thedrifter
09-16-03, 04:24 AM
09-09-2003
Air Force Academy: They Still Don’t Get It
By Raymond Perry
In his first talk with cadets at the scandal-plagued Air Force Academy, the new commandant used a warrior’s sword to emphasize his points about the importance of a professional military ethos and the damage suffered bythe Air Force from reports of cadet criminal misconduct.
No amount of dramatic sword-waving by Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida will fix the problems at the Air Force Academy. The real issue is a culture where the example of senior officers allows the perception among cadets that power is the key to success.
The service academies, as institutions within their respective armed service, propose to adhere to an honor code. Cadets and midshipmen will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.
Submerged in the loud discussion of the sexual violations are indications that Academy officials tolerate the violation of other important rules. In far too many of the rape incidents, alcoholic consumption inside their dormitory was a factor – despite the fact that Air Force Academy regulations prohibit possession of alcohol by cadets.
In some of the alleged rapes, classmates reportedly stood guard at the door of the dorm room while the act was in progress. How can Academy officials and cadet leaders so easily accept such behavior that violates the strict tenets of their honor code? It is well known among rape counselors that rape is really about power, not sex.
As I noted in an earlier DefenseWatch article (“A Failure of Our Ethos,” July 11, 2003), a psychological experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, revealed how such a breakdown in institutional discipline can occur. The study identified an absence of senior leadership in an organization becomes the enabler of aberrant group behavior.
Chapter Eleven of the book, Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm (by Philip G. Zimbardo, Christina Maslach and Craig Haney), reviewed the Stanford Prison Experiment in today’s context. The experiment, the authors found, “[demonstrated] the evil that good people can be induced into doing to other good people within the context of socially approved roles, rules and norms, a legitimizing ideology, and institutional support.”
Recent news reports have stated that senior Washington-based Air Force officials denied any knowledge of the Academy rape incidents. This does not pass the common sense test. Other reports have indicated that members of the Academy board of visitors had been informed. Are we to believe that these disclosures occurred in sessions so secret that senior uniformed officers were not subsequently informed of them?
In the early 1990s, former Air Force Academy cadet Elizabeth Saum filed a lawsuit against the Air Force alleging that she had been sexually and physically assaulted during SERE training. Although Saum and the Air Force settled the suit out of court with the record sealed, senior Air Force leadership, both active duty and civilian, had to have been aware of this case.
Each Superintendent and Commandant at the Academy must have hoped that the scandal would not break until he was distant enough to be immune from the impact. Most succeeded.
The very essence of a profession – including the U.S. military – is defined by a set of rules that one follows, come hell or high water, in behavior and performance and regardless of personal frustration.
This is the very backbone that enables a service member to risk painful death or capture. It also provides a basis for resisting those acts proscribed by the Law of War. The vaunted honor code of the Air Force Academy seeks to lay a foundation for each of these.
The behaviors associated with many of these criminal acts at the Air Force Academy suggests an attitude of, “If no one is checking, or the one checking is less powerful than I, it must be OK.” In a petty example this is exactly what caused the recent early retirement of the Naval Academy’s Superintendent after an altercation with a Marine sentry. (Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton’s error was to forget the 12th General Order for Sentries: “Walk my post from flank to flank, don’t take s--- from any rank.”)
The juxtaposition of one leadership failure at the Naval Academy with a far wider scandal at the Air Force Academy prompts this question: Why is it that the example of a junior standing up to a senior comes from a Marine corporal and not an Air Force Academy cadet standing his ground for the honor code?
This lends further strength to weak leadership as the cause of the Air Force Academy’s problems.
Make no mistake about it: such leadership failures could have disastrous effects in the outside world if poorly-trained officers find themselves tempted to assume an “ends justifies the means” attitude in prosecuting a war such as the one we see in Iraq.
Writing in The New York Times last Sunday, Michael T. Kaufman noted that DoD officials recently held an invitational screening of a controversial 1965 film about the French struggle in Algeria (“What Does The Pentagon See in ‘Battle of Algiers’?”). The movie, Kaufman wrote, addressed a number of thorny issues that confront our soldiers in Iraq today:
“The Pentagon’s showing drew … a[n] audience of about 40 officers and civilian experts who were urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film – the problematic but alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq. Or more specifically, the advantages and costs of resorting to torture and intimidation in seeking vital human intelligence about enemy plans. As the flier inviting guests to the Pentagon screening declared: ‘How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas.’ ”
This is the frustration of an enemy who can be anyone on the street. Kaufman notes that the temptation to resort to torture as a war drags on can be very real: “We’re trying to save lives, no one will ever know, this guy can tell us where the bastards are.” Can an Honor Code, so readily breached, provide insulation from such temptation when it appears?
Cadets will watch the drama of sword waving to see what it really means. It is clear and consistent professional behavior by the new leaders that will get the word around best And cadets will get the message, fast.
But, so far, Academy officials still don’t get it.
Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) is a DefenseWatch Contributing Editor. He can be reached at cos1stlt@yahoo.com
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=189&rnd=613.1483364885651
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Air Force Academy: They Still Don’t Get It
By Raymond Perry
In his first talk with cadets at the scandal-plagued Air Force Academy, the new commandant used a warrior’s sword to emphasize his points about the importance of a professional military ethos and the damage suffered bythe Air Force from reports of cadet criminal misconduct.
No amount of dramatic sword-waving by Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida will fix the problems at the Air Force Academy. The real issue is a culture where the example of senior officers allows the perception among cadets that power is the key to success.
The service academies, as institutions within their respective armed service, propose to adhere to an honor code. Cadets and midshipmen will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.
Submerged in the loud discussion of the sexual violations are indications that Academy officials tolerate the violation of other important rules. In far too many of the rape incidents, alcoholic consumption inside their dormitory was a factor – despite the fact that Air Force Academy regulations prohibit possession of alcohol by cadets.
In some of the alleged rapes, classmates reportedly stood guard at the door of the dorm room while the act was in progress. How can Academy officials and cadet leaders so easily accept such behavior that violates the strict tenets of their honor code? It is well known among rape counselors that rape is really about power, not sex.
As I noted in an earlier DefenseWatch article (“A Failure of Our Ethos,” July 11, 2003), a psychological experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, revealed how such a breakdown in institutional discipline can occur. The study identified an absence of senior leadership in an organization becomes the enabler of aberrant group behavior.
Chapter Eleven of the book, Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm (by Philip G. Zimbardo, Christina Maslach and Craig Haney), reviewed the Stanford Prison Experiment in today’s context. The experiment, the authors found, “[demonstrated] the evil that good people can be induced into doing to other good people within the context of socially approved roles, rules and norms, a legitimizing ideology, and institutional support.”
Recent news reports have stated that senior Washington-based Air Force officials denied any knowledge of the Academy rape incidents. This does not pass the common sense test. Other reports have indicated that members of the Academy board of visitors had been informed. Are we to believe that these disclosures occurred in sessions so secret that senior uniformed officers were not subsequently informed of them?
In the early 1990s, former Air Force Academy cadet Elizabeth Saum filed a lawsuit against the Air Force alleging that she had been sexually and physically assaulted during SERE training. Although Saum and the Air Force settled the suit out of court with the record sealed, senior Air Force leadership, both active duty and civilian, had to have been aware of this case.
Each Superintendent and Commandant at the Academy must have hoped that the scandal would not break until he was distant enough to be immune from the impact. Most succeeded.
The very essence of a profession – including the U.S. military – is defined by a set of rules that one follows, come hell or high water, in behavior and performance and regardless of personal frustration.
This is the very backbone that enables a service member to risk painful death or capture. It also provides a basis for resisting those acts proscribed by the Law of War. The vaunted honor code of the Air Force Academy seeks to lay a foundation for each of these.
The behaviors associated with many of these criminal acts at the Air Force Academy suggests an attitude of, “If no one is checking, or the one checking is less powerful than I, it must be OK.” In a petty example this is exactly what caused the recent early retirement of the Naval Academy’s Superintendent after an altercation with a Marine sentry. (Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton’s error was to forget the 12th General Order for Sentries: “Walk my post from flank to flank, don’t take s--- from any rank.”)
The juxtaposition of one leadership failure at the Naval Academy with a far wider scandal at the Air Force Academy prompts this question: Why is it that the example of a junior standing up to a senior comes from a Marine corporal and not an Air Force Academy cadet standing his ground for the honor code?
This lends further strength to weak leadership as the cause of the Air Force Academy’s problems.
Make no mistake about it: such leadership failures could have disastrous effects in the outside world if poorly-trained officers find themselves tempted to assume an “ends justifies the means” attitude in prosecuting a war such as the one we see in Iraq.
Writing in The New York Times last Sunday, Michael T. Kaufman noted that DoD officials recently held an invitational screening of a controversial 1965 film about the French struggle in Algeria (“What Does The Pentagon See in ‘Battle of Algiers’?”). The movie, Kaufman wrote, addressed a number of thorny issues that confront our soldiers in Iraq today:
“The Pentagon’s showing drew … a[n] audience of about 40 officers and civilian experts who were urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film – the problematic but alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq. Or more specifically, the advantages and costs of resorting to torture and intimidation in seeking vital human intelligence about enemy plans. As the flier inviting guests to the Pentagon screening declared: ‘How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas.’ ”
This is the frustration of an enemy who can be anyone on the street. Kaufman notes that the temptation to resort to torture as a war drags on can be very real: “We’re trying to save lives, no one will ever know, this guy can tell us where the bastards are.” Can an Honor Code, so readily breached, provide insulation from such temptation when it appears?
Cadets will watch the drama of sword waving to see what it really means. It is clear and consistent professional behavior by the new leaders that will get the word around best And cadets will get the message, fast.
But, so far, Academy officials still don’t get it.
Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) is a DefenseWatch Contributing Editor. He can be reached at cos1stlt@yahoo.com
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=189&rnd=613.1483364885651
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: