The Not-So-Long Gray Line

You know how I'm always going on about the fragility of the Honor Code and the importance of the officer corps? I am in good company. Please take a few moments and read the following op-ed from the June 28, 2005 New York Times. I present it in it's entirety.

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By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Op-Ed Contributor
Published: June 28, 2005

Los Angeles

JUNE is the month in which West Point celebrates the commissioning of its graduating class and prepares to accept a new group of candidates eager to embrace the arduous strictures of the world's most prestigious military academy. But it can also be a cruel month, because West Pointers five years removed from graduation have fulfilled their obligations and can resign.

My class, that of 1969, set a record with more than 50 percent resigning within a few years of completing the service commitment. (My father's class, 1945, the one that "missed" World War II, was considered to be the previous record-holder, with about 25 percent resigning before they reached the 20 years of service entitling them to full retirement benefits.)

And now, from what I've heard from friends still in the military and during the two years I spent reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems we may be on the verge of a similar exodus of officers. The annual resignation rate of Army lieutenants and captains rose to 9 percent last year, the highest since before the Sept. 11 attacks. And in May, The Los Angeles Times reported on "an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that the Pentagon's statistics do not yet capture."

I'm not surprised. In 1975, I received a foundation grant to write reports on why such a large percentage of my class had resigned. This money would have been better spent studying the emerging appeal of Scientology, because a single word answered the question: Vietnam.

Yet my classmates were disillusioned with more than being sent to fight an unpopular war. When we became cadets, we were taught that the academy's honor code was what separated West Point from a mere college. This was a little hard to believe at first, because the code seemed so simple; you pledged that you would not lie, cheat or steal, and that you would not tolerate those who did. We were taught that in combat, lies could kill.

But the honor code was not just a way to fight a better war. In the Army, soldiers are given few rights, grave responsibilities, and lots and lots of power. The honor code serves as the Bill of Rights of the Army, protecting soldiers from betraying one another and the rest of us from their terrifying power to destroy. It is all that stands between an army and tyranny.

However, the honor code broke down before our eyes as staff and faculty jobs at West Point began filling with officers returning from Vietnam. Some had covered their uniforms with bogus medals and made their careers with lies - inflating body counts, ignoring drug abuse, turning a blind eye to racial discrimination, and worst of all, telling everyone above them in the chain of command that we were winning a war they knew we were losing. The lies became embedded in the curriculum of the academy, and finally in its moral DNA.

By the time we were seniors, honor court verdicts could be fixed, and there was organized cheating in some units. A few years later, nearly an entire West Point class was implicated in cheating on an engineering exam; the breakdown was complete.

The mistake the Army made then is the same mistake it is making now: how can you educate a group of handpicked students at one of the best universities in the world and then treat them as if they are too stupid to know when they have been told a lie?
I've seen the results firsthand. I have met many lieutenants who have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, practically back to back. While everyone in a combat zone is risking his or her life, these junior officers are the ones leading foot patrols and convoys several times a day. Recruiting enough privates for the endless combat rotations is a problem the Army may gamble its way out of with enough money and a struggling economy. But nothing can compensate for losing the combat-hardened junior officers.

In the fall of 2003 I was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, and its West Point lieutenants were among the most gung-ho soldiers I have ever encountered, yet most were already talking about getting out of the Army. I talked late into one night with a muscular first lieutenant with a shaved head and a no-nonsense manner who had stacks of Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker and The Atlantic under his bunk. He had served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he was disgusted with what he had seen in Iraq by December 2003.

I feel like politicians have created a difficult situation for us," he told me. "I know I'm going to be coming back here about a year from now. I want to get married. I want to have a life. But I feel like if I get out when my commitment is up, who's going to be coming here in my place? I feel this obligation to see it through, but everybody over here knows we're just targets. Sooner or later, your luck's going to run out."

At the time, he was commanding three vehicle convoys a day down a treacherous road to pick up hot food for his troops from the civilian contractors who never left their company's "dining facility" about five miles away. He walked daily patrols through the old city of Mosul, a hotbed of insurgent activity that erupted in violence after the 101st left it last year. The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.

One cold night a week later, I sat on a stack of sandbags 50 feet from the Syrian border with another West Point lieutenant; he, too, was planning to leave the Army. "I love going out on the border and chasing down the bad guys," he told me as he dragged on a cigarette. "We've got a guy making runs across the border from Syria in a white Toyota pickup who we've been trying to catch for two months; we call him the jackrabbit.

"He gets away from us every time, and I really admire the guy. But when we catch him, there'll be somebody else right behind him. What's the use? Guys are dying, for what?"

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail message from another West Point lieutenant; he was writing from a laptop in a bunker somewhere in Iraq. "I'm getting out as soon as I can," he wrote. "Everyone I know plans on getting out, with a few exceptions. What have you got to look forward to? If you come back from a tour of getting the job done in war, it's to a battalion commander who cares more about the shine on your boots and how your trucks are parked in the motor pool than about the fitness of your unit for war."

There was a time when the Army did not have a problem retaining young leaders - men like Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, George Marshall, Omar Bradley and my grandfather, Lucian K. Truscott Jr. Having endured the horrors of World War I trenches, these men did not run headlong out of the Army in the 1920's and 30's when nobody wanted to think of the military, much less pay for it. They had made a pact with each other and with their country, and all sides were going to keep it.

When members of the West Point class of 1969 and other young officers resigned nearly en masse in the mid-1970's because of Vietnam, Washington had a fix. Way too late, and with no enthusiasm, the politicians pulled out of Vietnam, ended the draft and instituted the "all volunteer" military, offering large increases in pay and benefits. Now, however, the Pentagon has run out of fixes; the only choices appear to be going back to the draft or scaling back our military ambitions.

The problem the Army created in Vietnam has never really been solved. If you keep faith with soldiers and tell them the truth even when it threatens their beliefs, you run the risk of losing them. But if you peddle cleverly manipulated talking points to people who trust you not to lie, you won't merely lose them, you'll break their hearts.

Our Idiot Spotlight Shines Early This Month

Let’s not wait for 30th to roll around to annoint our Jackass O’ the Month. Not when some moron like David Napoli of Kansas City is walking around without a helmet and not merely willing to say stupid shit on a barstool, but to write ‘em down and send ‘em to the paper and sign his name to ‘em. Without further delay, I absolutely must share this man’s pathology with you all:

"It seems that many of our legislators and journalists and commentators are terrible historians. They don’t remember what happened in Vietnam. We lost that war, but we didn’t lose it over there. We lost it in Washington D.C., and in the media. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese knew what was going on here with the protests and the bad press. Because of this, all they had to do was wait us out. And that is what they did.

Now we see the same thing in Iraq. So many members of Congress are wanting us out, and the media is providing as much bad press as possible. The insurgents know that this is going on here, meaning in Washington and in the media. This encourages them to continue fighting. They, too, figure all they have to do is keep the pressure on and wait us out.

Sooner or later, those in Washington will lose their willpower, and we will put our tails between our legs and run. Shades of Nam."

David Napoli
Kansas City

I just love how fucking jerks who haven’t donned a uniform since Cub Scouts have all the answers; ascertained from their Barcaloungers in front of their Plasma screen power-suckers tuned perpetually to Faux News.

Where to start? How about with History, since he so thoughtfully brought it up? The history of Viet Nam predates 1954 when Eisenhower sent the first advisors, by the way, you useless worm. One of those advisors was my father, who did three tours in Viet Nam, so I got some game here. Sure you want to go round with me on this one? I’ll think more of you if you slink away quietly now. Fair warning – My dad taught me things he learned from Charlie and I do not fight fair. If you persist, I will smear your blood on my face and dance gleefully over your eviscerated corpse.

The United States didn’t learn anything from history before they got involved in Viet Nam. You think this tribe o’ morons is any better versed? If so, see Nurse Ratched for your medications immediately! Remember the French fiasco in southeast asia? The only reason we got involved in the first place was because of American hubris and sanctimony, which set the stage to sell a false fear of a “Domino Theory” of communism during cold-war hysteria. Didn’t quite work the way the think-tanks told us it would. (Things usually don't go the way the think-tanks assure us they will.) Well, here we are in 2006 and it turns out Australia isn’t a communist country after all, even though we did lose Viet Nam.

But lets take him down point by point, rather than ranting at random.

We lost that war, but we didn’t lose it over there. We lost it in Washington D.C., and in the media. Back then we had a word for a press that only told it’s readers what the government sanctioned the citizens hearing. It was called propaganda and it was - is – a dirty word. Still. TASS and PRAVDA were the two big examples of propaganda tools and they were held up to Americans as examples of what happens when the government controls the press and tells the people what they want them to hear. I went to military schools. A free press was a big deal and preservation of a free press was one of the things worth dying for.

By Mr. Napoli’s "logic" (isn’t that a fascist name, by the way?) we could have won that ill-advised pissing contest if the press had just been silenced. Of course it would have taken a lot more than 58,000 dead Americans to silence the press. Moron point number one, dealt with.

Because of this, all they had to do was wait us out. And that is what they did.

Oy mother fucking vey. Occupiers are always waited out by the occupied. Read history much? Oh yeah, we already dispensed with that - the answer is a resounding "NO." You brought up history, so choke on this bit of historical fact: The Brits went into Iraq in 1917, selling the war to the British populace as a humanitarian effort – the troops would be greeted with flowers and as liberators. It would take weeks, tops. Didn’t quite happen that way. Forty fucking years later they limped out of Iraq, the Royal Army broken and the royal treasury broke. Moron point number two: Dismissed.

Now we see the same thing in Iraq. So many members of Congress are wanting us out, and the media is providing as much bad press as possible. The insurgents know that this is going on here, meaning in Washington and in the media. This encourages them to continue fighting. They, too, figure all they have to do is keep the pressure on and wait us out.

Members of congress have access to intel that you don’t, and neither do Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carleson, you blooming idiot. They know the folly and the futility. And lets get back to propaganda. Is that what you want? A nation that was led to war by lies kept in perpetual war by more lies, perpetrated by a “patriotic press” willing to propagate any lie to further the government’s specious cause? Faux News is doing a good job of catapulting that propaganda. But it isn't news. Moron point number three: Hardly worth acknowledging.

Sooner or later, those in Washington will lose their willpower, and we will put our tails between our legs and run. Shades of Nam.

Here there is only one think to say…Fuck You! Put your own ass on the line, or get some skin in the game – send your kids, it’s such a glorious fight to be participating in. Or just shut the fuck up. Whichever. I could not possibly care less, so long as you do one or the other.

As a member of a family that comprises that professional Warrior class you and your ilk so easily take for granted and dismiss as cannon-fodder, but which allows you to sleep soundly at night, I can say without a bit of regret, you are a fucking asshole with nothing on the line and your opinion means less than zero to me and others who do have a stake in the fight. You are a fool, a warmonger, a chickenhawk and a feckless waste of humanity. You, I can hate with little effort, and that you stir that emotion in me makes me even angrier, because I do not wish to hate anyone, even ignorant jackasses. I would much rather pity your ignorance, or even be amused at your expense, but some people are just too stupid and wrong to be amusing or pitied. You are one of them.

Your best possible service to humanity is as an organ donor, and the sooner the better. Take up extreme sports immediately, and forgo the protective gear. Do it for the good of humanity.

Meantime, David Napoli, while we await that fatal skull fracture, you need to shag your ignorant ass back to whatever middle-school let you leave and demand that you receive the eighth-grade social studies education that you deserved to receive when you were a student; that eighth grade social studies curriculum that would all by itself keep you from looking like such a monumental jackass on the editorial page of a major daily newspaper.