Excellent point that "I might add that while the Code of Conduct may well be an effective tool now, it became necessary to create one from whole cloth after the dire ethical, moral and disciplinary shortcomings of American soldiery became painfully obvious ca. 1950 Korea."

I note the same in the paper. The Army really only changes when it is in crisis. Post Korea they had to contend with the brainwashing of several hundred American service members POWs who were forced to speak out against their country. The military responded with the Code of Conduct, which is quite good for its purposes. The CofC isn't actually designed to prevent the same things that happened in Korea, it is designed so that soldiers who still fail can survive with dignity and honor. That's the thing about torture - 99.9% will break eventually.

So here we are at the end of Iraq and nearing the end of Afghanistan and we are very much in a crisis again. While I would encourage the services to be more introspective, reflective and change-oriented all the time, if they miss this opportunity than there is great risk that we truly will become the amoral mercenaries (Rubber Ducky among others) accuses us of being.

Fix the moral foundation. Reorient on "Who We Are", "What We Are" as a combat force, and "Why We Fight." I reiterate, we lost the bubble pre-WWI maybe even earlier when Victory at all costs became the goal, rather than a better peace. (Challans provides most of this logic first, I am regurgitating his best lines). For example while unconditional surrender was a precept in some Civil War battles the ultimate surrender of the South was anything but. In an effort to rebuild a nation the Union provided for puts and takes and allowed the South some dignity in their return.

This should be no different in the global commons. The "Better Peace" is supposed to be the ultimate end of war, victory is simply a means to that end. And Challans would argue that all ends become means and all means become ends as they vary over a spectrum of time. Therefore no ends can justify the means.

This is really about shortsightedness. Our civilian and military leadership is so myopic in this matter they should be restricted from driving (a joke). Challans provides another excellent example in Iraq and Desert Storm. We traditionally view ODS as a great success for the American military. But what did we really achieve? We did expel the Iraqi Army from Kuwait which was the nominal goal. We did destroy much, but not all of Hussein s best forces in the destruction of the Republican Guard. By most criteria we achieved Victory, but failed utterly in achieving a Better Peace. In the ten years after we were forced to expend spirit, blood, and treasure in Ops Northern and Southern Watch. We continued killing Iraqis. Challans argues (and I did not verify) that everyday of those ten years we dropped ordnance on the Iraqi people. Economic sanctions also targeted those Iraqi people, not the military regime. And the regional powers saw (rightly or wrongly) the American hegemon killing people daily.

That my friends is not a recipe for long term success. Much of Challans argument is new to me. It took fresh eyes to see that much (not necessarily all) of what he was saying was very correct. Challans, for the record, is a retired LTC and one of the principal authors of the 1999 version of FM 22-100 Army Leadership...much of which remains in today's FM 6-22. I don't know him beyond what I have read from him. He strikes me as a smart, balanced man. (In other words he's not a left wing goofball advocating the disassembly of American forces or some such nonsense).

The Army desperately wants to be a profession, for reasons they probably don't understand. As Michael Vredenburg notes we have to rein in our people first. But the way to do that is to create the vision of what we want to be, then educate and train that vision. Moral/ethical dilemmas have to be integrated into every training exercise at every level. Most of all we need a single, simple code/statement of ethic to guide action and the will to enforce that code ruthlessly. Navy Seal and retired CPT Dick Couch notes that violators of his ROE (Rules of Ethics) should be immediately and irrevocably sent home in shame.

I've said enough today. We planned on walking Gettysburg but Mother Nature seems to have intervened. Many great lessons to be learned from that hallowed ground. Certainly one of those lessons is to respect and honor your foe. I think what it must have been like for Joshua Chamberlain - an academic - to fight that day in bloody hand to hand combat at Little Round Top, and return a few short years later to consecrate the battlefield with his opposition now returned to friend status. The memorials of Union and Southern forces are intermixed. Definitely, a lot could be learned.

needs to be digested by the senior leaders of the military, but I fear that its insights (which are as validly "out of the box" as they come) will be lost on that tier of leadership. Challans is one the few who could do what he did with the FM. He had the courage to speak truth to power while on active duty.

I hope he is working on another book.

I had seen the movie,; so I crouched down behind the the rocks and tried to imagine. Then I looked to where the flanking movement, the "swinging gate" must have occurred. Finally, at the Maine memorial above, I noted that someone had placed flowers and an envelope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBVguR5lrA&feature=fvwrel

Gettysburg is haunted. When I am there, I swear I can feel the spirits of the fallen are everywhere. It is indeed a sacred place. When I was there again a few years ago in July, the anniversary of the great battle, it was very disturbing to see among the throngs of visitors nary a Hispanic, Black, or Asian face. If this country doesn't bring back the civics and citizenship classes, the pledge of allegiance, and start teaching American history again, then I wonder what will tie us all together in this nation where apparently 40 million (2010 census) are foreign-born. (I am foreign-born too, so don't flame me and call me anti-immigrant, etc., etc.)

I'll second that. As an avowed atheist, I have to say I feel it. My spouse, who is Japanese, could feel it too both times that we've been there in the last several years.

But we also feel it at Hiroshima everytime we go there.

I also felt it at Okinawa.

It was actually a little more interesting for the rain, although my family is less than stalwart in less than perfect conditions - they don't have the infantryman experience of sleeping in the mud that I do, fair enough. LOL. I am always awed at Little Round Top, the site of Chamberlain's defense with the 20th Maine. Awe inspiring. A bit disturbing to see Mickie Ds so close to the cementary but what are you going to do, guess that's the price of progress?

The Park Service, bless its heart, is really one of the truly dedicated government agencies. By hook or by crook, they've really tried to maintain Gettysburg pretty much as it was in 1864, even to the extent of controlling the growth of trees over the past century (too bad about the commercial encroachment, though). I've always been amazed at how small the Little Round Top area is, in terms of where the fighting took place. Looks like it was almost hand-to-hand from start to finish. And at the other end of the spectrum, I've always been awed by the long distance over open ground that Pickett's Charge had to traverse. You can read in the history books that they had to cover a mile or so, but that's just abstract factoid until you actually walk the ground and realize how far it was. It's a miracle that even a few Confederates made it all the way to the stone wall through all that musket and cannon fire.

The men of the First Minnesota were positioned near Union artillery batteries on Cemetery Ridge. "We began to hear musketry which soon became one continuous roar. . . . Then shells fell uncomfortably near us," wrote Sergeant Alfred Carpenter in a letter on file with the Minnesota Historical Society. Then disaster struck.

Confederate Rebels infiltrated the Union line. "The Rebs came in two splendid lines, firing as they advanced, capturing one of our batteries, which they turned against us, and gained the cover of the ravine," Carpenter wrote. "The plain was strewed with dead and dying men."

Union general Winfield Scott Hancock desperately ordered the 262 men of the First Minnesota to charge the 1,600 advancing Alabama Rebels. Carpenter recalled, "We advanced down the slope. . . . Comrade after comrade dropped from the ranks; but the line went. No one took a second look at his fallen companion. We had no time to weep."

The next day, 15,000 Confederates charged Cemetery Ridge--the legendary Pickett's Charge--but were repelled by a devastating artillery barrage. Because the Minnesotans had saved the artillery the day before, the Rebels were repelled--but at a great sacrifice. 82 percent of the First Minnesota men were killed or wounded at Gettysburg--the highest casualty rate of the war.

On July 4, Lieutenant William Lochren wrote a letter to his hometown Winona Republican newspaper. "We are in the midst of a terrible battle," he wrote. "Two thirds of the regiment are killed or wounded. We got the better of the enemy in the fight, and our regiment captured one stand of colors."

The Union and Confederacy suffered 45,000 casualties at Gettysburg.

Hunter, you've got very good comments on this thread in terms of both content and sentiment. I appreciate greatly that you've actually read my book and speak favorably of it--and don't consider me a crank...it's hard to offer even mature and measured critique in our business without being marginalized. I want to assure you that I was very careful in relaying information, drawing conclusions, and making interpretations. You've done a good job quoting and paraphrasing, but there are a couple paraphrasings you made in which you said you didn't verify and weren't sure about. Instead of claiming that the Iraqi people were bombed every day between the two wars, I actually claimed that, "The US and Great Britain imposed illegal no-fly zones over Iraq (ironically condemned by the UN), and commenced bombing Iraq almost every day between Gulf I and Gulf II." And instead of saying that the US sanctions targeted civilians, it was: "Unfortunately, this pressure that comes in the form of sanctions was harming the population at large in Iraq. Furthermore, after ten years of pressure, Iraq's leaders seem not to have been pressured." That said, I really enjoyed reading your posts to this blog. As far as the topic at hand, leaders and moral responsibility, I recommend Jim Schneider's excellent new book on Lawrence if you haven't seen it, in which he considers Lawrence's excesses of human indignity near the end of his experience in the desert to be his undoing.