Published Airpower Journal - Winter 1996
We encourage your comments via letters to the editor or comment cards. All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Airpower Journal, 401 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6428. You can also send your comments by E-mail to aspj@maxwell.af.mil. We reserve the right to edit the material for overall length.
Your leadoff article by Chuck Colson ("A Question of Ethics") in the Summer 1996 issue could not have been a better choice. Hitting on the absolute existence of absolute truth and debunking the value of situational ethics as a way to live one’s life are themes which cannot be discussed enough. I am very familiar with Mr Colson’s writings and continue to appreciate his use of scholarly references and citations. While some may say that his comments regarding Christianity are presumptuous or unconstitutional, those comments hearken back to the great majority of this country’s history when absolute truth and the ethics that flowed from that truth were the norm.
Gen [Malham M.] Wakin hits strongly upon the theme of integrity as the entire moral character of a person ["Professional Integrity"]. We, as an Air Force, need to focus strongly upon the idea that what we do all the time, in and out of uniform, relates directly to the kind of person we truly are (e.g., if you’ll cheat on your wife, you’ll cheat on your government).
Gen [Jerry E.] White carries through the theme of the indivisibility of ethics ["Personal Ethics versus Professional Ethics"]. I find it unfortunate, especially with our civilian employees, that we are not allowed, as commanders, to judge the fitness of a person for a job because of something they do at home but not at work. We are left in the position of hiring an employee we don’t trust and waiting for the consequences of private indiscretions to spill over into the workplace and our professional lives. It will happen, and it does every day, from postal employees shooting up the post office to having to let a guy off to take care of a paternity suit. The idea that you can separate personal and private ethics, although having a foothold in our culture, is truly intellectually bankrupt. The Air Force must hit hard on this theme as the Air Force Academy does with its Center for Character Development.
The [Maj Brian F.] Hall and [Col David A.] Wagie article, "Character Development Program," which discusses the Air Force Academy’s Center for Character Development, begins with something I find particularly unsettling: "Integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do . . . are lofty aspirations that represent our Air Force core values." Making the year 2000 Olympic team is a "lofty aspiration." Integrity, selflessness, and excellence in all we do should be "common" character traits. I appreciated knowing the Air Force Academy is doing something toward making these traits more common. But I didn’t see enough about the consequences for one’s actions. For instance, when someone violates the honor code at the Academy, he or she should be quickly ushered out. Maybe that person can be a student at the University of Colorado, but I don’t want them in my Air Force. Examples should be made and standards set and enforced even when lives are not on the line and the stakes are not high. It’s an all the time thing.
Maj Bob Fant, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
I am writing to pass on some of my personal reflections after reading the Summer 1996 edition of Airpower Journal. Let me first congratulate the staff on an exceptionally great issue. I subscribe to APJ at home and always enjoy reading the many opinions offered on a range of topics but especially on military ethics and morality. Therefore, the Summer edition really caught my eye.
My primary purpose in writing is this: I am deeply troubled by the tendency in today’s society to use the words values and virtues interchangeably. In my opinion, these words couldn’t have more diverse meanings. Values are personal. They are derived from the virtues of our society. When the editor writes in "Flight Lines" that "there’s nothing wrong with our core values," I think he really means our core virtues. Is there such a thing as a core value? Maybe personally, but not throughout the military or society as a whole. Some examples will hopefully illustrate my point.
In the US military, the virtues of courage, integrity, and taking responsibility for one’s actions are not negotiable. We may or may not be able to live up to them but they never change. Using the word values to describe these virtues leads one to think they can pick and choose which ones they will use to guide their lives. This is ethical relativism at its ugliest. On the contrary, Mr Colson points out that we have collectively agreed, as a military society, that these virtues should reign supreme in our armed forces. What makes our personal values mirror the larger virtues of military service is our character. The fabric of one’s character is created and reinforced long before anyone enters the military. Recently, many scholars have written on this subject and the roots of this subject all focus on Aristotle. Aristotle believed that the most telling sign of a person’s character is his or her decision to act, not the act itself. For the decision to act is accompanied by discerning the particulars of a given situation.
I agree that our core virtues are certainly worth relying on, but the problem in the USAF today, as I see it, is that service members don’t know what these core virtues are. That isn’t the failing of the USAF. The roots of this problem go much deeper.
Capt Scott F. Murray, USAF
Nellis AFB, Nevada
I am pleased by the intellectual growth suggested by the use in your Summer 1996 edition of the expression "plural strategic centers of gravity," more than once showing that a Clausewitzian intellectual abstraction, "center of gravity," as a military concept has been modified and qualified after confronting wartime reality. It’s reassuring that our military analysts are capable of flexibility instead of bullheadedly insisting, as Clausewitz did, that the enemy must have but one center of gravity.
Of course, a physical object can only have one center of gravity and cannot have "plural" centers of gravity. So the expression "plural centers of gravity" must be incongruous and meaningless when applied to mechanics and physics, from whence Clausewitz derived his military "center of gravity" concept. Many military analysts have accepted this concept virtually as a matter of faith. They believe that because Clausewitz said the enemy has a center of gravity, he must have one.
I would prefer using an expression such as "plural decisive points" or "areas" or "factors," but I also realize in discussions of war, that most uncertain and chaotic of human activities, the ready acceptance of a term gilded with Clausewitz’s reassuring prestige, even if it is modified and qualified so far beyond his meaning as to be incompatible with his original intent.
Moving on to the discussion of the value of strategic airpower, which took up a large fraction of your Summer 1996 edition, I must disagree with the assertions on page 62 in Gene Myers’s "Commentary" attempting to rebut Col Richard Szafranski’s article on interservice rivalry, that strategic bombardment was responsible for destroying the German tactical air force as it attacked British and American strategic bombers escorted by Allied fighters and "allowed the Normandy invasion to proceed" by destroying the Luftwaffe and mauling the Reich’s oil industry and transportation.
It is unreasonable for the defenders of strategic bombing to claim that the German tactical air force could not have been worn down and destroyed if Allied strategic bombers had not been used as expensive, human-filled bait to lure the German aircraft to exposure to attack by escorting fighters. Are we really supposed to believe that the German aircraft could’ve avoided Allied fighters if they hadn’t been sent against Allied bombers?
Suppose the resources and personnel used by the British and Americans to build and maintain their fleets of strategic bombers had been used for more tactical aircraft. Those planes plus the planes used to escort the strategic bombers could have been used to provide more support to Allied ground forces—and to wipe out the German air force.
It was Allied tactical—not strategic—airpower that dominated the sky over the Normandy beachhead, protecting the invading forces from German airpower and frustrating enemy reinforcement and counterattacks. As Allied forces progressed across Western Europe, tactical airpower kept the German army from moving reinforcements, fuel, and material supplies that German industry did in fact continue to produce in spite of strategic bombing.
The enemy’s productive capacity is not a significant factor as long as its movement can be interdicted and the battle areas isolated by tactical airpower.
Joseph Forbes
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
--Abraham Lincoln
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