The American military is obediently unprofessional — exactly like Hitler's Wehrmacht was

© 2020 Peter Free

 

09 January 2020

 

 

Reflect on the concept of professional honor

 

Paul Waldman's succinct synopsis — of other newspapers' reports about the US-sponsored assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani — caught my attention today:

 

 

As The Washington Post reports, Trump was “motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone,” in particular that “details of his internal deliberations had leaked out” and he “felt he looked weak.”

 

He also, as ever, had Barack Obama on his mind: “[H]e felt the response to this week’s attack on the embassy and the killing of an American contractor would make him look stronger compared with his predecessor.”

 

In case that wasn’t stupid enough for you, The New York Times reports that when military officials presented Trump with options for how to respond to Iran’s latest provocations, “[t]he options included strikes on Iranian ships or missile facilities or against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq.

 

The Pentagon also tacked on the choice of targeting General Soleimani, mainly to make other options seem reasonable.”

 

When Trump eventually ordered Soleimani’s assassination, military officials were “stunned” and “flabbergasted,” scrambling to carry out the order.

 

© 2020 Paul Waldman, Stumbling Into War, American Prospect (06 January 2020) (excerpts)

 

 

Think about this

 

American military leadership presented the Commander in Chief with a grossly stupid and anti-strategic option. This reportedly, so as to make other — almost as strategically self-destructive — options seem reasonable.

 

That perversely concocted spectrum, in itself, tells you something about the lack of professionally active brain among our Uniformed Services' head people.

 

 

There is more . . .

 

The Vacuity Problem goes deeper.

 

The same group of star-bearingly resplendent nitwits metaphorically scrambled to implement Trump's asinine order.

 

God forbid that one of this supposedly illustrious group of "professionals" resign, rather than carry out such murderous, strategically self-destructive imbecility.

 

 

Using history — let's compare

 

There is not an iota of difference between the American military's subservient behavior in these "he told us to do it" matters — and the Wehrmacht's murderous subservience to Hitler during World War II.

 

American military "honor" needs to evolve beyond the — "Head Monkey told us to do it, and that's it" — stage of professional evolution.

 

Until then, these top folk are difficult to respect on the twin bases of intelligence and personal honor.

 

 

Earned contempt?

 

You do not get to:

 

 

(a) foment wars

 

that continue the decades-long American trend of killing hundreds of thousands

 

and

 

de-homing millions —

 

(b) those sad consequences occurring for no conceivably necessary strategic reasons —

 

and

 

(c) still call yourself a decent human being and professionally honorable person.

 

 

Intellectual and moral vacuity . . .

 

. . . of top-starred American military leadership astounds.

 

By way of uncomplicated example — in the case of assassinating General Soleimani — what sort of precedent do these fools think that they are setting?

 

Do they really think that it is okay to target a foreign nation's uniformed officer just because?

 

I can hear these very high-ranking Americans' pampered, self-righteous whining — were the same thing to happen to one of them.

 

 

The moral? — Like Hitler's Wehrmacht . . .

 

Do not count on American military leadership to protect the United States' true national interests.

 

These top folk are too strategically unreflective, culturally ignorant and personally ambitious to take ultimately sensible positions about anything to do with Sun Tzu's reflections upon The Art of War.

 

How else — other than Military Industrial Complex greed and personal self-advancement — can one explain the United States' strategically pointless warmongering from the beginning of the Vietnam War on?

 

They're just ain't no strategically and morally conscious adults in American's braindead top suite.

 

What does that say about our nation of 330 million people?