Letter to the Editor

Honor, integrity and moral ground

Wed, 06/22/2016 - 11:30am

Dear Editor:

These are the words by which we judge the actions of ourselves and our leaders. Honor is when the truth is told. It is when we give back something we inadvertently took — like a town that billed two property owners for the same item. When they admit their mistake and refund the erroneous duplicate billing, they are honorable. You might also say they have integrity — the quality of being honest and fair.

Lately there are a number of speeches that seem to brag that we stand on moral ground. In part, the speaker is boasting about the country, about those who put their lives on the line, or even about what someone stands for. It is perceived to be the result of taking ethical action. When we hear it in a broad “everyone in the USA” context, we feel good and forget for a moment all the immoral acts that occur in the country or on behalf of the country — because we want to believe the good acts and we use them to erase the not-so-good acts from our minds.

Recently I read two major Washington Post reports of a totally unexpected, unethical, decades running Navy military bribery scandal, including guilty pleas of admirals, other Navy officers, a turncoat NCIS senior agent, two government contracting officials, and Glenn Defense — the commercial beneficiary.

The investigation remains ongoing, with more than 200 subjects, of which 30 are admirals. The current amount is $35 million in excessive billing paid by taxpayers. The case wraps around eight states and eight countries and is the largest and longest running case in military history. These are the very people on which we place badges of honor, but here there was no honor. Acts of dishonor by naval officers in acceptances of bribes, disclosure of known classified information, bid rigging, staying in lavish $750 hotel rooms often shared with prostitutes are some on the list. Congressional enforcement budget cuts are a main reason why these acts took so long to discover and continue to take so much time due to the enormous depth and width of the problem. If we want to maintain our honor, integrity and moral ground, we need to support the cost of enforcement.

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb