Beauchamp and second chances

Like everyone else, I piled on Scott Thomas Beauchamp. His fables sounded like latrine humor to me, and it turned out that I was right. That post still gets a couple of hits every week – mostly from dot-mil addresses. I’ve taken pot-shots at Beauchamp every chance I got, but those days ended last week.

I read Michael Yon’s “Beauchamp and the Rule of Second Chances: Pass it Along” last week and I felt a little guilty;

Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it.

Just like when I drew on my platoon sergeant experience when I refuted Beauchamp’s stories, that same experience tells me to forgive him his transgressions, for the moment.

Yon’s conversation with Beauchamp’s former commander reminded me of my infantry platoon sergeant days. I’d occasionally get guys for whom my platoon was their their last chance in the Army. Out of all of them, in my twelve years of pushing platoons, I only chaptered one of them. The rest soldiered their asses off.  If Beauchamp’s leadership has that kind of confidence in his rehabilitation, I do, too.

But, as I commented at one blog, if Beauchamp has his sights set on being a writer, he should get down on his knees and kiss Michael Yon’s feet for that great post Yon put up in his defense that’ll rehabilitate his image in the blogosphere.

I’ll also concur with Yon as far as the fate of The New Republic’s staff;

As for The New Republic, some on the staff may feel like they’ve been hounded and treed, but it’s hard to feel the same sympathy for a group of cowards who won’t “fess up and can’t face the scorn of American combat soldiers who were injured by their collective lapse of judgment. It’s up to their readers to decide the ultimate fate.

The New Republic treed like a bandit . . . personally, I think they would make a nice Daniel Boone hat.

Beauchamp’s redemption will come after personal sacrifice, TNR staff will never understand the concept.

Confederate Yankee takes apart a poorly-researched LA Times /Tim Rutten attack on the military disguised as a defense of TNR (h/t The Jawa Report).

Glenn Greenwald, sock-puppet extraordinaire, claims the Army is becoming an appendage of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy;

But there is a secondary issue in this story that is being ignored — how the U.S. military, like everything else, is becoming rapidly politicized, fully incorporated into and following the model of the Republican right-wing noise machine.

Or, maybe, you goofy, goofy man, the Army decided they’d rather release information for public consumption through sources that would release the primary documents instead of sources that are famous for releasing bits and pieces accompanied by talking points and saturated with misinformed opinions.

How ’bout that?

Category: Politics, Support the troops