When Do You Become too Political?

Everyone in uniform is entitled to have and to hold political beliefs - the key though is to keep them at home and to yourself.

The higher you go, the more important it is to make sure that your political thoughts are opaque. The fundamentals of sound leadership demand it - common sense should make it, well, common.

Especially with those who have spent perhaps too much time in the beltway, or see themselves as a bit more important than they are - it can seep in. Like all temptations, it is our nature to fall for them if we are not fully aware that it is there and affecting out decisions.

Case in point via CBS;

Four former U.S. military advisors in Afghanistan testified to Congress Tuesday that the Army general in charge of the NATO Training Mission there tried to delay an investigation into alleged human suffering and corruption at Dawood National Military Hospital, funded primarily with U.S. tax dollars.

The military whistleblowers, two of them still on active duty, say they discovered "Auschwitz"-like atrocities in 2010 at the hospital for wounded Afghan soldiers: open vats of blood draining from soldier's wounds, feces on the floor, and Afghan doctors and nurses demanding bribes to provide patients with food and basic care. According to the witnesses, patients routinely starved to death, were operated on without sedatives, and died of simple infections.

Army Colonel Mark Fassl was NATO's Training Mission Afghanistan Command Inspector General in 2010. He says when he requested the inspector general to investigate the hospital, he was admonished by the three-star general in charge, Lt. General William Caldwell.

"His first response to me was 'how could we make that request with elections coming?'" Fassl told a House oversight subcommittee Tuesday.

Some things are in a gray area - that my friends is way over the line.

Hat tip LBG.