http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrGKwkmxAU

My guess is that the people who read your site and have an interest in military and naval affairs are generally familiar with the character and integrity of George Marshall, consequently it would likely never occurred to them that Marshall would approve of such unprofessional behavior. I am aware that Robert E. Lee (Marshall’s personal hero) is politically about as incorrect as one could be in our age. But Lee's honorable behavior at the end of the Civil War during his final years of life was an inspiration to George Marshall as it should be to all serving officers at the end of their active service.

Unfortunately, in our era it seems that a small number of officers who think themselves exceptional have adopted a more Wall Street or corporate executive type attitude in that they are entitled to be as opportunistic as possible as long as they don’t cross the boundary of what is and isn’t legally proscribed. Probity, integrity, professional ethics, are all given lip service but come in a distant second to cash.

If one knows where these flag officers came from, it can illuminate the future on what one might expect from them.

In example, I offer this, until now, little known biographic sketch on Gen. McChyrstal:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/05/exposing-the-true-identity-of-lt-gen-stanley-mcchrystal.html

"...if you are not careful, you wind up bringing in people who simply reinforce existing prejudices..."

Or worse, return to their own days of glory and actually push our defense posture backward.

I would just outlaw any retired military person from receiving government pay directly or indirectly. If the service needs them, just bring them back on active duty. They do this with enlisted men all the time.

Generals don't have to wear their uniforms if they became too fat. This doesn't cost much since they already collect 75% of their base pay in retirement. If that doesn't interest retired Generals, then they really don't have an interest in helping the service.

Of course this becomes difficult to enforce as greedy officers will set up companies as try to perform work as consultants. On the other hand, I always found Colonels to be better mentors with better experience than the political Generals. Colonels have more years of real experience on the cutting edge. I recall Generals asking questions about basic equipment and unit organization that revealed they hadn't kept up with changes for over a decade.

One more thought about Marshall. The appointment of first-rate commanders is of such acute importance that GM used to keep a ‘black book’ record of young promising officers he met in order to refresh his memory when it came time for making appointments. Generally, Marshall was uncannily superb in selecting the right officers for the right job though a few boobs inevitably slipped through such as Fredendall of the II Corps in North Africa or Lee in charge of Logistics for 12th Army in NW Europe. Using Tom’s excellent WWGMD I wonder whether a Tommy Franks would have ever had made GM’s list of promising officers let alone given command of Afghanistan in 01-02 and then Iraq in 2003? I think not!

And speaking of McChrystal, the chances of making just Brig. General are around 2-3% for a Colonel, so only those with connections make the cut. His dad was a West Point two-star General, Colin Powell was once his subordinate. His grandfather was at least an Army Colonel, from what I can tell.

As a result, McChrystal has little knowledge of the world beyond his Army gates, where his loyalty is deep. Here is one solution: http://www.g2mil.com/inbreeding.htm

Some officers told me that banning the children of West Point grads from attending would probably be overruled by the courts. If so, at least the selection process for West Point needs to be done by civilians at DoD, and not retired Generals.

Tom, don't think many are left old enough to understand what General Marshall would think...past is a world with different rules.

Let's go back, at mid life, what is a person's cash value outside the environment of personal networks? We are not a society that, unless one holds equity, really provides a material upside outside the inside.

I am one, not a GO or Flag, who is a bit of a commercial pilgrim or journeyman. You take a downslide for a personal and ethical upside. You are the best judge of yourself - not old war ghosts.

We are traders, all. The really good ones circle around Wall Street, Investment Banks, SEC, Treasury, AIG, Corporate Law, CEOs and private owners of telecommunications.

Pentagon, outside of the A76 reward owners, really mid- level wealth extractors. Backwater...Marcus Aurelius and James Stockdale, need not apply nor be concerned. It is a land that a purer Lot left.

Yes, I'm bored today.

Let me commend Mr. Ricks for posting a link to the best example of ethical corruption in the Armed Services.

Here is part: "Retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks was paid $100,000 — out of donations made to wounded veterans — for allowing his name to be used on fundraising appeals by a charity that has come under increasing scrutiny for the way it handles its money."

I recall General Franks commenting after retirement that "the pay is a whole lot better."

What kind of person would charge a fee for his name to be used to raise money for veterans who were injured under his command? This money came in small donations from people who make a fraction of what Franks hauls in from retirement pay, books, and speeches, who thought the money would go to help wounded vets. Franks pocketed $100,000 of this money. I have more respect for an honest thief, like a bank robber.

The U.S military reminds me of the practice for Japanese politicians to retire and take high-paying positions in wealthy companies. Of course, American politicians do that as well.

"What’s really slick is how the criminal element in DC has fogged the alleged mind of that vast, sprawling, larval critter, the public. Tell those salt-of-the-earth suckers out there that some hideous danger crawls ever closer, tell them you are going to protect them, and you can pick their pockets till there’s not an ounce of meat left on their bones. Think buzzards circling a dying horse."

Fred Reed 11-17-09

http://www.fredoneverything.net/PadreKino.shtml

Are the Generals doing this for pleasure, profit, or personal gain? Or are they doing it because they truly believe that they are helping to push forward policies that will be beneficial to the nation? I don't have the information available to draw a conclusion one way or the other, either in general or on a case-by-case basis. Anyone else?

To serve in a public office is an honour and a privilege. My father made a stand against corruption when he was elected to public office and refused to invite or attend anyone to a banquet paid out of taxpayers money.

He later found out the chairman of the council just invited more of his friends to fill the empty space round the table. It did not invalidate the stand my father had made but it does illustrate the fact that most people behave more like Tommy Franks than Horatius when it comes to performing ones civic duty.

In times when duty is more important than remuneration it is personal honour not money that matters. The strength of a nation will manifest itself thus. If the US does not show the world it can do this at home it cannot expect places like Afghanistan and Iraq to become model democracies.

These are not things that can be regulated they can only be taught by example.

Marshall was great because he was a VMI man. Nothing like being a Brother Rat. Compared to the terrors from Lexington, West Pointers have it SOFT SOFT SOFT.

'Nuff said.

I am thrilled to see this mention of Marshall. Few people in Washington had the integrity of this man who refused all invitations to Hyde Park because he thought it would be difficult to be honest with someone when you're eating his food and staying in his house.

While Sec. of State and Defense, he lived in the house of his former daughter in law and her husband so that people would assume he drove home to Leesburg every night and he could avoid the social whirl.

He STILL sets the standard.

I've had the opportunity to watch Marine Senior Mentors in action in two settings: in an exercise for a Marine unit getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan; and, in a war game played by mid-level Marine office students at the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting. In both cases the Senior Mentors were a strong benefit for the exercises. Their command experience at the General Officer level provided them with credibility for the training audiences and their retired status enabled them to provide candid advice. An area they stressed that was a learning point for the trainers as well as the training audience was the importance of interagency coordination and taking into account political and diplomatic issues in a conflict situation.

The Senior Mentor program is a very useful way to take advantage of the experience and insights of retired senior officers. Other Government agencies should consider adopting this program in their personnel training exercises. The media is missing the mark in associating this program with conflicts of interest on procurement issues. Business lobbying does not occur during war game exercises, anyone who attempted to do so would be shunned and not invited to return. Lobbying is more apt for the golf course or drinks during dinner; retired General Officers already have the networks for such lobbying.

Regarding George Marshall's qualities there is one other person who matches him in both professional skill and integrity and that is Adm. Chester Nimitz who in my mind was the greatest American commander of the Second World War regardless of service or theater of operations.

Questions have arisen here whether the problems with senior military officers retiring and then taking well-paid positions have caused difficulties for the services only recently or even more distantly in the past. My reading of the biography, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" would indicate that the problem certainly was evident even as recently as the Vietnam era. Boyd had lots of difficulties with senior officers, who seemed more concerned about personal futures. Boyd and others he worked with in the Pentagon were involved on several platforms, the F-16 and Bradley IFV being the two which most readily pop to mind, and seemed to find the problem pervasive across the services. Perhaps the most damning comment I recall him making in the book about generals typically and those removed from promotion consideration was that a person was often presented with the choice to be someone who was somebody or someone who did something. Clearly, Boyd didn't think generals did very much and that only the rarest of officers could do both.

There is an interesting historical question as to why so little of Gen. Marshall's influence on the military and the Army in particular outlived his tenure as chief of staff.

The temptation to cash in the economic opportunities offered by a very large peacetime military is not a new thing; it was one of the components of the "military-industrial complex" that President Eisenhower (who was something of a Marshall protege before he ran for President) warned against as he was leaving the White House. The opportunities themselves are probably greater now than they were a half-century ago, but Marshall's example seemed to count for less than one might have thought, considering that the modern Army owes its existence and organization as much to Marshall as to any man.

"When you leave a job, leave." That sounds like something Marshall might have said, and it's certainly what he did. Hours after his retirement from uniformed service, he was off to China, as I noted earlier, and plans were in work to replace Sec. Byrnes at the State Department with Marshall before he had gotten back. As Secretary of State Marshall had great influence in other areas, but did not try to exert any on the uniformed services. A good five years passed between Marshall's retirement from the Army and his return as Secretary of Defense after President Truman fired Louis Johnson, and in hindsight they were important years. By the time they ended only the most senior generals in the Army were men who had known Marshall well; most of the others knew of him but had not worked for him closely.

There is also the question of Marshall's tenure as Secretary of Defense and the impact it had on his reputation. On his watch the greatest military disaster suffered by the United States in the postwar period broke over the American army in Korea. Few people blamed Marshall for this; most military historians put the blame squarely on MacArthur, while at the time most Americans probably blamed Truman. The fact remains that Marshall neither clearly foresaw the catastrophe before the Yalu nor did anything to forestall it. The damage control done after the fact was mostly the work of other men, and at any rate did little more than restore the status quo ante.

It may reach too far to suggest that the tarnish done Marshall's reputation by the events of the 1950-51 winter made his personal example less compelling to the next generation of senior Army officers. Possibly his austere, rigidly self-controlled personality was always bound to attract more admiration than emulation. It is also true that after he left the Pentagon for the last time Marshall -- bowed by age, illness, and probably also by years of tremendous stress -- did not have an active retirement. I've always thought it interesting, though, that the one military officer without whom America's victories in its greatest foreign war could not have been won and whose character attracted wide praise and near-reverence by during his own lifetime seems to be a kind of historical curiosity, a footnote, within the service one might have thought would value his example more than any other institution in the country.

“. . .kind of historical curiosity, a footnote, within the service one might have thought would value his example more than any other institution in the country.”

This is a very good observation and I think is accounted for by the fact that Marshall was not a commander of units involved in combat. He was a world-class staff officer and his tenure in command of troops was in peacetime (the term ‘peace’ is relative since he was in China). Had he won the command of ‘Overlord’ then perhaps history for better or worse would remember him differently.

Junior officers often have a tendency to emulate combat leaders particularly those who were colorful (Patton) or exceptionally talented (Matt Ridgeway) but rarely the officer who does an excellent job managing the logistics of a campaign or excels as a staff officer. That is just the nature of young men who really have not matured to the point where they have acquired the knowledge base and reflection necessary to make more profound judgments.