5 U.S. generals in trouble stun military culture

WASHINGTON — When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointedly warned young troops last spring to mind their ways, he might have been lecturing the wrong audience.

At least five current and former U.S. generals at the rank of one-star or higher have been reprimanded or investigated for possible misconduct in the past two weeks — a startling run of embarrassment for a military whose stock among Americans rose so high during a decade of war that its leaders seemed almost untouchable.

From adultery and malfeasance to potentially inappropriate e-mails, the foibles have rocked the military establishment and shocked the Obama administration even as it wrestles with a host of international challenges and a postelection redo of its national security team.

The missteps suggest the possibility that the senior officer corps — including many who led or sent thousands of troops into battle since 2001 — are troubled by the same strains that sent suicide, sexual assault and stress disorder rates soaring among the rest of the force.

At a deeper level, it may reflect the old adage about the military: Rank has its privileges. Do the generals suffer from arrogance and entitlement, borne from years in a military culture that endows them with unquestioned respect, even reverence? Are they so dazzled by their own standing that they become blind to their moral code?

These questions recall a 2007 essay by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, then an active-duty Army officer, who stunned his superiors by writing of a “crisis in American generalship” — a condemnation of their intellectual and moral failings. He cited an accountability double standard in the military.

“As matters stand now,” he wrote, “a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”

Others, however, say the generals’ stumbles are just a microcosm of people as a whole and not necessarily typical of the higher ranking military.

“You’re not describing a general officer corps, you’re describing a human condition,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Whenever people are in hierarchical structures they develop a sense of entitlement, and they do, on occasion, abuse it.”