One of the hidden reasons used to prevent the Medal of Honor from being awarded to living recipients is that the story is not quite ended. When a man rolls on a grenade, he saves the lives of his team at the cost of his own, in certain knowledge of immediate death. Greater love hath no man than this.
Story ends.
But some who performed with conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty at great personal hazard and nevertheless live to tell the tale wind up being imperfect citizens, once back among the sheep.
Go figure.
That said, I am not quite certain that it is time to lump Marine veteran and recent Medal of Honor awardee Dakota Meyer into the category of those with “troubled lives,” in their post-military service.
British Aerospace appears to be, however:
Two months ago, Dakota Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama for his service in Afghanistan, the military’s most prestigious award. On Monday, Sgt. Meyer alleged that a defense contractor has called him mentally unstable and a problem drinker, ruining his chances for a job in the defense industry.
In legal papers filed Monday, the Marine claims that BAE Systems, where he worked earlier this year, retaliated against him after he raised objections about BAE’s alleged decision to sell high-tech sniper scopes to the Pakistani military. He says his supervisor at BAE effectively blocked his hiring by another defense contractor by making the claims about drinking and his mental condition.
Based on our discussions here, I laud Sgt. Meyer’s objection to the sale of high end infantry weapons to the Pakistani military. The sale of F-16s I find less troubling, as they are unlikely to wind up in the hands of some rustic Afghan with a bone to pick. But a sniper rifle – especially one that has night vision capability – could wind up anywhere.
We own the night. We need to keep owning it. Or at a bare minimum, share our ownership only with unambiguous allies.
It’s too soon to know whether Sgt. Meyer’s behavior landed him in hot water with the boss, or whether he is facing retaliation for sticking to his guns rather than playing team ball with a defense contractor whose compelling concern is the quarterly sales number. Or whether both things are simultaneously true.
But we do know two things for certain: Sgt. Dakota Meyer’s actions on the 8th of September, 2009 saved 36 lives and were well-deserving of the recognition he received. And BAe is in for some very unwelcome – and potentially self-inflicted – scrutiny.
I didn’t think that the Medal of Honor was a lifetime achievement award. Heaven forbid someone who faced something horrible enough to qualify them for a Medal of Honor actually have some emotional fallout afterwards.They did something heroic and sacrificial and they should be honored for it.
It makes me nauseated thinking that the men and women considered for this honor could (or already do) have their lives pre and post incident raked through with a fine tooth comb. Don’t we get enough of that in this country with the political process for election?
UGH.
Amen sister! Well said.
He wouldn’t be the first Medal of Honor recipient to have some spots in his afterlife. And he wouldn’t be the first former military employee to blow the whistle on defense contractor shenanigans, either.
Let BAE produce some documented evidence, or shut up and pay out the compensation package.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
——V.I. Lenin
One of the few VERY TRUE things any Communist/Marxist has ever uttered..
PS: I would remind the readers that IBM sold the NAZIs the punch-card tabulating machines with which they kept track of the prisoners in and en route to the concentration camps and AT&T kept the international sea-bed telephone/telegraph Atlantic cables open between Berlin and the US long after we were at war with Germany until FDR shamed them into cutting off the service by threatening to go public with the knowledge.
You want to tell them about Ford and Spain?
Hey, I missed that one!–elucidate away, Zane!
People forget that Henry Ford is highly praised in Mein Kampf; that in 1938 he was given the highest award a civilian could receive from the Third Reich; he supported the Third Reich via neutral Spain throughout the war. There was a roommate connection in there somewhere that I can’t remember, a startingly direct link between Ford and Hitler.
Ford, maker of the Great American Way, according to the whitewash drivel leaking through our skoolz.
Should make you think twice what you really know about any of the great industrialists and financiers.
Or Ford and teh Soviet Union. Most of the people Ford sent over were killed by Stalin’s regime, iirc. I saw an interview back in the 80s of one guy sent by Ford in a group of 10, and he was the only one to make it back. To say Stalin was paranoid is to make Hitler seem sane by comparison.
Thanks. I’ll be damn sure I never buy a Ford again…count on it.
And I believe Caterpillar and USSR.
Byron, it wasn’t Ford’s fault. They tried to get their people back after the plant was set up, but Stalin simply ignored them.
I have no idea of what transpired with Cat and the Sovs that Joe raises.
And lets not forget the digital computer-contolled precision machine-tool cutting technology a Japanese subsidiary (iirc) sold the Russkis for producing silent non-cavitating sub props. Or the improved ICBM guidance technology/software Loral engineers imparted to their Chinese counterparts to help their “civilian” satellite launches perform better..
That would be a nine-axis CNC milling machine made by Hitachi.
Toshiba, not Hitachi, if my memory (and google search) are correct.
Ivan was not able to make ball point pens until Carter allowed the sale of precision machine tools during his maladminstration. Alas, those same tools allowed Ivan to MIRV his ICBMs as well.
Having worked for two contracting companies overseas, I can tell you that the “ethical” thing is not high on any of their priority lists. $$$$ is. Period
Sgt. Meyer’s objections stem from being a SME on the damage a scope of this kind can do in the wrong hands. semper Fi Marine.
Being a SME on all things HR, I would say his former supervisor is likely being shoved under the company bus for bringing too much attention to BAE. BAE will look to get out from under the wave of crap this will gin up. If I were their VP of HR, I’d be writing the check and a well worded apology about now, after canning the middle-management idiot who thinks he knows more about battlefields than a MOH recipient.
Industry often shows that V.I. Lenin was correct about western industrialists.
Spot on SK1. I spent 24 years on active duty and have now worked for one of the big five defense contractors for 12 years. Ethics is shoved down the throats of the engineers and worker-bees and paid lip service to by management. We’ve had multiple lay-offs over the past two years and our area’s big boss is touting how “we’re a global company”. Translated, this means US jobs are again going overseas. Many, if not most, of the SOBs care only about the bottom line, no matter who writes the check. This story sounds all too familiar. In the defense contracting world, there is no honor, there is no courage, there is no commitment to traditional American values. So I’m not surprised that someone of Sgt. Meyer’s caliber ran afoul of some management puke.
Unethical behavior trumping the innate heroism of someone with an ethical compass – feels off-balance to me.
I agree with SK1 – having experience during my career as an HR Generalist, BAE should be composing a letter and preparing a check for Sgt. Meyer as we speak.
This kind of scrutiny in light of Pakistan’s recent actions towards the U.S. won’t go well for the bottom line at BAE.
I don’t know the truth of the allegations on either side.
But as someone who has dealt with wrongful termination cases in a corporate law department, the biggest frickin’ goofball here is the BAE supervisor who allegedly told another defense contractor that Sgt. Meyer was mentally unstable and had a drinking problem.
If you’re a corporate employer with deep pockets–like BAE –and you have a “problem” employee, you shine ‘em up and ship ‘em out. You do NOT badmouth the employee to another employer. Even if what you say is absolutely true you open yourself up to a big time lawsuit and compensation. The corporate rule is “Sgt. Meyer was employed here from X date to Y date doing work as [job title]“. End of story–that’s ALL you say when you are called for a reference.
If the mouthy supervisor said what Sgt. Meyer claims he said, the BAE supervisor diddled the pooch big time here. It’s time for BAE to get the checkbook out and offer compensation. Truth of the allegations is not a defense.
Yeah, HR people at my company said we are never ever to say anything to another company about somebody other than dates of employment. If you want to give a positive reference to another company you do it on your own time from your own phone. NEVER give a negative reference.
That advice came straight from our lawyers.
BAE supervisor is going to regret that.
According to:
http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/victoria_cross.htm
“King George V felt so strongly that the decoration should never be forfeited. In a letter to his Private Secretary, Lord Stamfordham, on 26 July 1920, his views are forcibly expressed: “The King feels so strongly that, no matter the crime committed by anyone on whom the VC has been conferred, the decoration should not be forfeited. Even where a VC to be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the gallows”.”
sight unseen, since i have no personal experience with either, i’d be inclined to take Sgt Meyer’s word until given concrete reason to doubt it.
BAE? not so much.
deeds speak more to a man’s integrity than any amount of press releases, mission statements or “codes of ethics” do to a corporation’s.
“be inclined to take Sgt Meyer’s word ” You got an amen to that one!
Take the word of an USMC MOH awardee, or the word of a company that is capable of making an assault rifle that is so bad that even HK could not fix it, I’ll take the word of the Marine any day.
I’ve worked for a gov’t contractor, in one capacity or another, for my entire adult life. I’m rooting for Sgt Meyer. There is not such thing as ethics in big business. They’ll sell their souls for the bottom line. I hope he gets a big pay out. And Mike is right, the corporate rule is exactly as he stated. I was stunned when I read what the supervisor had said. Everyone knows that’s a big NO.
Well Bou the world is full of morons who didn’t get the memo. And that includes people, including lawyers, who should know better. I was general counsel for a division in a Fortune 500 company. There was a sexual harassment allegation in one of our subsidiaries. I sent one of the company’s labor lawyers down to the plant site to investigate. He came back and sat down with the division president and me to report on what he’d found. When the labor lawyer used the word “thunder thighs” to refer to one of the female complainants, I made my mind up to settle right then and there. Call me chicken but if my own danged labor defense lawyer was going to make a “joking” comment like that, I wasn’t going to roll the dice with him at trial.
I suspect the same calculus is going through the mind of BAE’s lawyers right now.
As for the supervisor? I daresay every person who reads or comments on this blog has worked in either a private corporate or military hierarchy where you can see that not every person in the organization is the sharpest pencil in the box. Typically those people get weeded out as the best of them climb towards the top. But when Lex can refer to exploding bolts on command pins in the Navy, some of those high level pencils can get dull suddenly.
I know the corporate policy is “say nothing”. But if an acquaintance at a competitor calls and asks what you think about “Mr. Smith” who worked at your company and is applying for a job at the competitor things slip out. If you think Mr. Smith is a great employee, and you’re sorry to lose him–and you want to give Mr. Smith a “boost” at the new job, you’ll naturally want to say something positive. And it the guy calling about Mr. Smith is a good friend and a long time acquaintance and you think Mr. Smith is a wrong ‘un–well something stupid might just slip out of your mouth.
In a word stuff happens. But I think BAE is going to be writing a check.
Just finished up 2 1/2 years working for a subsidiary of one of the big defense contractors in Saudi Arabia – company was ran like a military unit, with more than its fair share of drunks, malcontents and slackers that were in the right (management) positions to stifle any positive change – the majority of the workforce has been there 5+ years, in jobs that pay the worst salaries in the Middle East. Some of them would turn a blind eye to Saudis walking off with laptops or military gear – they felt that they didn’t want to “rock the boat” when it came to reporting serious matters or trying to get things fixed over there. I guess that’s why the company has been training the SANG for 35+ years and “will be over here doing it for another 35 years”.
BAe – just write the check and fire the idiot that opened his mouth…stop the pain before it gets to a courtroom
I would question where those F-16s might end up, and whether someone might figure out how to use them as a delivery platform for a Pakistani nuke. Whatever ends up with the tribesmen, it stay in the local region, sometimes for generations. Witness the British Martini-Henry rifles that still surface in the markets. But you give them F-16s, somewhere down the road when they decide they hate us enough, they’ll use them or sell them.
And they will make that decision, that war is coming, it’s not a question if, just when. This latest dust-up is just foreplay.
“mentally unstable and a problem drinker.” Some older people might say that those qualities in reasonable amounts were features, not bugs, in Marines.
P.s. I give you, e.g., Gregory Boyington. Or Robert Leckie, a Marine who made PFC four times before he could keep it. He started at Guadalcanal and stayed with it until he was blown up at Peleliu. I have his book, “Strong Men Armed”, by my side at this moment. It is quite scholarly and erudite, though written by a self-confessed “brig rat” who loved his likker.
P.p.s. Leckie lists every Marine (and Navy Hospital Corpsman) who received a Medal of Honor in the Pacific in an appendix to the book. In the body of the text, he recounts the circumstances which led to the awards. A creepily large proportion of them were posthumous, often having to do with smothering grenades with their own bodies, or, among Corpsmen, shielding wounded Marines with their own bodies.
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
Rule one: never debate company policy with a subordinate. If you can’t change it, neither can he, so all you get is heat and not light. Save it for a blog somewhere after you retire.
Rule two: never say anything bad you haven’t reported to HR, and put in his eval, and can substantiate by a copy of a diagnosis by a competent professional concerning mental health or substance abuse. If you can, don’t say it either. It will just land you in hot water, and likely get the company sued. Which it did, Q. E. D. Let HR deal with it. If you don’t, they may wind up dealing with you.
Likely, they are.
My bet, big check, and bye bye bad boss.
My opinion, as it should be.
http://www.businessinsider.com/sgt-meyer-medal-of-honor-bae-pakistan-arms-sale-2011-11
Indeed.
My opinion? I think Meyer’s boss was a bit afraid of him, as being more kewl&manly, etc., and took the opportunity to get all wussily passive-aggressive at him, not having first thought out the probable consequences of his action.
If I were in that boss’s position, I would be quite happy to have somebody like Meyer working for me. I would cut him lots of slack, try to learn from him, and buy him drinks in the hope he would tell me some educational stories. (for instance, about how well the various weapons he used worked)
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] Lex –Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] place *t* with 1/3 vote – Neptunus Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] place *t* with 1/3 vote -Neptunus Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] place *t* with 1/3 vote -Neptunus Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] place *t* with 1/3 vote -Neptunus Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]
[...] place *t* with 1/3 vote -Neptunus Lex – Lawsuit submitted by The Mellow [...]