Sure. Dave Simmons expressed the idea that it should be all right to fire a man for having sex, even when he is having an affair with his wife. The flagrant invasiveness of this rule into marital privacy is, I should think, obvious. I don’t even think the guy should be firable for having an extramarital affair – that’s rinky-dink, kid stuff. His WIFE should be able to divorce him under those circumstances and take a goodly portion of his income and so forth, but it’s just not the brass’ business.
Now, when we’re talking firing someone for having an affair while separated from his wife, we’re in all kindsa stupid territory. Invasive. Very subject to whim, as is probably the case here.
Dave Simmons said
and in doing so he’s buying into the military ethos I have already characterized as stupid. Ipso facto. Ergo procter. Hoc. The general’s trousers are no concern of David’s.
Being fired from his position does not constitute “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” After all, he could have been tried by a court-martial, reduced in rank, and imprisoned for some time.
Another issue is that, as a commissioned officer, one of his responsibilities is to enforce the laws and regulations governing the military. Since the man was flouting those same laws and regulations, I feel it is proper that he faced punishment for his actions.
BTW, Congress has set up quite a few laws that stupidly invade the personal life of military members. Some of those laws are incredibly prejudicial to those military members who are not married. I guess this is one of those laws that cuts into a married member’s life.
I don’t understand what the big deal is here. It doesn’t matter if the rule is stupid. When you sign on the dotted line you are expected to make specific sacrifices and are expected to follow the rules as laid out by the UCMJ. There is no discussion, that is how it is. He broke the rules by defying a superior who was also going by the rules. That is unacceptable.
You don’t get to change things to suit yourself when you join the military. You change or you get beat down for it. That’s the deal.
I thought he expressed the idea that maturity and restraint were the issue for him. The relevant article cited above (134) seems clearly designed to leave much to the discretion of those who can bring charges and prosecute. Particularly this phrase:
This phrase clearly tells anyone who is subject to it that nearly any behavior might be subject to it if the behavior displeased any powerful person, or if the powerful person had a grudge against someone. As cited by others, the military has various reasons (insularity, other peculiarities of base life, the incredible importance of following orders, etc) to operate by vastly different rules than does the civilian population. I have no personal experience in the military, but as a citizen I have the right to think and talk about these issues. I do not presume to fully understand the issues.
I understand that you have characterized the military ethos as stupid. I’m interested in why you think that is so. Are you advocating the idea that military personnel be given the same sort of right to privacy that we enjoy in civilian life?
But there are more than one topic here. Few people are saying there weren’t grounds for firing the general. Many are saying the grounds on which he was fired are stupid and that there’s good reason to doubt that the firing was simply a matter of maintaining good discipline. Are you saying that we do not have grounds to debate these points?
He couched his argument in terms of maturity and restraint, which I see as cheap rhetoric. Whenever people want to say someone should abide by existing codes of sexual conduct, no matter how ridiculous those codes may be, they try to throw the onus on others by calling for ‘maturity’ and ‘restraint’ which really just means, ‘do what I think you should do.’
I sense a great gulf between our personal codes of morality. How is it not stupid to allow your employer (which is what the military REALLY is, all bullshit aside, just an employer) to tell you who you should hook up with sexually in your free time? Expecially when you are hooking up by standards that are well within conventional morality? What word could you use to describe this other than “stupid, backward,” etc.?
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. The only possible objection to the situation is that the rule sucks. However, he knew what the rule was and he broke it, which is especially egregious in the face of a superior officer telling him to knock it off. There’s nothing of substance to debate.
Of course, you can continue on the “this rule is really stupid” tack, but it doesn’t matter a bit whether it’s stupid or not. The rule is representative of the sacrifice you have to make when you join the military and how the rules apply across the board (theoretically).
Now, if the debate was about how Lynndie England was scapegoated for Abu Ghraib you would have some grounds for an argument. But this…meh. If you can’t follow the rules you’re in trouble. If you disobey orders you’re in trouble. You don’t get to decide for yourself unless it is an unlawful order, which this clearly was not.
Excluded middle. Also doesn’t address the concern in which you have a bunch of laws that everyone breaks, enabling the law-enforcers to pick and choose who to punish.
As a pinko commie anti-war, generally anti military kinda guy, I tend to agree with everything **Airman Doors ** stated. I’m sure we CAN debate the issue of punishing adultery in the military, but you seem to be totally dismissive of the concept. If you don’t think that the military should be in the business of punishing adultery, can you tell us why? A few things you’ve touched on so far:
privacy- tough shit. It’s the military, for Christ’s sake. A superior officer can command you to do all sorts of degrading shit, can demand a sample of any precious fluid you possess, and can make your life hell in all sorts of ways. We accept that as necessary to maintain a functioning fighting force.
sexual prejudices- I’m still not sure what this means. But yes, the military has a right to structure your life as much as possible to avoid inter-unit conflict; if that means you can’t have sex with a superior, so be it. If that means you can’t screw around on your wife/husband, so be it.
Joining the military is, last time I checked, totally voluntary. But once you sign the dotted line, Uncle Sam has a duty to do whatever it takes to make you a soldier, and keep you ready to fight. That includes ordering your life to suit its model of ‘stable.’
Do you really not see how adultery could have an impact on a unit’s fighting readiness? And if so, can you concede that, in the interest of fairness, it should not be tolerated at any level?
To me it appears that the issue for debate is precisely what **Evil Captor ** has been talking about: is the UCMJ justifiable or stupid? The general in question appears to have been fired according to the rules. So, how about those rules? I plead a degree of personal ignorance about the needs of the military, but I’m willing to presume that their rules need to be quite different from civilian law.
This includes the closeness (and often isolation) of military bases.
But also, consider the ramifications of the oath. A soldier takes an oath of service. An officer doubly do. Soldiers are expected to behave honorably in all circumstances, and are punished when they do not. A soldier who breaks his oath to his wife (or any other similarly important vow) is useless. If he cannot be counted on the in the one, can he be counted on in the other? It may seem like they are unconnected, but the mere fact that we do punish and keep soldiers on the straight and narrow no doubt helps avoid many, many other problems.
In short, a soldier is expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct in every area which they enter. If they do not, they should be punished for it.
IMO it’s over the top obvious that that firing a 4 star general for this kind of thing is extremely rare, esp. given the context of the situation (ie he’s separated, divorce being finalized is a paperwork formality, and relationship is with a single, adult female civilian) for the powers that be to fire him for this pre-divorce relationship that normally would barely register a blip of moral outrage from anyone. This (again IMO) , means there’s another hidden agenda at work.
Maybe it’s comforting to think it just the right thinking quality of military justice, but based on what I have seen of military investigations in the news no one is CYA’d by the system of military justice more than senior officers. It usually has to be a serious, in in your face, screw up before harsh discipline is applied to senior staff.
He did something but the pre-divorce affair is merely the pretext not the reason.
We are agreed then that the superior was justified for firing the guy for disobeying a direct order that wasn’t criminal in nature. No debate there.
It matters a great deal. Granted, in the military, a man can be fired for disobeying a stupid order, or worse, lose his life. But this does not mean we are not enjoined from subsequently looking at the rule and deciding if it is stupid or not. I think this one is. If you have any grounds on which you think it makes sense, let fly, but let’s not have any horse stuff about not being able to judge stupidity where we find it. And very often these stupid laws are used for spiteful and unjust purposes by unworthy commanders … which is kinda what this smells like.
The Lynndie England thing was a side note, in response to Dave Simmons’ argument that firing the general shows that the UCMJ is no respecter of rank. I agree it is good to hold officers as accountable to the UCMJ as enlisted men.This is of course patently not what military courts do, given the way the Abu Ghraib scandal has been prosecuted. No amount of sexy general firing can change that, so I reject that argument.
Sorry, but “tough shit” isn’t an argument. Clearly the military can do quite a few things that civilians generally cannot, like ordering someone to charge a machine gun nest when doing so makes it very possible he’ll be killed. Everything else you list is just the stuff that people go through in boot training so they’ll be amenable to receiving orders involving risk of life instead of doing the natural thing and telling the officer to go to hell.
However, this principle does not necessarily hold in peacetime at a post which is under no threat. Then we can reasonably ask, “Does this rule make sense? Does it REALLY promote order in the military or is it just something some idiot martinet dreamed up because he had nothing better to do?”
The notion that we as civilians have to accept any ludicrous piece of crap rule the armed services come up with as necessary to maintain a fuctioning fighting force is laughable. As citizens, it is our duty to examine every rule and idea our leaders, including our military leaders, come up with, with as much skeptical intelligence as we can bring to bear.
See above.
I absolutely do not see how adultery on the part of a general in a rearward post could have any impact on a unit’s fighting readiness under ordinary circumstances. Suppose you set forth your ideas on this topic.
I’m married, and I’m tagging my squadronmate’s wife. That is adultery detrimental to the unit. However, it should be noted that you can’t make something like that illegal without banning adultery in general. That’s the reason. It’s that simple.
I won’t argue with you that this particular application of the rule appears to be petty. I will argue with you until I’m blue in the face that it doesn’t matter, because the rule was put there for a reason, it applies to all, as a general officer he should have known the rules better than most because he was charged with enforcing them, and he was told to knock it the hell off. Too bad, so sad.
Given the importance of unit cohesion is a wartime scenario, I don’t see how adultery *would not * adversely affect fighting readiness. The same goes for fraternization. I am also quite sure, based on my limited experience, that most military folks would object to your repeated assertion that ‘peacetime’ or ‘rearward’; posts should have wildly different standards that those in active combat. Are not all of those who have sworn the oath required to be ready to fight?
As for this specific general, will he ever be in a position to judge a case where adultery is the offense? Will he ever be called upon to enforce the punishment called for by this breach of conduct? Just as I’d not trust a police officer with a history of criminal behavior, I’d not trust a military officer with an ongoing breach of conduct to enforce military law.
I’ll also second everything that **smiling bandit ** has stated.
Once again, the affair started the General down this road. He was told “knock it off.” I’m guessing that if he had stopped, that would have been the end of it. But he did not. He continued. He disobeyed a direct order to stop, conduct that was in violation the UCMJ. What would you have Army leadership do then? Ask him nicely a second time?
How does the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on adultery line up with the all-but-officially-sanctioned-and-perhaps-tacitly-encouraged use of the service of prostitutes by soldiers?