Critique of W. Lind’s “On Cabbages and Kings”

William Lind’s article “On Cabbages and Kings” comments on an incident in May 2005 regarding a single engine plane that violated the airspace around the White House. He correctly makes the connection between the Persian King Darius’s lack of physical courage at the battle of Issus and our current administration:

“The whole episode would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. As an historian, I could think of nothing other than the behavior of an earlier profile in courage, the Persian king Darius, at the battle of Issus. As the Roman historian Arrian described it,

The moment the Persian left went to pieces under Alexander’s attack and Darius, in his war chariot, saw that it was cut off, he incontinently fled—indeed, he led the race for safety … dropping his shield and stripping off his mantle even leaving his bow in the war-chariot—he leapt upon a horse and rode for his life.

Not surprisingly, Darius’s army was less than keen to fight to the death for its illustrious leader. I suspect that more than a few of our soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, enjoying as they do a daily diet of IEDs, ambushes and mortaring, were less than amused at watching Washington flee from a flea. More importantly, what message does such easy panic send to the rest of the world? Osama bin Laden has whole armies trying to kill him, but as best I know he has shown no signs of fear. Here again we see the power of the moral level of war. In cultures less decadent than our own, few men are likely to identify with leaders who fill their pants at one tiny blip on a radar screen.”

He also correctly assess the impact of this character flaw on the morale of the nation state:

“There was also a message to the American people in the Cessna affair, and from a Fourth Generation perspective it was not a helpful one. The message was that the safety of the New Class in Washington is far more important than the safety of other Americans. … Not only will ordinary people die in large numbers, it will be realized in retrospect that many of the deaths could have been avoided had the New Class cared about anyone other than itself. But, of course, it doesn’t.

He also enumerates what is at stake:

“[W]hat lies at the heart of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state.”

He shows us that we have no “Grand Strategy” as defined by Boyd:

“In America, that crisis can only be intensified by any instance where the Washington elite draws a distinction between itself and the rest of the country. When the same people who have sent our kids to die in Iraq and left our borders wide open run in panic because of a Cessna, the American people get the message: Washington is “them,” not “us.” At some point, that gap may grow wide enough to swallow the state itself. Kings who become cabbages, like Darius, end up history’s losers.”

It is clear that because of the lack of physical, mental, and moral courage this administration is incapable of implementing a Grand Strategy that will unite us and our allies, while isolating and weakening our opponents.

What he did not mention is that the current bureaucracy is led by appointees chosen not on leadership abilities or “character”, but on loyalty the personage of the current executive. As Gen. Krulak once said “Leadership is the imperative.” This is crucial in that I believe that the bureaucracy wants to do moral and just thing, but the leadership will not let that happen.

In other times and under better leadership the federal bureaucracy has acted in the public good. However, under this administration there has been a focus on “political correctness” (are you loyal to loyal to the personage of the king?). Intelligence produced by bureaucrats/whistle blowers (intelligence analysts) which did not agree/support the predetermined outcome (Iraq has WMDs, Iraq was involved in 9/11, Iraq has purchased yellow cake, existence of mobile biowarfare labs, etc..) have been dismissed (terminated), marginalized, or put in danger (Valare Palme) all in the name of personal loyalty to the king. While this decreases the number of people that are willing to stand up for the public good, not all have left.

As Boyd points out: culture is important. The culture must encourage dissent, it must promote and reward “Themis”. Instead, we have created a culture where people are rewarded for actions that are detrimental to the nation, but are beneficial to the person in the executive suite.

I do disagree with this comment:

“In cultures less decadent than our own, few men are likely to identify with leaders who fill their pants at one tiny blip on a radar screen .“

As I have illustrated above, the cultural changes have discouraged those that would put the public good over personal gain, but they still exist. A more accurate statement would have been: In cultures less decadent than that practiced by this administration and their supporters, few people are likely to identify with factions whose leaders fill their pants at one tiny blip on a radar screen. Those changes recognize the fact that many people (men, women and children) do not support this administration’s policies, unilaterally actions, or its self-referencing nature. It further recognizes that the faction that supports this administration is “evil and corrupt” (as defined by John Boyd) and, therefore, incapable of competing at the moral level.

The decadence of administration and its supporters is evident in that propaganda now poses as news, the power of the state is now for sale to business, the religious right moves to turn the country into a theocracy, and our military is now deployed to support factional religious and business interests. All these indicate that we are now a fascist state. Worse, we are becoming a fascist state with a poorly led armed service as promotions in the officer corps are now determined by loyalty to the king not the country (Meirs vs. Shinseki. Can you say Abu Gharib? ).