One of my pet peeves is people who don’t want to tell their boss no, so they ask their friendly lawyer for an opinion. Then when the lawyer tells them what they already knew, they run to their boss and say, “The judge says you can’t do it.”
March 13, 1981
“Hey Judge, Colonel Flapper wants to use unit funds to purchase that gear we were talking about. Could you take a look at paragraph 7-2a of Army Regulation blankety-blank. I don’t think the regulation lets us do that.”
“I agree,” sayeth the Judge. “Thanks Judge.”
“Hey Colonel Flapper, I just talked to the JAG about using unit funds and he won’t let us. Says it violates some regulation.” “Damn, I wanted that gear. You can always count on the lawyers to get in the way.”
Please excuse my mild paranoia, but I am convinced that the above is in my job description. At my previous assignment, in a funny shaped building, I would receive correspondence that would ask, “Does para 4-3 prohibit us from doing this?” I would pull out the regs and sure enough, para 4-3 would say, you can’t do it. Then I would call the turkey who sent me the request and ask him why the dumb question? The answer goes something like this. “The boss really wants to do it and I don’t think he will believe me if I tell him that he can’t. But if you put it in writing, he’ll understand. Sure he’ll understand. He never had any doubt. It’s those damn lawyers again.
We don’t like to tell commanders no. We would rather have them tell us what they would like to do and then let us try to figure out how they can do it legally. But it is also our responsibility to keep our clients out of trouble. When we see that there is a danger in what is proposed, then we have to stand up and be counted. That comes with the territory.
But the type of responsibility I am talking about isn’t limited to lawyers. We have all kinds of soldiers who are experts at what they do. The best. Each one of you who knows your job should let your boss know when you see something is wrong. I’m not saying a soldier shouldn’t do what he/she is told. What I’m saying is that if you see something wrong, something that doesn’t make sense, something that is dumb, let your boss know. We ought to take advantage of everything we know and make it work for the organization.
