Quote:
Originally Posted by veganwriter
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What were you taught?
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Not to watch TV!
A while after I was out, where I had done MP work, I was in a civilian college forensics class. The prof was asking a hypothetical question of what do you do if your informant wants to be under your protection but still deal drugs? I immediately answered you don't let him....and was ignored. He presented the question another way, I gave a similar answer, and he went by me. After another pass or two, I was beginning to wonder if I was too nice for this job.
When he asked what one's guide was, how did they decide how to act, I answered by following one's oath, one's Constitution, and he accepted my answer for the class.
Afterwards in office hours, I told him my concerns, about being too nice for the job, and he told me, "Look, I know you have law enforcement experience, but your classmates don't. The only thing they know about this job is by what they see on TV." (ie, like shows like "The Shield" where the ends justify the means)
Secondly, before I was commissioned, a bunch of us midshipmen were in a submarine battle simulator. We were suppose to sink a Soviet destroyer escorting a hospital ship. Well, our multiple attacks were something of a comedy of terrors, we sank the hospital ship by accident, and the destroyer wasted us. In the briefing afterwards, us midshipmen were all under the general mindset that we should have hit the hospital ship intentionally to clear the path to take out the destroyer. What did it matter if there were wounded Soviets on it? Soviet was Soviet.
What it mattered was, my father told me, that there may have been POW's on it as well, that we may be intentionally killing our own troops. That was a little fact I didn't know at the time.
Okay, that was our ROTC school's mentality at work, where the beliefs imposed are one belief, perhaps even the same belief year after year. This indoctrination continues into the military, where the Captain's philosophy becomes that of everyone under him and may heaven save those who disagree.
Right or wrong, for it may be necessary for survival and victory, if one doesn't get other input, they are at a risk to be unprofessional further down the road.
And what is being unprofessional? When one does things that are against their oath, because everyone else says it should be done, because if they don't do it, they will lose all they have earned over the years. When it is better that they always appear right. When the ends justify the means.
If one is doing something where they aren't willing to stand up and say, "Yes, Sir, that was me," then they are probably being unprofessional.
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