What's Wrong With America's Generals?
Liar. Cheat. User. Hustler. Brad Carlton was all of these things. Then he took advantage of women. Or worst of all, hid behind their skirts.
~ Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) on "The Young and the Restless: Episode #1.9078" (2009)
Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, formerly deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, has been charged with forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, inappropriate relationships, fraud, forgery, and possession of alcohol and pornography while on deployment.
Gen. William "Kip" Ward, who formerly led the U.S. Africa Command, was stripped of a star and forced to retire after accusations of spending thousands of dollars on lavish travel and other financial improprieties.
Brig. Gen. Roger Duff was dismissed from the military for conduct unbecoming an officer for wearing unauthorized awards or ribbons and making a false official statement.
In 2005, 4-star Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes was forced to retire after engaging in an extramarital affair.
In 1999, Maj. Gen. David Hale pled guilty to charges related to adultery and was ordered to retire at a reduced rank.
If the U.S. government’s national security leadership is increasingly taking on the cast of a soap opera, the headlines certainly bear it out. As with most people, I’m having a hard time keeping up with what general has been hitting on which married woman, one of whom was being hit up by a shirtless FBI agent, and so on and so forth. The writers of The Young and the Restless could not conjure up a more outlandish and tawdy plot. But, as the above cases show, hanky-panky among the country’s top military brass is nothing new. It’s just that we’ve had a cluster of them lately. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had brought home his film actress mistress from the Philippines. He subsequently dispatched his aide, Dwight Eisenhower, to pay her $15,000 to go away. She later committed suicide. Eisenhower, himself, is rumored to have had an affair with his chauffeur, Kay Summersby.
What accounts for this Generals Gone Wild behavior among men who spent decades honing self-discipline and rectitude, expected to act as moral examples to those under their command?
While assigned to the Naval War College in the ‘90s, I befriended a civilian psychologist who counseled Naval personnel. Without naming names, my friend outlined a picture among officers as well as enlistees of widespread substance abuse, depression and domestic violence behind the Navy’s veneer of retro-family values. A report by the Defense Department’s Family Advocacy Program shows that in 2010, the spousal abuse rate was 11.2 per one-thousand couples, up from 10.1 per thousand in 2009 and 9.4 per thousand in 2008. The rate had been steadily declining from 16.5 per thousand in fiscal year 2001. Furthermore, there were 16 domestic abuse deaths in 2010. In 81 percent of the cases, the perpetrator was an active-duty soldier. Also, the number of confirmed child maltreatment cases rose from 4.8 incidents per one-thousand children in 2008 and 2009 to 5.7 per thousand in 2010. DoD reports prescription drug abuse doubled among U.S. military personnel from 2002 to 2005 and almost tripled between 2005 and 2008. Alcoholism is also on the rise, particularly among troops returning from combat duty. Also, 20 percent of active and 42 percent of reserve component soldiers are in need of mental health treatment. A sustained and intensified ops tempo resulting from fighting two wars is largely behind these trends.
Gen. Petraeus commanded combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a total of six years, following which he took the reins of CIA director, hardly a low-stress job. He was treated in 2009 for early stage prostate cancer. The man has hardly taken a break in years. One wonders how the incessant stress has affected his judgment. Behind the surface of uber-General is a human being, subject to the same vulnerabilities as many of us.
Perhaps we need to take a closer look at the hyper-moral codes to which our military personnel must strictly adhere. Our allies tend to be less rigid than we are in this area (though the Canadians sacked their commander in Afghanistan a couple of years ago for having an adulterous affair with a female subordinate.) Flag officers are citizen soldiers. Those stars on their shoulders lead a few to hubristic or reckless behavior. My take, however, is that they are subject to the same weaknesses of the flesh and judgment as businessmen, teachers, doctors, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Shakespeare hit the nail on the head: "I am driven on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives."