Duty of Care
05:11 Sunday, 7 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 30.06°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 97% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 1025
I have been criticizing the retired flag officer community in general, and retired ADM James Stavridis in particular, in comments on YouTube videos where he appears. Most recently, this one.
The reason for my criticism is because our country, that is to say, you and I, have a duty of care to ensure that the men and women who volunteer to serve us, our country, are not compelled to endure moral injury through the faithless exploitation of their service.
There's a lot to unpack here, it's important, and I don't happen to think that it should fall to me, a retired O-5 with only 22 years of active duty service to try and educate you about something you probably know nothing about. I never achieved high rank, I never commanded thousands of men and women, I never walked the halls of power where the decisions to deploy and exercise combat power, to "kill people and break things," as our juvenile SECDEF would say, are made.
That doesn't mean I don't know or understand the concept of "duty of care," it just means that I am perhaps not the most authoritative voice to write or speak on it.
Why should anyone listen to me? I never had stars on my shoulders.
But these flag officers are silent, and the duty of care we owe our armed forces is being ignored. This is a grievous failure, a profound breach of trust. It shames all of us.
And it's past time we began to talk about it.
Morality is a fraught concept. To the extent that it's discussed in the public sphere, it's used to divide us, rather than to find common ground in a search for "the good," in questions confronting our society.
"Moral injury," is a wound that a person suffers when they feel as though they have violated their own deeply held moral beliefs. This is part of the justification offered by intolerant people who don't wish to decorate cakes for gay wedding couples, and for health care workers who would rather withhold medical treatment from women than to offer care to women seeking to end a pregnancy.
That's quite a spectrum, from the trivial cake decorator to a doctor or a nurse confronting a patient seeking to terminate a pregnancy. It certainly extends farther than that, where you have members of the military being ordered to kill men in small boats, simply because they're carrying drugs.
Now, someone is going to get all upset about the use of the modifier "simply," there. It doesn't matter. Bear with me.
Presumably, in this country, there still remains a moral belief that it is wrong to kill. I say "presumably," because the NY Times recently interviewed some Trump voters, members of the "pro-life" party, and many of them seem pretty bloodthirsty to me. Here's a link that'll get you to the story, even if you're not a subscriber. It's not very long, but it's very troubling. Here's a taste:
“They should have done that strike regardless,” she said. “Every human being does have value, but if you’re caught up in something that’s very detrimental to society, I think that you should die.”
Let that one sink in for a while.
This is perhaps a result of the media diet they consume. In an opinion piece in the NY Times, which I strongly commend to your attention, Phil Klay writes:
The president’s supporters seem to grasp this. Fox News’s Jesse Watters responded with utter incredulity that the United States would offer quarter to an enemy. “We’re blowing up terrorists in the Caribbean,” he said on Monday, “but we’re supposed to rescue them from drowning if they survive?” Others went further. “I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water,” Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster, said, “but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.”
Seriously, read the whole thing, as we used to say back in the day.
I'm going to give you one more piece of homework, and ask you to read this piece by David French, which includes this paragraph:
Trump has put the military in an impossible situation. He’s making its most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts, and he’s burdening the consciences of soldiers who serve under his command. One of the great moral values of congressional declarations of war is that they provide soldiers with the assurance that the conflict has been debated and that their deployment is a matter of national will.
French alludes to moral injury when he writes of "burdening the consciences."
Moral injury is real, and it has genuine consequences.
People often regard military service as a duty, "a moral or legal obligation," to one's country. But that works both ways, and the reciprocal duty is seldom discussed apart from the seemingly ubiquitous notion that service members are owed gratitude.
"Thank you for your service."
We don't get off the hook that easy. We also have a duty of care, an obligation to uphold the trust placed in us when a person takes an oath of military service. Trust that their service will be used in honorable ways. Keeping faith with the values we supposedly share.
We have ignored our duty, and in so doing we are inflicting moral injury, wounds to the souls of our sons and daughters in uniform. We elected an immoral leader as president, appointed an incompetent person as Secretary of Defense, and surrendered the authority of the Congress to act as a check on the office of the president. We have abandoned our sons and daughters' souls to the greed and ambition of men not fit to polish their boots.
Shame on us.
And shame on the retired flag officers, who probably understand all of this as well as I do and probably better, for not speaking out. For not educating the public about our duty to safeguard the moral integrity of our soldiers and sailors.
✍️ Reply by emailYelling at Clouds
06:12 Saturday, 6 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 22.82°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 6.26mphWords: 907
It's impossible to know what effect, if any, personal writing on the web has on the world at large. Or even at smaller scales. "Social media," is less uncertain in my mind. Its effect seems undeniably corrosive.
For a long time, I thought that it may have some positive effect by adding to a "net vector sum" of the zeitgeist, or "public opinion." Now I believe the only real value is some small personal satisfaction that I wasn't silent.
"About what," you ask? Well, climate change, the Iraq War, Donald Trump the First, Donald Trump the Second, using the United States military as a mercenary force for conducting extra-judicial killings, stuff like that. And since all of those things keep going on anyway, it's mostly been just a pointless effort in futility.
Which isn't much of an antidote to the profound sense of despair that is constantly threatening to overtake me.
It's hard to quantify the degree to which Donald Trump and the fascist, white-nationalist, reactionary incompetents that surround him are accelerating the collapse of this civilization.
But we only have moments to live, so it's probably wise to try to live them in the moment, rather than focus on the unmistakable trajectory hurtling us toward catastrophe.
In that vein, some lighter notes.
We were guests at my wife's daughter and son-in-law's Thanksgiving, and their other guests were a couple who had met a Kenyon College. I asked them if they were familiar with David Foster Wallace's commencement address, now popularly known as the essay, "This Is Water."
Not only were they familiar, they were present. They also knew one of the students on the speaker selection committee and felt as though they had some role in encouraging his selection, the other candidate being John Glenn.
So that was pretty cool, in a "six degrees of separation"-adjacent sort of way.
Selling the Florida house has genuinely given me some sense of relief. We split the proceeds, and since we don't have a project for the new house underway at the moment, we put our respective sums to work doing other things. In my case, I paid off the Maverick, so I own my truck now; and should I shuffle off this mortal coil anytime soon, it'll pass to my kids without a lot of unnecessary paperwork and financial rigamarole. I was also paying 4.03% interest on it, so that's also a net gain. I stuck the balance in a 10-month CD at 4.07% interest, expecting/hoping that that aligns with our new house, whatever that may be.
I have been distracting myself playing around with retro-computing, specifically either with my Apple IIc or in Virtual ][ on the MacBook Pro. It recalls a more innocent time, when computers kind of promised a better future. To the extent that they have, I suppose it's mostly behind the scenes as part of the infrastructure in things like MRI machines and CAT scans, emission controls in internal combustion engines, and navigation systems. In terms of the "personal" nature of "personal computing," I'm less convinced.
Anyway, I've been trying to figure out how I can use some actual hardware in my constrained environment here. I can use the IIc, but I have to store it in the closet when it's not in use because it occupies the same space as the MacBook Pro on the desk. That kind of mitigates against spontaneous "play." It's also not ideally situated for typing on it in that configuration.
But I recently bought a ROM 3 Apple IIgs that looks to be in pretty good shape. I haven't actually turned it on, because there are some filter capacitors in the power supply, known as RIFA capacitors from the manufacturer's name, which have a propensity to fail and expel a significant quantity of smelly gas popularly referred to in "the community" as "magic smoke." Since we're in a confined space, it would be inconsiderate to risk that indoors here, so I need to open up the power supply and remove those capacitors, which I haven't done yet.
But what makes the IIgs a candidate for retro-computing play in this confined space is that it was the only "modular" Apple II, with a detached keyboard. So it occurs to me that I could mount the computer vertically on a piece of plywood, and make a kind of shelf/bracket arrangement to rest on the rigid metal cross-beam that connect the legs of this workbench-cum-desk. The I/O connectors are all in the backplane, which would then be at the top of the computer, so I could connect to the HDMI port of the 27" Benq monitor, while the keyboard could sit under the monitor stand when it's not in use, not interfering with the MacBook Pro.
There are mass storage solutions that don't require connecting a floppy disk drive to the machine, and I have a number of them, which eliminates another space requirement. So all this seems rather doable. I need to figure out whether I want to conceal the machine behind the mounting board, or have it exposed so I can use the power button. That would be visually unappealing. I think I can conceal it, the power cord, and the keyboard cable and use a power strip with a switch on it to turn the computer on and off. Something to think about anyway.
✍️ Reply by emailFree At Last
11:20 Friday, 5 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 18.59°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 11.74mph
Words: 133
The sale of our Florida house closed. Deleted four home automation apps, the gate access app, downloaded the lifetime data for the Powerwalls and deleted the Tesla app. Deleted the IQ Fiber app.
Canceled the homeowner's policy. On a whim, asked about the flood insurance. They transferred me to another desk and it turns out that I was (happily) wrong. So we're getting about $900 back from that premium, which was an unexpected surprise.
And in the vein of "irony is the fifth fundamental force of the universe":
Mission accomplished.
(IYKYK)
✍️ Reply by emailOut the Front Door 12-5-25
Current Wx: Temp: 6.87°F Pressure: 1026hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 6.58mphWords: 122
One of the upcoming challenges is likely to be building a new house on this property. The back of the property is higher, and we think we can get the house to the point where the power lines and the sumacs are below the line of sight to the far hills. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.
But we're keeping our minds open right now. Everything is on the table. Build here, or buy some land and build somewhere else? Buy an existing home somewhere else? We're not ruling anything out at this point. There are constraints to every approach.
We're not in very much of a hurry. But I think we'd like to have a course of action decided by spring.
✍️ Reply by emailIn Other News
07:02 Friday, 5 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 6.62°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 6.35mph
Words: 530
With a little bit of luck, we should be closing on the sale of our house in Florida today. Kind of a mixed-emotions thing. We're very happy to be financially liberated from the ongoing clusterfuck that is the state of Florida. We're pretty disappointed with the price and the process.
The house ended up selling for about 10% less than what it was appraised at when we put it on the market, which we thought was low then. But the reality we were facing was one of new home listings coming on the market each week with a price/square foot lower each week. That is to say, it doesn't seem as though we've reached the bottom of this price decline. So the house represented a stranded asset, one that was depreciating, and one that remained something of a risk given today's climate extremes.
At the first showing, the buyer was accompanied by her son and while she was thrilled with the house, "Love it, love it, love it," he wasn't thrilled with the price. We have a security camera in the house because it's our house, it's vacant, and we're almost a thousand miles away. While we've observed many of the showings, we didn't actively watch this one because they were usually disappointing. The camera automatically records several seconds of video whenever it detects motion, so that's how we learned that the buyer loved it, while her son didn't like the price.
We later learned that her daughter-in-law was the agent representing her. That's supposed to be disclosed to the sellers, but she never let that slip. We figured it out from the gate access records and an internet search. They bargained very hard, and brought their kids into the house the second time they viewed it, and they were running around, out of control, very unprofessional. During yesterday's "walk through" the son turned the camera around. So we turned it back. Our house, our rules.
Just big "entitled" vibes from these people. No courtesy. No respect. So, once it's closed, we're done with it. I had intended to facilitate the transfer of the flood insurance, at no cost to them because it's already paid for and I was pretty certain they wouldn't pay for it anyway, so screw it. They know we had a policy on it, but they haven't asked. If she buys flood coverage on her own, I think she'll still get the "continuous coverage" discount, but if she's like everyone else there, she won't.
Given today's rainfall extremes almost no place in Florida is immune to flooding. There are areas of isolated "high ground" here and there, but the Nocatee development is all pretty flat and much of it had to be raised with fill. If they get 24" of rain in 24 hours (like Fort Lauderdale did a few years ago), they'll flood. There's no place for that much water to go fast enough to keep it from rising.
So, well, good luck with that.
Anyway, it'll be good to finally have that off our plate. More challenges lie ahead, but hopefully they'll be more rewarding.
And the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailQuestions for the Administration
10:58 Thursday, 4 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 26.76°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 13.85mph
Words: 66
Although I believe these are wholly unnecessary to establish the unlawfulness of the program of murder undertaken in the Caribbean and Pacific against alleged drug smugglers, this is a relevant list of questions to establish that fact unequivocally.
And never forget the wisdom of Mack Bolan:
The only problem with killing sons of bitches who deserve it is it's so hard to know when to stop.✍️ Reply by email
Gen. Hertling
09:57 Thursday, 4 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 29.05°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 14.81mph
Words: 71
General Mark Hertling has also been late to speak out, but it seems to me that he has been more direct in his criticism of Hegseth and the administration with regard to the Venezuelan boat attacks.
But this piece from The Bulwark (I'm sorry it's on the Substack platform.) is relevant to everything I've been harping on, or, as I've sometimes mentioned here, "Ranting into the void to no discernible effect."
✍️ Reply by emailSunset 12/3/25
09:26 Thursday, 4 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 29.39°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 75% Wind: 11.7mphWords: 611
Moderately entertaining sunset last night.
YouTube brought this video from yesterday to my attention this morning. I don't know anything about Michael Smerconish, I think this is the first Sirius YouTube video I've ever seen. Apparently he's a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and has a Saturday spot on CNN, so not a complete unknown but not an A-lister either.
I offer all that because I was surprised to see his guest was Stavridis, and I was definitely interested in what he had to say.
If you watch the video, I think you'll find that he's very circumspect in his comments. A little more to the point than heretofore, but still very "diplomatic."
So I commented on the video, and here is what I wrote in case it's not visible in the comments to the video:
The men and women of the United States Armed Forces should NEVER have been placed in the position of having to evaluate the legality of orders to employ deadly force against non-combatants in what is in every respect a law enforcement operation. Drug cartels are criminal enterprises, they are businesses. Illegal businesses, but nevertheless businesses with a profit-seeking goal. They are not political or ideological non-state actors with political or ideological goals that threaten the United States in any meaningful way. They provide an illicit product to a market with an enormous demand in this country. This would have been an interdiction operation conducted by the Coast Guard, often in cooperation with, or supported by the United States Navy. Never a "seek and destroy" mission.
Retired flag officers, in my opinion, should have been speaking out from the moment of the first attack, asking what the lawful basis for these killings was. They owed it to the men and women of the armed forces to question this policy and demand answers, and to alert the public to the risk of moral injury to our soldiers and sailors from this administration turning them into murderers. Instead, they were silent. Why? Protecting their self-interests? They had the knowledge, experience and expertise, even absent the purported "intelligence" data the administration has been alluding to, to know that this was an unprecedented use of military power with a high risk of compromising the moral integrity of the armed forces. This is bad business, and they should have been screaming about it to the media and the public right from the beginning. Now we will witness the embarrassing efforts of this administration to justify this abuse of power. I am ashamed of ADM Stavridis and his fellow retired flag officers for failing to speak out, to defend the moral integrity of the young men and women who entrust us with their lives and their honor, that their service will be used in lawful ways in keeping with the highest standards of military service. Instead, they allowed them to become mercenaries.
I'm a retired Navy commander, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, with 22 years of active duty service. I was a plebe in 1975 when a Navy chaplain, a captain, gave us a lecture about moral courage, less than five years after a court martial was convened to address the My Lai massacre. Ostensibly about the Naval Academy's honor code, it was also about having the courage to speak out when you know something is wrong. I've never forgotten that lecture, or the tall, imposing chaplain who served with the Marines in Viet Nam who gave it. ADM Stavridis was the brigade commander when I was a plebe. I wonder if he got a similar lecture when he was a plebe? Perhaps not.
✍️ Reply by emailMorality
07:42 Wednesday, 3 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 17.02°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 510
Brief definition: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
Moral authority. Moral courage. Moral hazard. Moral injury.
Values. Faith and honor.
What is a "good life"? What is "service to others"?
There is no more challenging crucible or more severe trial in confronting these questions than service in uniform that grants the authority to use violence in the course of doing one's duty.
"Right" and "wrong" are binary terms, and "reality" is seldom so clear, which is why it is so challenging to confront those questions in the moment.
Which is why leadership is so important.
When we elected a president who has exhibited, proudly, a personal character devoid of any morality, we invited the appointment of an entire leadership team similarly unequipped. And we are witnessing the consequences of that choice today.
Morality is a freighted concept. Rather than wrestle with difficult questions, some people rely on prescriptive rules laid down in ancient texts, which themselves are described as being "sacred," or "holy" and from a God that commands obedience. This empowers people who embrace one particular faith and set of holy texts to seek to impose those rules on everyone, whether they share that faith or not. Because God is an absolute, and must be obeyed.
This causes conflict and division. Politicians have exploited this view of morality to divide us for generations. They aren't questions we examine to try to find the common good, or to improve our relationships with one another. When they are discussed in the public sphere, they're used as cattle prods to herd us into red and blue corrals, where "red" and "blue" can be political parties or religious faiths.
These aren't "inviting" questions, they are repellant. We don't wish to question our own "morality," or have others question it either. So we ignore them, except insofar as they may be summoned from time to time by ambitious "leaders" to divide us from one another. Except insofar as we embrace them to judge and wholly condemn others over single issues where we may not agree. Our morality serves not so much to inform our actions, but to direct our attacks.
As a result, morality and ethics are ideas that aren't genuinely part of our popular culture. To the extent that they are live questions, they exist mostly in academic institutions, sometimes in the law and the courts. Sometimes in professional societies or organizations. But many voters have such an ill-defined sense of personal or public morality that they were unable to recognize the complete and utter amorality and immorality of a man like Trump, and what the consequences of that form of personal character in office would be.
To the extent that this whole sorry affair may invite a wider, more open, less judgmental, examination of the morals, ethics and values we wish to embrace as a society, it would be a worthwhile outcome. And it might go some way toward atoning for the sin of giving that creature, Donald J. Trump, power.
I'm not optimistic.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Cows Came Home
11:46 Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 28.49°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 2.48mphWords: 23
Our neighbor got his cows back some time ago, but we haven't been seeing them as often. They're all near the barn today!
✍️ Reply by emailMark Kelly A Real American Hero
10:27 Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 27.18°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 4.92mph
Words: 226
Arizona can be proud of two Navy veterans who became United States Senators, John McCain and Mark Kelly. Two men of genuine courage, both physical and moral.
When the video by Kelly and six other legislators was first reported, I hoped it would spark a deeper critical examination of the legal basis for these strikes in the Caribbean, but that story was immediately overshadowed by Trump's over-the-top reaction calling for their executions.
Nevertheless, it does seem to have had the desired effect, because something prompted the leaked reports to the Washington Post regarding the murder of the survivors in the water from the first strike. That has prompted the deeper and wider examination of this whole misbegotten effort, which should have been undertaken immediately after the first strike.
I watched a recording of Sen Kelly's news conference yesterday and I was proud of him directly confronting the incompetent, immoral and criminal actions of this administration. I commented that "Courage is contagious," and that we will begin to see more men and women of integrity standing up and demanding accountability for what Trump and his gang are doing to our country.
For the first time, in a long time, I'm beginning to feel as though the tide may be turning. We're by no means out of harm's way yet, but we have begun to fight.
✍️ Reply by emailWinter Is Here
09:53 Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 26.15°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 4.92mphWords: 238
We're back from a trip down to DC to visit with family and spend Thanksgiving together. Didn't do any blogging there, plenty of other things going on with a three-year-old in the house. It was a nice visit, a good meal and a chance to get out a bit in our nation's capital.
We went to the Botanic Garden on a very chilly blustery Friday after Thanksgiving. We got there right when they were opening, which was a very smart move. By the time we left, you could barely move in the place.
From there, we went right across the street to the National Museum of the American Indian. The Friday after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day, so that seemed appropriate. I'd visited the museum before, but it was several years ago so it was nice to see it again.
Unfortunately, we were also there when the two West Virginia National Guard members, SSgt Andrew Wolfe and Spc Sarah Beckstrom, were attacked and wounded, Beckstrom fatally. An unfathomable, bitter event that tragically marred an otherwise beautiful day.
We had a pleasant drive back up to Winterfell yesterday. It was on the cold side, but clear. I would not have wanted to be driving in this snow. But we're back now, snug in our little house with the lights still on, but ready this time if they should go out.
And the beat? It goes on...
✍️ Reply by email