yourviews
country, about 50 miles from the nearest beach. —Col. Irwin M. Jacobs, USA (Ret) Life Member
Boynton Beach, Fla. Politicizing the Military
Your survey of MOAA members’ opinions about whether retired se- nior officers should be free to voice their political opinions and endorse political candidates (“Flag Officers and Politics,” Washington Scene, Oc- tober 2016) ... [must] be placed in a larger context. As someone who has spent many years ... educating U.S. military and international officers on civil-military relations, one of my concerns [is] the long-term implica- tions of this type of conduct. First, within the military itself, while military officers might have more education on civil-military re- lations ... the same is not necessarily true of enlisted members. It would not be surprising to find junior en- listed members would be more in- fluenced by political statements and positions of retired senior officers than the officer corps would be. But most important is the effect on
the U.S. public at large. ... Many stud- ies have shown the average citizen does not have much [contact] with servicemembers. Additionally, the average citizen does not ... make a distinction between retired senior of- ficers and serving senior officers when they hear political and policy com- ments from those officers, who are always addressed by their rank. ... So many senior retired officers serve as commentators or interviewees in the media — while they might initially be identified as a retired officer, through- out the interview they are identified
JANUARY 2017 MILITARY OFFICER 11 solely by rank. This is decidedly not a plea to
restrict the constitutional and civic rights of retired senior officers, but it is a plea for those senior officers to consider the implications of their conduct in further politiciz- ing the U.S. military. While most servicemembers are gratified ... the U.S. public ranks the military as the institution they most admire in the country, the more that institution is regarded as part of the political process, the greater the chances for distrust and cynicism to grow with regard to the U.S. military. —Col. Kathleen A. Mahoney-Norris, USAFR (Ret) Life Member via email
Whither Encore?
What happened to the humorous stories that used to appear in the last pages of Military Officer? That was always my first read, followed by Lessons Learned. —Lt. Col. Rick Stetson, USAR Life Member, South Shore (Mass.) Chapter via email
Editor’s note: As indicated on page 88 of the June 2016 issue, over time we observed significant overlap in the content of the Encore and Les- sons Learned columns. Effective with the July 2016 issue, the two columns were merged.
For submission information, see page 4.
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