-1 through E-5 and O-1 through O-4 ranks) it would be a mistake to think that senior NCO’s and officers are immune to the same problems.
For the last six years of my career I spent more time in a combat zone than I did here in the United States. To think that has not played havoc on my marriage and family would be a mistake. For the past six years I have been surrounded by friends and family who deeply care about me. Yet, I personally have never felt more alone at times. I know my wife cares about me and she wants to sympathize with me and ease whatever pain I may feel. On the flip side, I care deeply for her and out of my respect and love for her, I never really open up with her about my experiences. This is caused by several things I am sure to include wanting to protect her…and myself ….as well as maybe a bit of guilt because some of the things I had to do go against her values, and to an extent even my own values.
This paradigm of mine makes it very easy for me to see a correlation in both of these Generals and makes me ask the question if their recent experience played a part in their loss of judgment and focus.
To me there is a cause and effect here. With the size of our military and the fact that it is a volunteer force, it means we as a nation have to ask ourselves is this something we can live with…or is there changes that we need to make to our force. For me the answer is simple….we need to make changes to our force to include more manpower either on active duty or in the reserves.
Beautifully stated. Thank you for compliment, by the way. The problem with deployment after deployment is that it becomes immersive to the point of altering your view on nearly everything. After spending 3 years abroad, engaged in the act of waging war, I personally feel like it does take a significant hold on your viewpoint and skew it fundamentally. That doesn't mean it's right or wrong, or good or bad. It just....is. To say it's skewed is qualitative, not evaluative.
I know tpg feels this as well as anyone. The experience changes you. It changes how you view people, your loved ones, your morals and values, the truths you believe, the value of human life, and yourself. And that's just at the company/battalion level. No one ever put my picture on Time magazine and asked if I could really save the war effort. That was Petraeus' mantle to bear...the hopes of a nation that could only care about the war effort long enough to lay it at his feet and say "Please to walk in front, sir."
So, I suppose if you view the world in the simple black/white spectrum of the armchair quarterback, it would seem like I'm attempting to rationalize or justify his actions. That's far from the case. He made a promise and he broke it. That, in our society, is wrong and he will have to deal with that in his own way. However, we do need to ask whether there might be a reason he strayed so far from the principles he demonstrated throughout a long career. Reasons do not make things right or wrong. They simply give us insight. If a husband stalks and kills his wife's rapist, that is a reason, and knowing it helps us understand what happened. It doesn't excuse the man from going to jail. But it helps us frame the event and ask pertinent questions.
This situation is no different. Did years upon years of military service, waging war from Mosul to Afghanistan, fundamentally change the man in ways that allowed him to willingly abandon his principles? If so, what does that tell us about the larger force? What does that tell us about the Soldiers and Marines who've seen year upon year of bloodshed, who lived through the madness of the surge, whose children are as used to life without them as with them? Do we need to rethink the model of our military, or the model of our wars? Maybe not, but then again, maybe so.