Just cleaning up some study space and I ran across a copy of “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. In Iraq my facility was secure and was jot permitted any “non-military necessity reading materials”. I can not function without reading material laying around, so I bent the rules in what I considered acceptable, willing to take the heat. A quiet, rather backward, Soldier once asked if he could take my copy of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond back to the FOB to read. He had been randomly picking it up for a week, so I let him. A few days later I asked how he liked it and he told me he was going to buy a copy for himself. I told him to keep it, rather impressed based on what little I knew of him that he was interested. This is bad of me to say, but based on my experience with him to this point I wasn’t even sure he could understand half the words in the book.

A week later he stopped me on the FOB going into the CP and handed me a book. It was the only book he had brought with him, and it was one of his favorites. “The Wealth of Nations”. I met him for lunch a few days later and he spoke eloquently and genuinely informed on his subject. He even started discussing Hayek by the end of lunch. When he was in his element, he was on. I was touched that he could open up to me, upset with myself for discounting his abilities based solely on behavior, and wished that other Soldiers in the platoon could look to him as an inspiration, rather as the dumb kid.

Last I heard he had finished an honors program and was on to study engineering at NJIT. Need to find him.

I generally have a lot to say about what I perceive as a lack of formal relevant ethics training during my military career.  Save 3 or 4 “ethical leadership discussions” during Infantry Officer Basic, I can’t recall a single ethics brief or training that did not solely concentrate on what you can and can’t do with a GSA vehicle, when you are allowed to keep an airline bump, and what is considered an acceptable personal stop during a duty day. Don’t remember much about leadership ethics training at the Maneuver Captain’s Course.  Certainly have never received it at an Officer Professional Development activity at the Battalion or Brigade level.  The USAF Squadron Officer’s School did a better job by having many professional discussions, everything from Janowitz and Sarkesian to Toner.  Much of what we rely on is that our profession is supposed to be self correcting; the members believe too much in the honor and duty to allow bad apples to rise to the top without having at least been corrected.  Not sure if it has ever worked that way, but I fee sure that it is not necessarily the best way.

Ralph Peters seems a bit of an extremist most of the time to me, but here he nails it: Instead of going easier on the generals, they should face harsher penalties than the captains. Generals know better. But their sense of entitlement has murdered their sense of duty, honor, country.  In his op-ed today for the NY Post he gets it right when describing the failures of GEN (LTG) Ward, D/CIA Petraeus, and BG Sinclair, but he fails to address any more than the sense of entitlement at the General Officer level.  He describes other GOs closing ranks around Ward and protesting his loss of rank at retirement based on his reduced retirement benefit.  For abuse of power and the public’s trust he should be censured, not defended.

SECDEF Panetta has ordered a review in ethics training, but again this is concentrating more on public image and fiduciary responsibility that it is establishing a core ethical foundation.  “Beyond mere compliance with the rules, I also expect senior officers and civilian executives to exercise sound judgment in their stewardship of government resources and in their personal conduct,” Panetta said. “An action may be legally permissible but neither advisable nor wise.”

To Peter’s point, SECDEF’s seemingly reactive CYA review of ethics training (though the article states that this was in the works before the Petraeus break, timing is everything…) does not address a core leadership trait that is not being sufficiently reinforced.  Peters mentions “entitlement”.  My Soldiers know that I am very quick to knock them down a notch on humility.  We have built over the past few years the sense of entitlement that goes with being told “we are special”.  Advocacy groups and merchants both use the “1% or .45%” numbers that have been bandied about to show what a special segment of the population service members are.  Leaders pump their Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines with a “you are a warrior, a descendent of Sparta” tributes with very little reflection as to what those words mean, or the expectations that go along with them.  We teach Privates from day one that they are special, in many ways more special than other mere citizens (at least we haven’t gone full Starship Troopers yet), because they have volunteered to do something that has the very real potential of being very, very dangerous. These Privates come to expect being lauded.  They expect special treatment.  And they become the Sergeant Majors, as the Second Lieutenants become the Generals, that expect that they do deserve what they believe they have coming.  It is OWED to them.  This sense of entitlement permeates every level of what we do and leads to ethical lapses of individuals that are at the heart a lapse in the system.

Andrew Exum created a little controversy when he discussed what is owed a professional Army, but he was right in addressing that we need to take a hard look at how we are convincing our Soldiers today about who and what they are.  His best example, and one I have seen first hand, is an airline asking for uniformed service members to board first ahead of a mother with infant.  How screwed up are our priorities when this is the expectation we are setting in our Soldier’s heads?

I have had the unfortunate experience of having to counsel depressed Soldiers, and during discussions several have mentioned that they didn’t understand that it would be so hard post-deployment as they returned to the civilian job market and their lives.  “Don’t we deserve better?” was a common question.  We all probably do, but it doesn’t mean we are entitled to better by way of service.  Selfless Service is an Army core value.  Maybe we need to remind ourselves about that every once in a while.