taking this book without a grain of salt would be... DERELICTION OF DUTY

I just finished reading DERELICTION OF DUTY by Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, USAF (Retired). It's strange that this book ended up in my hands at this time. This past weekend I attended the retirement party of my Guard Unit's most recent commander. He, unlike Patterson, was a "full-bird" colonel. The term "full-bird" refers to the fact that a Lt. Colonel's insignia is an oak leaf cluster. When promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel, the insignia is an eagle. Anyhoo, the day after that party just happened to mark 20 years to the day of my anniversary of joining the United States Air Force and the Ohio Air National Guard.

I say it's strange timing that I just read this book because as I began reading it, I was intrigued by the fact that I was in the military, and even participated in some of the same operations that Lt. Col. Patterson writes about in his book. I'm blessed with feeling that I'm too young to have been involved in anything about which history has been written, but when Patterson criticized OPERATION UPHOLD DEMOCRACY as being one of Clinton's "objective less boondoggles," I took note of the fact that I too had been to Haiti as part of that United Nations initiative. (an initiative that actually began during Bush 41's term) It struck me that my perception of that humanitarian mission (my unit repaired and replaced water and sewer lines, roads, power production and distribution equipment, drilled water wells, remodeled hospitals and schools) was fairly positive, while Patterson's opinion, formulated from his view of the country from the cockpit of his aircraft while on the tarmac at Port au Prince airport, was rather negative. I wanted to read more about that time in my life. I remember it for a couple of reasons. My wife and I were expecting our first child and the Cleveland Indians were in the World Series for the first time in my life... and I was in Haiti at the time. But Patterson's description of Haiti didn't include much about what I remember about this country that once flourished until the French pulled the rug out from under it. Instead, Patterson criticized the operation as misuse of our military, and as one of several reasons why terrorism is all Clinton's fault.

My initial thoughts while reading the prologue and the first chapter were along these lines:

This guy's really bitter. Perhaps someone noticed this early in his career and that's what kept him from making full-bird colonel. He's too wrapped up in himself to have any kind of world view. After all, he's a self-described hero, combat veteran, squadron commander, and hand-selected presidential aid. None of the commanders I'd seen off into retirement boasted any of those credentials (other than the "squadron commander" part, of course... but none had been pilots or presidential aids) and I'd seen quite a few leave who served their entire careers sans combat and still got the birds to wear on their collars.

Just as I caught myself thinking this way, I remembered the study skills I was teaching that week in the reading class I've taken over through the end of the year. I remembered one of the bad habits of bad listeners: criticizing the speaker instead of the message. The old "ad hominem" fallacy. I was preparing to warn my students about this basic principal when I caught myself doing the same thing. So I suppressed my evaluations and read on.

Fortunately, the book is written for people with short attention spans and consists of little more than a short story, lengthwise. I believe it's about 150 or so pages. So I forged on and finished reading it the next night after making these observations. (both that Patterson is bitter, and that I shouldn't decide that until I finish reading all that he has to say)

So I finished the book. But my conclusions about it are pretty much the same. They're slightly altered, I'll admit, but only to include this: As I stare down my own retirement now that that date has passed which makes me eligible, I consider the rank I've achieved and wonder if maybe I shouldn't have achieved more. Can the same criticism be leveled at me when I leave for good. And, more importantly, did the same kind of egotistical narrow-mindedness I found in Patterson's reflections prevent me from contributing more to my section, squadron, state and nation? Could I have fallen into the same singularly-focused trap that Patterson has?

I doubt it. I'm actually pretty happy with my career. Rank comes a little slower in the guard than in active duty, especially now that no one wants to stay on active duty, but I'm happy. I had set a few personal goals once I'd been around long enough to know what some meaningful goals might be and I've achieved almost all of them. I'm close enough to the ones I haven't achieved that it's reasonable to expect them in the remainder of my current enlistment (which will actually take me to 21 years of service), but even if I don't achieve all of them, it's been extremely satisfying. Other than the occasional twinge of hypocrisy I feel for having participated in OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM given how vocally I've opposed it from the beginning, I'm pretty content. In fact I can even live with that since I had no idea we'd be ordered into something so stupid when I made my commitment and, unlike the guy who caused that, I honored that commitment. So I'm cool with it. Nope, I don't think I'll "sally forth" into greener pastures (as RED HORSEmen are wont to do upon their retirement) with quite the chip on my shoulder that Patterson describes.

Here's why... and in case you haven't guessed by now, here's why his book should be taken for what it is - little more than the personal venting of frustrations by a rather narrow-minded officer who was fortunate enough, in spite of himself, to retire from one of the greatest organizations in the world.

In chapter one, Patterson attributes Clinton's "failure" to order the assassination of Osama bin Laden to Clinton's preoccupation with a professional golf tournament. There's no question that from Patterson's perspective, the golf tournament is the reason Clinton didn't "pull the trigger." I won't dispute that. What I will take issue with is the assumption that Patterson knew all of the facts regarding Clinton's decision. It was apparently beyond Patterson to consider that the decision had already been made before the golf tournament started... or that there were reasons for not ordering an assassination that Patterson wasn't privy to. Who knows, maybe, just maybe, the President of the United States knew something that one of his staff aids didn't?? Chapter one, of course, precludes that possibility lays the blame squarely on Clinton's selfish desire to watch a golf tournament... that was actually rain-delayed at the time of the phone calls according to Patterson's account of it. Patterson seems to forget that Gerald Ford signed an executive order banning assassinations AND that Ronald Reagan later issued his own order making the language even stronger. (something he would later regret when dealing with Manuel Noriega)

Patterson attributes one more factor to this particular failure: Clinton's lack of courage. yet Patterson ends the book with an example of his own. In the last chapter, Patterson remembers discussing with the military aids from the other services the fact that the joint chiefs of staff all resigned at the same time during the Vietnam conflict. Patterson says the current military aids to the President tossed the idea around due to their mutual disgust for the president. But, alas, none of them could pull the trigger and instead, they attended the farewell party held in their honor and accepted the medals President Clinton awarded them with. IN two classy moves that speak volumes about Patterson, he finishes up accusing the president of making eyes at this wife at the party and pointing out that he never opened the box the medal came in. Sounds a little like how John Kerry felt about his Vietnam medals, eh?

By that point, I felt fairly safe in assuming my initial impressions of Patterson, based solely on what he chose to write, were pretty accurate. He took the job to further his career and when that didn't pan out in spite of glowing evaluations the president wrote, and which, for no apparent reason other than self promotion, were included in the appendix of the book, Patterson decided to go the company route and bag on the Democrat in spite of the facts.

He includes a number of fallacial arguments between the two chapters I've mentioned, and while it wouldn't take long to summarize each of those chapters, I'll dwell only on a couple of the bad arguments and perpetuated myths that made the book a best-seller.

Patterson blames Clinton for the first WTC attack although Clinton had only been in office for 38 days. Patterson then makes it dreadfully obvious that Clinton, the CIA, the FBI, and pretty much everyone else in Washington DC knew about bin Laden, yet when the second WTC attack took place eight MONTHS after Bush took office, Patterson says that was somehow Clinton's fault too.

Patterson says Clinton's failure to retaliate against terrorist acts led "the terrorists" (as though they're all in some private club together) to learn that America was vulnerable and unwilling to defend itself. He neglects to mention that Reagan and Bush 41 took no action whatsoever in response to two of the largest attacks on American citizens prior to 911.

Patterson blames Clinton for the fact that he inherited a military, after 12 straight years of Republican rule, that was drastically underpaid. Patterson even cites a Time Magazine study in 1993 that notes the number of military families living below the poverty line. 1993! Clinton just moved into the White House! And yet, according to Patterson, it's his fault that while Reagan and Bush 41 passed on billions of defense budget dollars to their buddies who own big defense corporations, they kind of forgot that all that equipment had to be run by people... people they gave the standard 2% pay raises to. Patterson neglects to point out that Clinton convinced an opposition Congress to give the largest single military pay increase since Eisenhower. To his credit, Reagan tried to give bigger raises, but even 5% wouldn't have helped the families Time Magazine wrote about. And congress wasn't going to pass that budget at that point anyway because the Russians had already beat us to bankruptcy and military spending, nation building, regime tooling, was no longer a priority.

Patterson gives himself a pretty loud pat on the back for his participation in OPERATION URGENT FURY (Grenada) and credits Reagan's decisiveness for the operation's success. He then later blames Clinton's lack of decisiveness for the death of 18 U.S. troops in Mogadishu. Patterson never mentions the mishaps, poor planning and reliance on faulty intelligence that resulted in that same number of deaths during URGENT FURY, an operation that lasted less than 30 days.

Patterson makes numerous mention of the examples of where Clinton appeared to believe he was above the law, especially the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and accuses the president of frequently being guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, yet he seems to suggest that he's never seen any other military officer act similarly. Apparently he doesn't consider whining behind one's boss's back unbecoming. As an enlisted person, I could write a hundred books about officers who have tarnished their commissions as such. It happens. No one's perfect all the time, but most of us trust our friends and colleagues to either say something to our face or shut the hell up about it and hope we correct it on our own. (talk about a lack of courage)

Oh, I could go on and on, but I think I'm almost spent.

Patterson's knee-jerk Republican support, in spite of some obvious and blatant lapses of memory, is something I'm used to now that I've hung around military folk for 20 years, but I'm surprised someone was able to publish a novella based on it! Kudos to that guy. I wish I'd thought of it first. I hope he's enjoying his retirement... and can live with the bitter taste of the spoils of his whining.

I'm startled by the impact my 20th anniversary has had on me. I'd never seriously considered getting out just because I am suddenly eligible, but the passage of the date has kind of had me thinking otherwise. I'm no longer eligible for any reenlistment bonuses. My unit has frozen promotions in order to give the appearance of political correctness while some changes with the Ohio Air Guard take place. Plenty of my buddies are retiring, and I definitely don't want to leave my family fatherless again, even for a year, to go back to Iraq or any other unjustified war our current commander in chief might volunteer us for.

Patterson's book reminded me that I can't always trust the officers above me to apply logic to every situation. That's nothing knew to me, but now I've got to decide how comfortable I am with it... how much longer I'll have to hang around before I can write a book about how bad one of my bosses was even though I didn't say a word at the time to stop him.

Speaking of that...

How' bout them Dixie Chicks?! I'm definitely not a country music fan, but I was tickled to learn that the "liberal media's" attempts to boycott their music because they'd exercised their right to express their opinions didn't keep them from nearly sweeping the Grammys. Bush was pretty cocky when their record sales dropped, but I haven't heard him say anything about their recent awards.

OK, that's all for now. I'm trying to balance out DERELICTION by reading AGAINST ALL ENEMIES next. I'm only into about the third chapter, but it's a vastly different book in that it has already considered the opinions of at least two people outside of the author's.
Later dudes.