Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (Modern War Studies)

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding story of an outstanding American!
Review: I had the honor to know General Harold K. Johnson while he was a Commanding General, and then to serve two years as his personal aide while he was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Sorley has done a magnificient job of research and reporting on the life of the most dedicated American military leader in recent history. General Johnson was a unique man, humbled by his roots, molded by his experience as a POW, and a man whose personal moral standards never waivered. I think the author has portrayed General Johnson as the man I knew. My only difference with the portrayal is the implication of "resignation in protest" on a number of occasions. General Johnson held the view that his function was to advise the President, and that the President had no obligation to accept that advice. I would accept the "resignation" theory only if it portrayed General Johnson as considering resignation because he felt his advice was inadequate or that his articulation ! of that advice was inadequate. The idea of resignation would have been because he felt someone else could perhaps do it better. He was such a private man that I also doubt he would have shared that thought with others, particularly junior to him. But, a really excellent biography and Sorley has done himself proud.

Rating:
Summary: The soldier's highest duty is to the truth.
Review: I'm four-fifths done with "Honorable Warrior", and about the same amount done with "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" by Neil Sheehan, and I'm terribly afraid, in fact, I'm pretty sure (I looked at the ending) that Mr. Sorley will duck the question that his subject could not duck..quite. That question was whether the military effort was going to work. General Johnson was averse to Phoenix-style assassination programs and to unrestrained bombardment. He thought local policing and interdiction of infiltration would answer things. This assumes (on his part) that the South Vietnamese regime would use this breathing space to flourish in democracy, rectitude, and mercy. Why did he assume this? His cherished analytical principle, Mr. Sorley informs us, was "challenge the assertion". For instance, the General tore to shreds, anaylytically, one of McNamara's "Systems Anaylysis" monster-reports on Vietnam by pointing out that it had been cobbled together out of twenty-eight other analyses, each of which had different assumptions. As my history professor would say, "scissors and paste" or "daisy-chaining" does not good history make. My question is whether the General was rigorous enough in evaluating his own thought, his own assertions. The question is directed to Mr. Sorley, who says in his conclusion that the war was actually against mere "surrogates" of China and the Soviet Union. By that logic, we would have been morally authorized to kill every Vietnamese, since they were only inert instruments of the source of the belligerency. Trying to look through Mr. Sorley's somewhat blood-misted eyes, I take seriously his suggestion that the General was often tempted to quit and that he had paralyzing doubts about the war, which he justified to himself as bringing freedom to the people of Vietnam. Did the General end up believing, in the words of the U.S. officer so often quoted, that in order to save the nation of Vietnam it was necessary to destroy it? No, I hear his fans shouting, he was too moral! But was he moral enough to realize that it was immoral to police and interdict a viable political regime (sponsored by Ho) to death in the hope that another regime would spring up from the morally toxic swamps of Saigon? (This concept of viability of regime is the standard upheld by so-called international law in determining which of competing regimes deserves recognition). Could he make that leap of faith in good conscience? Or did he in fact drape his moral doubt in words like "anti-communism" and "security", and leave it to someone else to decide if the whole thing was going to work? My suggestion for a moral lesson is that if you're called on to do something by someone who is farther from the action than you are to the extent that you're confident that you know more about the moral questions raised than your "superior" does, so much so that your sense of obligation to this superior evaporates, you cannot dress up your feeling of emptiness with some slogans, much less with the claim that you're only following orders, but must do something to rectify the malfeasance of your own superiors. In the words of Matthew Ridgeway, words that the Army put on a leadership poster ten years ago, "If you are confident that your orders are mistaken, you are obliged to attempt to fix things." Not his exact words. I don't think he just said to bring it to the attention of your superiors. I suppose that leaves disobedience, resignation, and forceful advocacy. It is the lack of forceful advocacy by the General, and lack of concern by Mr. Sorley over the General's lack of forceful advocacy, that makes the life of the General, as Mr. Sorley tells it, only worth four stars out of five. I mean, you can't just blame everything on General Westmoreland, especially when he worked for General Johnson, traditions of lattitude for field commanders notwithstanding. Alright, how do I know the General wasn't forceful enough since I haven't finished the book? He could have ordered Westmoreland to fix things: whatever, invade Laos, install U.S. commanders in all ARVN units, take over the administration of the South Vietnamese civil population, which is the same as taking over the Saigon regime, whatever it would have taken in his mind to win ("the freedom of the South Vietnamese people", remember) and then suffered the consequences. The President could have fired him. The fact that the President didn't fire him is proof to me that he didn't advocate forcefully enough. That is crude of me. Romantic. Duel at Diablo. End of story. Soul intact. It is so easy in a bureaucracy to adopt the attitude of "garbage in, garbage out", but they pay you and respect you for doing hard things. In the words of the New Testament parable, we are worthless servants when we only do what we are told. If the General had no doubt that his conduct of the war -- he was plumb in the middle of the road of the chain of command, it was on his watch -- was ethical, we cannot second-guess God's judgment of him. To quote the previous reviewer, however, it seems that he thought that his job was to follow orders. That is not ethical. That is, in the final analysis, stupid. We don't creates lines of authority to multiply our stupidity, but to diminish it. If, when you give somebody an order, there is no implicit "or am I being stupid" which they feel free to confirm or deny, you are not getting the best out of that subordinate and the people are not getting its best out of you. This applies the more so, the higher up you go. Hey?

Rating:
Summary: Bob Sorley has hit another home run
Review: Sorley had become the preeminent biographer of military leaders. His first book, Thunderbolt, was a joy to read. Honorable Warrior is the story of man who fought, the Japanese, survived the Battan Death march and many years of unspeakable horror in Japanese prison camps. He also fought with great bravery in Korea. However, I t was his time as Chief of Staff when General Johnson faced his most difficult professional agonies. Anyone interested in leadership, the military or American history should read this book.