Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
wm,

My point is there is more than one dimension in analyzing the conditions of civil-military relations and the appropriate boundaries for the behaviors of senior military officers.

Quote Originally Posted by wm
Should it turn out that officers are not able to support these two rules of conduct, then they ought not continue to serve. One would hope that they would end their service voluntarily, but sometimes, as in MacArthur's case, they must be removed. Some others may take what I call the Speer defense (after German Armaments Minister Albert Speer) and stay because they believe that their replacements would do even more damage.
They 'should' but why don't they? As it appears, they attempted to fulfill your two 'rules of conduct' without regard for the consequences. And with the exception of a few senior officers relieved for one reason or another, they all benefited handsomely from their activities irregardless of the outcomes. Is this a question of incentives? Opportunities?
AP:
Your initial sentence speaks to more than one dimension in analysis. What are the dimensions you have in mind? Your ultimate paragraph seems to suggest that "it is all about the Benjamins" for these senior folks, which is a single dimension.

I am willing to acknowledge that this may be true for some of them. However, based on my experiences with many senior leaders, a variation of the Speer Defense that I mentioned before seems much more the case. If it were really just about money and power, then I submit that most of these leaders would have left before the magic 10 year mark, when many officers realize they are half way to a chance to get a pretty nice pension. Or, they would not have joined at all because they could have made much more in the private sector. BTW the pension piece , in my day, was still iffy until 18.5 years of service. You could be bounced at 18yrs, 5 months and get nothing after a third passover for promotion.