Struggling with Even the Most Elementary Basics of Leadership — Commander in Chief Obama’s Pusillanimous Posturing in Regard to Military Sexual Assaults

08 May 2013

What good is rank, if you are too much of a wimp to use it appropriately?

President Obama’s spineless posturing in regard to the deluge of military sexual assaults on his watch has me recognizing that he just hasn’t got the spine and inner moral force to command effectively.

Risk-averse folks make crappy commanders.

Background

According to the Pentagon, sexual assaults in the military are up 35 percent in the last two years. Some of the rise is almost certainly a phantom one, having resulted from elevated awareness. But even without that, the situation has long been intolerable.

Aggravating the military’s good ole boy “rape everything that walks” nonsense is the fact that the services allow commanders to overrule jury verdicts in criminal cases, including sexual assaults. Recently, two three star generals — Lt. General Craig A. Franklin and Lt. General Susan J. Helms — did exactly that:

In both cases, the generals ignored the recommendations of their legal advisers and overruled a jury’s findings — without publicly revealing why.

Neither general was a judge and neither observed the trials, but they intervened to grant clemency before the convictions could be heard by an appeals court.

Such arbitrariness simply reinforces troops’ unwillingness to come forward and buck the chain of command by reporting the crimes that victimized them.

On this point, being a former police detective, I am intimately familiar with the psychic pain that accompanies both the sexual assault and the miserable experience that takes place with each step of the civilian criminal justice process.

Imagine going through all that in a military establishment that essentially has no dependable rules, no reliable appellate justice, and in which you often have to salute the human garbage that raped you.

Now, add a pusillanimous Commander in Chief to this disgusting mix of dick-like injustice

Here is what the perennially posturing President Obama said yesterday in regard to military sexual assaults:

“The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this,” Obama told reporters.

“If we find out somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged — period.”

Obama said he had instructed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “to step up our game exponentially ” to prevent sex crimes in the military and hold offenders accountable.

“For those who are in uniform who’ve experienced sexual assault, I want them to hear directly from their commander in chief that I’ve got their backs,” he added.

That’s laughable.

Where was the Commander in Chief, when two of his generals circumvented simple fairness?

Where was his outrage then? Why weren’t those high ranking folk in his office begging for their jobs?

Why didn’t his alleged fury with the situation target those most directly responsible for the culture that spawns it?

The bottom line — effective command requires spine and a willingness to make subordinates fear to provoke you

When you command, people need to respect your ability and determination to hurt their careers, if they sabotage the mission that you have set for them.

That’s the reality.

And this President is too risk-averse, too frequently wimpish, and too clueless to recognize that sometimes you have to crush the undermining opposition’s will to tangle with you.

Don’t tell me that the Commander in Chief does not have the clout to make generals and their perverse incentives quake, when he gets pissed.

The President’s pretended outrage yesterday was a charade. You don’t tell Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to fix a problem with two generals that you could have much more effectively and efficiently fixed yourself.

The problem that the military has with sexual assaults stems directly from the tolerant atmosphere that comes directly from its top commanders. There is no person in a better position than the Commander in Chief to metaphorically grab these guys by the throat and make them do what he says he wants done.

The moral? — Real commanders lead — pretenders talk a lot and nobody listens

Effective leaders mold circumstances to their will with a mix of persuasion, mutual respect and, when necessary, fear.

President Obama appears not to have the spine, or the moral sense of outrage, to lead effectively. The game is too often about him, his political ambitions, and his increasingly apparent need to be a member of the plutocratic establishment. It is only very rarely about the rest of us and, especially, the victimized and downtrodden.

“For those who are in uniform who’ve experienced sexual assault, I want them to hear directly from their commander in chief that I’ve got their backs.”

Given the President’s sorry record on sound leadership that is sort of like saying, the “Chief Pussy” has my back.

President Truman (who fired General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War) would be puking with contempt.

PeteFree.com

Struggling with Even the Most Elementary Basics of Leadership — Commander in Chief Obama’s Pusillanimous Posturing in Regard to Military Sexual Assaults