Loyalty and the Oath
By Anthony Cowden
May 19, 2017
Recently an article was published in Naval Institute Proceedings magazine that explored a subject that is central to service in the military but does not receive the attention it deserves (“The Oath as a Sacred Covenant”, Naval Institute Proceedings, February 2017). While a student at the Naval War College some years ago, after a particularly bad experience with a commanding officer who was eventually relieved for ethics violations, I wrote a leadership essay on the role of personal loyalty in the military.
The thesis of the essay was that personal loyalty – that is, loyalty to the person themselves – is a dangerous element within the chain of command, and my research led me back to the same oath that Lieutenant White writes about so well in the article mentioned above.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/05/19/loyalty_and_the_oath_111417.html
