Published Airpower Journal - Winter 1994
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MILITARY ETHICS

This article is an edited transcript of a conversation among three people on the subject of military ethics. Lieutenant Casebeer, Colonel Szafranski, and Dr Toner respond to the increasingly negative perceptions of the ethical standards of members of the armed forces, as reported in the public media. Each man believes that the armed forces must be more ethically robust or pure than the society at large--even more so than other professions. The academic and philosophical nature of the conversation is a function of the participants' individual personalities. We print this article to raise issues that suffuse the subject of ethics in the armed forces.

Szafranski: I'm concerned about the number of reported ethical transgressions among officers, especially senior officer "problems." Some of these reports may be inaccurate or just malicious--the "moral equivalent of fragging."¹ Anyway, it seems we have a serious problem with ethics in the armed forces.

Toner: I agree. Based only upon publicly available sources such as newspapers,² the opinion that there is an ethics crisis in the military seems to be well founded. I'm afraid that published reports are only the tip of the iceberg. How extensive the moral erosion is, I couldn't say. I certainly remember what it was like when I was a company-grade officer 20 years ago.³ I thought the corner had been turned. Hasn't it?

Casebeer: As a company-grade officer, I'm not so sure we're any worse off now than my perceptions of where we were 20 years ago. Tailhook aside, the vast majority of military men and women strike me as sensible and ethical individuals. Of course, there's always room for improvement, and the military is by no means a perfect institution. So, to make sure we're in the same ballpark, let's define some terms. Dr Toner, when you use ethics and crisis, what do you mean?

Toner: By ethics, I mean simply the ability to distinguish between what is honorable and what is shameful--in the sense of "duty, honor, country." By crisis, I refer to a time or situation of great danger or trouble. But to be more specific, the word moral would refer to custom, and in a more practical sense, the word ethics would refer to a code that transcends social convenience.

Szafranski: I understand honorable to mean something like unselfish--something subordinate to an imperative that's unselfish. But honor can mean different things to different people. Bushido is honor to some; omertà is honor to others.⁴ To me, honor means something like the absolute commitment to putting something, someone else, first.

Toner: I think that's a useful concept, yes. But a person can certainly be selfish and still be honorable. I think of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), who went to the gallows for what he believed, despite the pleas of his wife and family to accede to the king's demands for religious conformity.⁵ Was More selfish? Sure, in a sense. He followed the dictates of his conscience. But he was also honorable.

Casebeer: Whether or not a person like More can be moral for selfish reasons--at least in a utilitarian system, where results are equated with morality--our goal should be to determine what ethical standards we are to hold ourselves to, no matter what the individual reason for doing so: love of country, love of God, love of flying, and so forth. This is an admittedly utilitarian or results-oriented standard and not a deontological or intention-based yardstick.

Szafranski: That may be a starting point, because these reported scandals hurt and embarrass all of us in the armed forces, professionally and personally. It does appear, however, that somehow a negative form of selfishness has interposed itself in our rules of behavior and has become more widespread than it should be. And now, because of this selfishness, we are in danger of losing something. After all, how can someone charged with the public trust and the lives of others come to believe that others exist to serve him or her, or that the public trust can be maintained if there's a lot of misbehavior? But I agree with you, Bill--if something's broken, we've got to fix it. Period.

Casebeer: Precisely. If careerism and excessive self-love are really the root of the problem, then our system needs to be retailored to address and punish egoistic behavior. If someone truly cares only about his or her career, and that career can only advance if the person is ethical, then egoism would actually provide for a straightlaced force. If excessive careerism is being rewarded in today's Air Force, it's our fault as individuals for letting the selfish be rewarded.

Toner: While I think there's nothing wrong with appropriate self-love and self-respect, my complaint is that in the military, excessive self-love--egoism--becomes careerism, where the officer--whether soldier, sailor, airman, or marine--says, "I come first." This attitude is particularly heinous when it appears in military service, where leaders have to be aggressive, take-charge people, intent on mission accomplishment. Yet, that aggressive attitude toward the mission can easily spill over into an aggressive attitude toward self-promotion. So how do we set up a system in which legitimate self-concern is balanced by appropriate devotion to the community?

Casebeer: That's a classic question of political philosophy: how do we balance the needs of the state against the needs of the individual? The framers of the Constitution recognized this inherent tension and resolved it by forming a governmental system of checks and balances. On the other hand, I'm sure many evolutionary biologists would disagree that self-concern is largely natural and instinctive, preferring to believe that cooperation and symbiosis developed naturally in our ecosystem despite the reward for being self-concerned.⁶ Perhaps societal conditioning is really the largest factor affecting self-love.

Szafranski: Let's leave biology and political philosophy. Where did these ethical problems in the military originate?

Toner: We can leave biology, but we can't leave philosophy. I would argue, like Thucydides, that human nature is essentially unchanged over the centuries. But good societies--good social structures--generally facilitate reason and impede passion.⁷ Break down institutions like the family and religious communities or any other means by which societies encourage the best in us, and--as in William Golding's Lord of the Flies⁸--there will be political and moral chaos. All questions, at their heart, are religious and political. One of the problems involved with ethics education is that, especially in the military, we just cannot teach about ethics; we must teach ethics. In the military, ethics isn't academic or clinical; it's an everyday, living reality. There really are "school solutions," and the people tasked with teaching ethics must inculcate the right way of doing things. But I wonder how there can be a "right way" when people actually talk about shoplifters as "nontraditional shoppers"? If there is no ultimate social agreement on matters of ethics, then there is no society.

Szafranski: Yet, these scandals seem to have cropped up suddenly, out of nowhere, and it seems we're seeing more of them. The problem goes beyond mere self-promotion. Something--some removal of inhibition or restraint, some loss of moral compass bearing--must have occurred recently to cause the kinds of alleged misbehaviors and shameful behavior that are reported as widespread. Why does this seem so much more a problem now rather than two years ago--or 10?

Toner: I agree that excessive self-promotion and intemperate self-gratification have always been problems. Even though it may be somewhat of an overstatement, however, I think that until the 1960s, certain cultural totems and taboos were in place that helped to restrain the darker side of our nature. The notion that everyone can pretty much do what he or she wants to do seems to have emerged full force in the late sixties, and we're seeing the ripples of that effect today. I suspect it will get much worse before it gets any better because so many of the 1960s campus radicals who subsequently joined university faculties are now tenured, and many of them remain unchanged in their views about ethics and politics. The teaching of traditional ethics is an essentially conservative enterprise, for ethics is a constellation of beliefs about wisdom and virtue that comes to us from the centuries. If such wisdom and virtue are derided as the things and thoughts of "dead, white, European males,"⁹ then traditional ethics--the heart of the military ethic--will not be taught, for there is no one to teach that discipline.

Casebeer: Roger Kimball in Tenured Radicals and Dinesh D'Souza in Illiberal Education¹⁰ say essentially the same thing--that people who lost the ideological struggle that took place in the late sixties and early seventies sought refuge in the universities and colleges. Nonetheless, if this were the heart of the problem, we would expect to see the most flagrant ethics violations taking place in the age group of officers and enlisted personnel who attended college in the late seventies and early eighties when these radical viewpoints were fresh on the minds of the newly estranged Left. That would mean the problems would center around our most junior personnel--those who attended college and high school during the Reagan years. But that just isn't so.

Szafranski: Good point. Then this egoism or self-centered legacy of the sixties and seventies has become a pernicious disease that has pervaded all aspects of the force. Do either of you think it's "terminal," or is there something we can do about it?

Toner: I think you're exactly right when you use the term disease. I think we're in the middle of a moral bubonic plague. Our ethical hygiene is generally so bad that we spread the disease practically unknowingly. Edmund Burke (1729-97), the British statesman, talked once about prejudice, which he used in a good sense to mean "unarticulated social custom."¹¹ Today, we must instruct people in rules that many of us used to take for granted. The very fact that we have to do this is a symptom of the epidemic we face; naturally, it carries over into our warriors. I think of the graphically sexual lyrics in songs and the slogans on shirts today that, when I was in high school in the early 1960s, would have been unthinkable. I think of the majority of Tailhook offenders who had no concept that their behavior was wrong--even criminally so.¹² How do you teach someone that "some things just aren't done"? There must be an atmosphere--a milieu or expectation--of what is done and not done. The military notion of the "officer and gentleman" and the article in the Uniform Code of Military Justice about "conduct unbecoming" capture this spirit.

Szafranski: So we've got to do something. We can't afford to let these attitudes and behaviors prevail. Our obligations as warriors are so big we'll lose the trust necessary to carry heavy burdens if we can't even carry light ones. We warriors have in our hands the means to rob others of their very existence. This is the essence of our trade. How can the moms and dads of America trust me with the lives of their sons and daughters if I can't tell the difference between sobriety and drunkenness--or between the lawful exercise of authority and the abuse of authority? These allegations and kinds of things--like organized public drunkenness, like witnessing debauchery and not intervening, like exerting abusive or unlawful influence, like ridiculing the president, like mismanaging a procurement program--I find hard to relate to cultural totems, taboos, or the 1960s.

Toner: Dick, your response to the things you list derives from an objective standard that you have internalized on a personal level--a standard that used to be the core of the military ethic. If, however, I have no internalized standard, then self-indulgence and self-promotion are what spur me toward any action. My standard of right and wrong, honor and shame, virtue and vice becomes merely what pleases me. I think a substantially different ethic worked in our parents' time--one much more in keeping with the profession of arms. People joined "the service" during World War II. Increasingly, today's military is seen as a career opportunity, a business enterprise, a place for experimentation in total quality management. The idea that a soldier is a "secular Jesuit" seems laughable to today's recruit, but it shouldn't be. The military is and must continue to be a profession--a community of comrades-in-arms locked in common, high purpose. It must never become IBM with M-16s and F-16s.

Casebeer: Good point. All too often, the military is viewed as a means to an end--such as a way to get a good education, a way to build up a resume before you enter the private market--instead of an end in and of itself. However, I wouldn't be so pessimistic about today's military. In general, our soldiers are professional and dedicated service members.

Szafranski: You're right; there are more good folks than errant ones, and none of us is perfect. But if the dominant social ethic is sick, the problem is just beginning. Like a real epidemic, it can run its course only by mortal means. It seems that the ethically ill--the mortally ethically ill--in our profession must die, or our profession will die because of them. If that's so, who does the vaccinating against this plague? From what we've said, parents and society at large are at fault. We can't fix all of that. What can warriors do?

Toner: If the disease runs its course, I tremble for the society our warriors are supposed to protect. No, this disease must be arrested and cured. The problems, certainly, are not only in the military. Consider the accusations of depredations by priests and ministers, for example, that have been commonly reported in the media. If there is a vaccine, I think it resides in good education. But recent changes in the curriculum at the US Air Force Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, don't seem to offer much hope. If I am to believe published reports,¹³ there is little--or no--instruction in ethics. Isn't that a mistake?

Szafranski: Unfortunately, by the time you reach your "majority," it's probably too late anyway.

Toner: A very good point. Professional military education (PME) should reinforce previous education. Again, by education, I refer to instruction in wisdom and virtue. But imagine trying to sell that notion on most campuses today!

Casebeer: Still, more instruction and training in ethics would definitely help the problem. The ultimate solution, though, is backbone: when we see ethical violations occurring, we must stop them immediately. Turning the other cheek might help us "get along," but it won't help the military polish its tarnished character.

Szafranski: OK, but let's hold off on that idea of individual integrity for a minute and get back to this idea of education. If we accept the idea that the solution--the vaccine--is education, who will be charged to conduct this education? Is there a moral or ethical elite of whom I'm unaware?

Casebeer: In relation to values, childhood is still the most important formative period in a person's life. So the majority of the burden here is going to fall on parents. Yet, in any educational situation we would set up, we'd have to deal with the quandary in our society's value system posed by ethical relativism--the belief system that posits there are no absolute and independent standards of right and wrong.

Szafranski: Specifically?

Casebeer: The quandary is this: if all moral statements are relative to one's beliefs, then relativism is itself relative. However, I can choose to accept an absolute standard and effectively disprove relativism. This is what we all do when we pledge to defend the Constitution of the United States with our lives. So for our intents and purposes, we shouldn't give up hope--an ongoing process of a somewhat "absolutist" military education can help correct the errant ways of its members. In today's valueless society--at the very least--we can attempt to provide a rational, ethical nervous system for those people whose consciences have been left vacant by the nihilism of the past two decades.

Toner: In that case, we have to return to good teaching rather than to political correctness. Almost every week in U.S. News & World Report, John Leo has a column about the inanities and excesses of political correctness. In many respects, ethics cannot be politically correct because inculcating traditional ethical values is an inherently conservative enterprise. Much of what we understand as ethical is the fruit of traditional religious, philosophical, political, historical, and literary reflection--much of what has been "deconstructed" by political correctness, which is at heart a leftist ideology.¹⁴

Szafranski: Jim, this is sounding either Ciceronian ("O tempora! O mores!") or Dylan Thomasesque ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light"), and neither of these views is very productive.¹⁵ I refuse to be fatalistic about this; nevertheless, we must restore--unarguably--honor to this sometimes onerous profession.

Toner: You're right. If you know that something--some component--flat-out doesn't work in an aircraft and that such failure can endanger your life, it seems to me that you'll take action as soon as practicable to get the thing fixed. If you can't trust the guys on your left and right, you'll try to get new guys--people--on board. Ethics can be very practical stuff.

Szafranski: I don't want a cookbook, but I do want some clues as to wherein you both think the remedy lies. Some of the new people we're bringing on board in our premier warrior schools are lying, cheating, raping, and stealing, and the military academies haven't immunized themselves to the disease either, it would seem. What specifically is the fix? Who is the agent of change? Where do we start?

Casebeer: Well, the service academies are in a unique situation to help, but they're also problem-ridden. In the sixties, the ethics violations that took place there may not have been as flagrant; of course, class sizes were much smaller then, and sensitivities about sexism are much higher now. But part of the problem stems from an honor system that gets bogged down in technicalities and game playing.

Toner: Yes, which reminds me of something we touched on before--the idea that the vaccine for this disease also has to be in the minds, hearts, and souls of men and women of character and gumption--people with enough sense and substance to say, from time to time, "No! This is wrong! It must stop!" They know something is wrong for many reasons that I won't explore here.¹⁶ But the "elite teacher corps" is already around; they just don't know it yet! More than 40 years ago, Gilbert Highet wrote a wonderful little book called The Art of Teaching,¹⁷ in which he says that all of us are--or must become--teachers. Certainly, anyone who holds a commission--which means "with mission"--is, ipso facto, a teacher. If one sees a minor abuse of protocol (e.g., not saluting a senior), one has the responsibility to make a correction. How much more critical it is, then, that officers realize they must set the standards in their commands. Officers don't teach ethics; they are ethics.

Szafranski: But I repeat, Jim, how does the teacher get taught?

Toner: By seniors, by society, by self. To some extent, one is what one is because others have cared. They have taught that person what they know best. Society customarily taught us standards that we collectively endorsed as a nation. The Nuremberg, Manila, and Tokyo war-crimes tribunals taught us, again, the importance of listening to seniors and society and of accepting ultimate responsibility for ourselves. Again, this is not just philosophy; it's the law of the land! Finally, I have my own conscience. Of course, conscience is not an ultimate answer unless it is formed by consent to values that transcend the ego. John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-90) once said, "Conscience has rights because it has duties."¹⁸ Following the dictates of an exclusively selfish or ill-formed conscience is unlikely to lead one to do what he or she should.

Casebeer: Exactly. No matter what we choose to present in education programs, ultimately the individual is the key. Society and nation are aggregate terms--what we do and believe as individuals determines what our society and nation look like. Any problems start there and have to be stopped there.

Szafranski: Society will continue to fail us. So how is it possible for the individual, the moral self--Lieutenant Adam and Lieutenant Eve, in a garden of earthly delights and snakes--to save himself or herself and thereby save us. Perhaps fear is a solution. Make us all afraid to misbehave.

Casebeer: Yes, external punishments are needed. But if we frame the issue deontologically, where intent and attitude toward duty are important, then it isn't enough to punish, for that does nothing to change the dictates of an individual's free will--the intent behind the action.¹⁹

Toner: There is clearly something in what you both say. I think fear can serve an initial teaching purpose in some situations, but my chief concern is that we'll accidentally create a political or military Frankenstein who will terrorize us in the name of the holy. All systems use fear, I know, and that may not be bad. I prefer, however, to think that our ultimate "vaccine" lies in the two areas of grace²⁰ and of reason. I'll not pursue the former here, but because we are rational beings, we can see error around us. Hurt can lead to resolve. Resolve can lead to reformation. I agree with you, though, that fear can be made to complement reason.

Szafranski: So, the agenda for reformation seems to be in assuming these characteristics. First, it must begin within ourselves; second, others can help us through an education process; and third, the right way is the way of reason with the discernment given by grace. Still, I'm stuck with a problem. How can we keep the reformation simple for the people involved in it?

Toner: One doesn't teach ethics--it used to be called "character guidance"--in basic training by assigning readings in Aristotle. Troops don't need to read AFP 110-31, International Law: The Conduct of Armed Conflict and Air Operations (November 1976), to understand the rudiments of just conduct. I come back to Burke's term prejudice. There are some standards so basic--yet, so critical--that anyone entering the military must know them before he or she graduates from basic training or boot camp. In this way, we can teach ethics without becoming embroiled in academic debate and in philosophical jargon.

Casebeer: I think the Air Force Academy's honor code is well put: "I will not lie, steal, or cheat or tolerate those who do. Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and live honorably, so help me God."

Szafranski: So, would "I will not lie, steal, or cheat or tolerate those who do" work as a simple formula for the whole Air Force, maybe buttressed by appropriate amounts of frequently underscored fear?

Toner: Well, it's an excellent starting point. "Duty, honor, and country" is good too, but it's not something readily understood by everyone. I have tried to develop a way to inculcate this for 18-year-olds. I came up with the notion of principle--purpose--people. That is, the soldier's first responsibility (back to Nuremberg) is to follow legal orders; second, to get the job done right; third, to take care of his or her fellow soldiers.

Szafranski: That is very, very good. It is simple, understandable in human terms, and put in such a way that it fixes us in relation to others--good relations, unselfish relations. So if we vaccinate the 18-year-olds, how about the 50-year-olds? What's to be done for or about them?

Casebeer: Incompetence can be moral as well as, say, mechanical.²¹ The issue of professional incompetence is thorny. If we equate a lack of professional knowledge with immorality, then busting a check ride makes you an evil person.

Toner: The incompetents, in either sense, must be weeded out by professionals over the years. Although these are difficult times for the military because of cutbacks, this is also a good time very carefully to choose the people "on your left and right." Let me say one more thing about teaching, though. Another phrase I use to teach this idea is mother--mission--men--me. I use men for reasons of alliteration only. I put me last; my buddies (or my command) come(s) ahead of me (whenever possible); the mission has to come before the men (as the Code of Conduct properly suggests); but mom is first. What I mean is that if we imagine our moms seeing us do things we should be ashamed of, we might be able to cease doing them. It is hard to imagine a drill sergeant discussing deontological ethics in basic training. But it is not hard to imagine an instructor telling soldiers, "If you would be ashamed of having your mother see you do it, it's probably wrong." Terribly simple? Sure. There are numerous exceptions. Married people make love--and there is certainly nothing wrong with it--but it is not a public activity for mothers or for anyone else to observe. That doesn't make sexual intimacy in marriage wrong. Soldiers might have to bayonet the enemy, and they would not want their mothers to see that, either. But the action of killing the enemy in combat may well be necessary. The idea to get across is that some actions (e.g., lying, cheating, and stealing) are almost always wrong, and somebody should say so very early on. "These actions are wrong! Do them, and you will pay the price [fear]! You will not do them because you are educated in our profession, in our community of values."

Szafranski: I'm beginning to see a way out of this swamp! I really think most people are good or want to be good. The military, with its emphasis on teamwork and group accountability, is really made up of special people--unselfish people--as Bill mentioned earlier. Maybe all we need is a little more openness about ethics and good conduct. So how do we proclaim that without a doubt, the reformation has begun and cannot be stopped?

Toner: The first leadership principle I learned at Infantry Officer Candidate School (OCS) was "be technically and tactically competent." I always thought ethically should fit in there too. Dick, I know the bad guys won't be won over by appeals to their sense of shame, but when somebody says, "Think about what you're doing! Is it right?" most of us will listen. It's time for warriors to get back to the notion of the community.

Szafranski: OK. On some level, I'm both comforted and challenged by our discussion. We've pointed out ways and words that can provide the vaccination against the disease. How do we formalize this educational process within the warrior clan? You mentioned basic training, officer formation programs, and PME. Do you see a continuing program of moral armament and rearmament?

Casebeer: Great term! Moral armament! Returning ethics to the commonsense level makes a lot of sense. We still need to be wary, though, that today's conception of common sense--greed? immorality?--is compatible with our military mission.

Toner: As a teacher, I always think of reading lists--and they're important. PME--indeed all military education--should have such lists. They're necessary for moral armament but not sufficient. We need models. That is one reason, as you know, that the service academies for years have insisted on officers teaching--because officers must understand the values that suffuse those programs.

Casebeer: My experience at the Air Force Academy drove home the importance of having good role models. Military members in the classroom provided both positive and negative examples of officership.

Szafranski: As we've said, all officers must answer again the call to arms and become the role models they were meant to be. But you just addressed PME. What about some set of recurring, annual, whatever, "core value" training for everyone?

Toner: Agreed. A major problem with any military education is the shortness of time permitted for "enculturation" or socialization. It took me a year in the Army to earn a gold bar. It takes people in Air Force Officer Training School (OTS) three months. How does a new officer learn the community--the professional--values of the service (and thus become a model of them) in three months? The very people who have the key teaching roles--lieutenant colonels and colonels--have relatively little time to learn their profession and much less time [usually] to pass its values on before they are retired. Doctors, lawyers, and college teachers, by contrast, have a professional lifetime to master their profession and to pass along its values.

Casebeer: Or in the case of the service academies, four years sometimes isn't even enough. Even so, we face a dilemma. We need to purge ourselves of those who can't meet military standards of conduct; yet, the very act of getting rid of soldiers puts "the community" at risk. How can we develop a sense of community in a reduction in force (RIF) and selective early retirement board (SERB) atmosphere?

Toner: Tough call. Still, warriors must realize that honor--military virtue--is not just a nice thing to have; it's a functional imperative. One of the sad things about military education is that teachers are rotated into and out of slots so fast that there's little chance to create a real honor guard--that is, the core (and corps) of seasoned military teachers who know ethical theory but (far more important) model ethical behavior. They teach well because they live well. I believe that there should be a corps of professional teachers in the military--it should be a military occupational specialty or Air Force specialty code--that would allow seasoned professionals to earn their advanced degrees and then to teach at the service academies, OCS/OTS, ROTC, and the PME schools. We've got to stop penalizing these folks in our promotion, RIF, and SERB processes simply because they're educators.

Szafranski: The "crisis" is not without its bright side. That is, it provides the justification for now deliberately and consciously approaching these issues with an eye toward authentic reformation. You've given me a new awareness of the foundation of the warrior "coda." It's because we hold the stuff of life and death in our hands--sometimes, in dire straits, trusted with ensuring the very survival of our country and its institutions and values--that we must be adherents to and practitioners of right thinking and right behaving. Further, we can fight or fix anything as long as we can pinpoint the enemy.

Toner: Too, I think we have all profited from lousy teachers. Maybe the ethically stunted officers we've referred to have done us all a good turn by modeling how not to be an officer. Thomas Jefferson told us that "we hold these truths." We need to get back to the truths we hold--and all of us, as C. S. Lewis once told us, share so many truths in common.²² But we need to practice ethics daily. Taking a hill by fire and steel is rarely done by most professional warriors. But fraud, waste, and abuse issues, though not glamorous, are really the stuff of daily military ethics. We usually lie, cheat, and steal over the trivial stuff; thus, we "practice" wrong! Every athletic coach knows that as you practice, you will play. Lie, cheat, and steal in petty matters, and you'll very likely do the same when lives are on the line. After a time, in fact, people who lie, cheat, and steal can't even separate truth from fiction. They become lost souls, figuratively and literally.

Casebeer: In the strictest moral sense, even the slightest ethical violation is tantamount to committing the gravest of sins. If we can't trust ourselves on the "unimportant issues," how can we trust ourselves when truly important moral problems confront us?

Szafranski: I agree. The only hard part is getting started. Coach Bob Knight at Indiana University used to say, "Everyone has the will to win, but only winners have the will to prepare to win." If we prepare ourselves and practice right thinking and right behaving, we'll win. But if we don't, all of us lose. Like Toner says, we're lost souls--literally and figuratively.

Notes

1. This phrase was used by Maj Glen Sanborn, a member of the judge advocate general corps and formerly the chief of military justice for the 7th Bomb Wing at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas. Sanborn used it as a possible explanation for the large number of complaints levied against senior officers beginning in 1990 and continuing to the present. He hypothesized that the troops were unhappy with the changes and rate of change that occurred in the armed forces after the cold war ended. The troops, he speculated, took their revenge--in many cases--by moral fragging. That is, they mortally hurt their superiors by alleging that they had engaged in some kind of misconduct. The presumption of innocence, an important principle in our country, never seems to make the news.
2. References to the ethics crisis in the military are based on reports about Tailhook, about inappropriate command influence in the selection of general officers, and about other matters well covered recently in the press.
3. See James H. Toner, The American Military Ethic: A Meditation (New York: Praeger, 1992).
4. Bushido is the code of the samurai. Omertà is the code of silence among the Cosa Nostra ("our affair"). Honor can be interpreted differently by different groups. Ask yourself what it means to you.
5. See Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (New York: Random House, 1962) or refer to William E. Campbell's Erasmus, Tyndale, and More (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950).
6. The framers of the Constitution were undoubtedly working from a certain set of assumptions about human nature. Checks and balances were introduced in that document to offset our natural drive toward selfish behavior. Biologists may not be working from these same assumptions about human goodness. For an excellent exposition about how altruistic behavior in nature can sometimes be rewarded by the evolutionary mechanism, see Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) or The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (New York: Norton Press, 1987).
7. For an excellent overview, see Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence (Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1993).
8. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962).
9. Dead, white, European males (DWEM)--Shakespeare, for example--are seen by some professors as representing class, gender, or perhaps religious interests different from the values of many others (e.g., "people of color"). In a typical college course--the reasoning sometimes goes--there are only so many books on the reading list or syllabus that the professor can assign. Therefore, it is important to be certain that a wide variety of authors--some of them perhaps not well known--be included. To concentrate on the supposedly great literature of DWEMs is to inculcate a certain set of Western, white, male values into what ought to be a multicultural educational enterprise.
10. Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, Inc., 1991); and Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Sex and Race on Campus (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991).
11. See Glenn Tinder, Political Thinking: The Perennial Questions, 3d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979). Burke's term, of course, is from his classic book Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Doubleday, 1989).
12. Department of Defense Inspector General, Tailhook 91, Part 2: Events at the 35th Annual Tailhook Symposium (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993).
13. See, for example, Maj P. Mason Carpenter and Maj George T. McClain, "Air Command and Staff College Air Campaign Course: The Air Corps Tactical School Reborn?" Airpower Journal 7, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 72-83.
14. Political correctness may be defined as conformity to liberal or ultraliberal political and social norms. Such conformity is supposedly required by a number of American institutions.
15. Cicero, In Catilinam, no. i, sec. 2; and Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," line 3.
16. See James H. Toner, The Sword and the Cross: Reflections on Command and Conscience (New York: Praeger, 1992).
17. Gilbert Highet, The Art of Teaching (New York: Knopf, 1950).
18. Quoted in Pope John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth (Boston: St. Paul Books, [1994]), 50.
19. Deontologists believe that the intent behind an action is crucial to determining whether the action is "moral" or not. Results are irrelevant. This schema is based on the assumption that we can't perfectly predict the future, so how can we make our morality contingent on chance? Intent and good will--not outcomes--are what count. One of the most famous deontologists is the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who says in his Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), "An action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place" (from Philosophic Classics, ed. Walter Kaufmann [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1968], 495).
20. It is increasingly difficult in our society even to raise the idea of grace, which is a religious concept. See Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Basic Books, 1993); and James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993).
21. No one has made this point better than Col Malham Wakin of the Air Force Academy. See his two fine essays on "The Ethics of Leadership," in War, Morality, and the Military Profession, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986). Another excellent book is Col Anthony E. Hartle's Moral Issues in Military Decision Making (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1989). Hartle teaches ethics at West Point.
22. See William E. Bennett, ed., The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993); and James H. Toner, True Faith and Allegiance: The Burden of Military Ethics, forthcoming.