What’s missing in our schools is encouragement of independent, critical thinking; kids are now supposed to have a uniform education experience, not an experience which highlights their singular gifts while improving upon areas of weak performance. More so than any past effort to socialize public education, the current public school system creates mindless, unquestioning, conformity.

It scares the crap out of me.

Your comment was very rewarding in that it prompted me to talk with my kids while I drafted my response; we hashed over the nature of authority. (Mom is still the uber-boss – heh.) We explored the limits of authority that teachers, principals, policemen, elected officials possess in a variety of cases. It was a good discussion. I didn’t tell them this was the kind of “Stranger Danger” that could continue to hurt them well into adulthood, when we give “strangers” power that they shouldn’t have, but we’ll get to that some day soon.

The crime that caused my ignominious exit from the Army was revealing a 15 percent rate of addiction to heroin in my unit at Fort Carson, Colorado in 1970. The Army didn’t want this lovely little secret to see the light of day until they were ready…about 18 months later, as it happened. So for revealing the Army’s heroin problem and trying to do something about it — I tried to convince them to insitute a program where soldiers could turn themselves in for treatment without being arrested for the crime of drug use, which is what happened to one of the troops in my platoon — I was unceremoniously dismissed as not fit for the service.

They were correct. I was unfit under their terms, and I’ve been unfit for “yes sir!” service to anyone or anything ever since. Most recently, I suffered a lesser, but similar fate while in Afghanistan back in 2004 with an assignment for a major magazine to “cover” the search for bin Laden. I was that I had to have a public relations “escort” at all times while working on the story as an “embed,” and that before I interviewed anyone, I had to write down all of my…get this…”talking points, questions, and areas of interest” beforehand.

Needless to say, I refused, and in less than 24 hours, I was put on a C-130 bound for Kabul, my military press credentials were yanked, and I was out of the business of “covering” the Army’s search for Osama.

Some things never change.

Lucian K. Truscott IV

Lucian K. Truscott IV

It really leaves you without anyone much to vote for or any real hope in government as a vehicle. Certainly, while men and women like Beaver, Townsend, Comey, Philbin, Ashcroft, Goldsmith, Gonzales, Yoo, McNulty, Clement, Flanigan, Mukasey, Filip, etc. inhabit the halls at DOJ, there won’t be anything positive that comes from there – but while there are Levins and Clintons and Liebermans and Reids and Pelosis and Hoyers etc. etc. etc. – there’s nothing really worthwhile there either.

That’s for sure.

Good points Mary. I lived in Naptown for a couple years back in the day when Dick Lugar was mayor.

I only wish I had access to secret briefings of Congress because most of what really happens in this government, and particularly this administration when it comes to oversight, takes place behind closed doors.

not following an illegal order and “I was just following orders” is not a legal defense

This is part of the disaster that the OLC and things like the Beaver memorandum generated. They a) said that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply because these are “unlawful” combatants (the laws don’t apply to them) and that b) there is a legal defense, it’s “self defense” or “necessity” because you just never know when that 12 yo you bought off a Pakistani criminal might hold the key to Armageddon, and that c)it is a lawful to follow those orders that tell you to violate the UCMJ (that’s pretty much the heart of the Beaver memo) because JAG and OLC say so.

So sure, you can’t follow an “illegal” order, but JAG and OLC have ok’ed these orders to engage in depravity.

Lots of food for though in a lot of the posts (115 – I didn’t know Keller was a socialist, you’d think that would have been mentioned now and then )

119/122 – Those are some interesting observations. It makes me think back to some of the testimony by one of the other soldiers – not Calley, I’d have to google back to find the name – about the women holding babies and being asked if the babies were about to attack and having this dogged response about taking action against a possible “counterbalance” maneuver. When you mentioned this, “the way he described the assault on My Lai sounded like it was taken straight from the Infantry tactics field mannual” it took me back to that.

And when you mention, “The great thing about bullshit believers is that all you have to do is change the bullshit, and they’ll believe the new version as easily as the old, which is to say that they respond to good leadership as well as to bad.” I relate that to people in general and, for that matter, the way dogs work in packs. But it’s why you have to have place the controls on the leader. If my German shepherds take off after something, the way to control the 4 is to call down HARD, the top gun in the crew. Sometimes even before he responds, the rest stop in their tracks and start back. As soon as you call down the leader – they start the new path they know he will be taking.

It also makes me think a bit about some of what Tony Lagouranis talks about in his book, “Fear Up Harsh”

129 – Lots of very good stuff about the probation system and reactions of America to its burgeoning “criminal” subclass, but on the initial observation,

“Where is the detailed list of the daisy chain of the people who generated the orders that Beaver received? Congress has done little to clarify this in the hearings I saw. “

This is what Taguba made a lot of effort to highlight and not one Demcratic member of the Armed Services made a big deal over this. Taguba said pointedly that the main sources of problems seemed to generate from Military Intelligence/MI – and not from the MP stories that were getting some attention. Sam Provenance has been a whistleblower to the same effect. Both of them have not only not seen a follow up on their claims, but have also suffered for trying to push forward on those claims.

Levin and Clinton pretty much have done NOTHING and made sure that anything said was done sotto voce. I couldn’t be more embarassed of my “once upon a time” votes for Lugar and Warner, but even the Dem “leadership” has stood shoulder to shoulder in cover ups and acquiescing on what MI was authorized to do and what it did. Presumably the “Gang of 4″ and later the “Gang of 8″ and/or the full intelligence committees received briefing at some point on the detainee who was frozen to death during his torture interrogation and they all stay silent about that criminal revelation. Presumably they were briefed on the plans to bury detainees like Zubaydah alive and stayed silent.

If they didn’t ever get briefed, then now, as the stories have emerged, they are doing a bang up job and not requiring any briefing. Pelosi and Reid can look at Negroponte’s briefing schedule and, on its face, determine that the administration deliberate and for years violated the National Security Act’s provisions on briefing covert programs – but they raise no outcry and say nothing.

Never.

It really leaves you without anyone much to vote for or any real hope in government as a vehicle. Certainly, while men and women like Beaver, Townsend, Comey, Philbin, Ashcroft, Goldsmith, Gonzales, Yoo, McNulty, Clement, Flanigan, Mukasey, Filip, etc. inhabit the halls at DOJ, there won’t be anything positive that comes from there – but while there are Levins and Clintons and Liebermans and Reids and Pelosis and Hoyers etc. etc. etc. – there’s nothing really worthwhile there either.