I have to confess that my post yesterday was a little tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I did think that the women who tempted those generals were not “worth it” (judging by their looks, at least), and I do believe that many, if not most, men in the totally over-sexed Western society end up being sexually frustrated to the point of becoming unable to control even their most basic sexual urges. It is an irony that an completely over-sexed society like the American one ends up producing men who are as sexually frustrated as the Saudis who live in a society which is fantastically repressive in sexual matters…
Anyway, I was thinking about the implications of my thought that these women were not “worth it”. As opposed to Anna Kushchenko who would be “worth it”? Can marital infidelity ever be “worth it”?
This brought to my mind an interesting conversation I had once had a long time ago and which I want to share with you.
About twenty years ago or so I had the opportunity to spend a few months working on a project with a former Deputy Commander of the US “Delta Force”. I used this opportunity to interview him at length about his career, Delta Force operations and his views on many other topics. One day, we were sitting and discussing the type of soldiers Delta recruited and trained. This was a topic of special interest to me since I had become good friends with an ex-commander of the Soviet KGB Spetsnaz unit “Kaskad” and that through this friendship I had become quite well informed about how Kaskad recruited, trained and operated (The comparison between Delta and Kaskad is not what I want to discuss here, but I will say that the difference in philosophy between these two crack units was immense). Anyway, after listing all the characteristics required to be considered a candidate for Delta, my colleague suddenly said the following: “… and, of course, we never take divorcees”.
I thought that I must have misheard, to I asked him to repeat and, sure enough, he repeated that divorced soldiers could not apply to Delta. I have to admit that I was quite astonished and I asked him to explain why divorced soldiers could not become Delta operators. This is the reply he gave me (almost verbatim, I vividly recall this conversation):
“You know, we typically spent anywhere form six to nine months away from our families, and this puts a great deal of stress on everybody. Sadly, a lot of families are not capable of living with these types of hardships, and we would never blame one of our operators if his wife decided that she could not continue to live like that. However, we have a zero-tolerance policy for any marital infidelities or divorces if initiated by any of our men. Why? Because there are only two occasions in a man’s life when you take a sacred oath: to your wife, and to your country. If a man is capable of betraying his sacred oath to his wife, he is also capable of betraying his sacred oath to this country, and we don’t need men like that in Delta”.
At that time I was not married, but I have to admit that his logic made perfect sense to me. You are either of the type who considers your oath as unbreakable or you are not. I have now been blissfully married to a wife which I totally worship for 19 years, and I have to admit that it has been ridiculously easy for me to remain true to my marital vows (I love my wife more with every passing day), but I also have seen friends struggling in their marriages, some even divorcing, and I have to say that each time I see somebody breaking his marital vows I also see somebody whom I simply could never fully trust since he already committed perjury at least once. I personally find the logic of this Delta officer absolutely rock-solid.
Let me immediately add here that I have no idea at all whether this is actually what takes place in Delta or not. I have a hard time believing that Uncle Sam would spend an immense amount of time, efforts and resources training a Delta operator only to kick him out for doing that which is so prevalent in the rest of US society. The officer I interviewed was the only Delta operator I ever spoke to, and maybe he was expressing some wishful thinking of his. I really don’t know. But my post today is not about Delta, its about this basic fundamental question:
What does marital infidelity tell us about a man? Can we really make some broad conclusions simply based on the fact that a man cheated on his wife or not? In other words, can a man who cheats on his wife be considered a man of honor or not? Can such a man be trusted?
To the risk of alienating many of those who will read this, I have to say that I personally believe that cheating on one’s spouse is a fundamentally dishonoring act, something which is never “worth it”, something which cannot be excused in any circumstances.
In marriage, both spouses literally give themselves to each other. They voluntarily “renounce themselves” for the love and sake of the other, and they accept the same gift from the other person. Think about it: for decades Mrs Petraeus (to use this example) probably lived only for the love and sake of her husband, and he accepted that. He came home, and she fed him. He was sick and she nursed him. He was sad and she encouraged him. And yes, he wanted sex and she gave herself to him. For the full duration of their marriage, the spouses renounce their own wants and needs, and give totally themselves to each other. And then, Mr. Petraeus, like some pimply teenager, suddenly decided that his sexual urges are an emergency which need to be addressed no matter what?!
Forgive me if I come across as a bigoted, intolerant and judgmental enforcer of reactionary morals, but I can think of no circumstance which could excuse the cynical and deeply dishonorable betrayal of a sacred oath (and many years of acceptance of the loving dedication of a spouse) for the sake of some late-life sexual gratification.
Before the modern era (which I think began after World War I), adulterers were often expelled from the officer corps. Yes, I know, many men did have mistresses, often not even well hidden. And the old European society did have a deep hypocritical streak about it. But at least officially the concept of personal honor and the honor of being an officer were upheld. Whereas today, all that is asked from an officer is the ability to be a skilled solider and commander. Personal integrity or honor really do not matter any more.
Now, I understand that the kind of personal immorality which we now see from Generals Petraeus and Allen is to be expected from a military culture which openly accepts homosexuals and refers to them as “gay”. I know that the post-Christian Western society has basically degenerated to the point where it is unable to articulate anything around the concepts of “right” or “wrong”. A society begins by declaring that “God is dead” and you end up having “leaders of the free world” like Clinton and his infamous “cigar”.
But the fact that our society as a whole has gone crazy and is basically unable to categorize something as right or wrong does not mean that this is true in all the segments of society. This is not true on a personal and family level were there are still plenty of people living according to ethical and moral principles, and this is not necessarily true of the military where somewhat abstract concepts such as “honor” often mean the difference between life and death.
Men in combat are fundamentally dependent upon each other. For example, it is a sacred principle in most elite combat units to never leave a man behind. One common feature of the training of both Delta and Kaskad (nowadays its name has been changed to “Vympel”) is that it is centered on the failure or success of the entire group rather than of the individual. This type grueling training is specifically designed to created unbreakable bonds between the various operators who, once in combat, will act as one entity, fully willing to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the others. I find that most interesting as the type of psychology which is developed in special operators is, in fact, exactly the one which traditional Christianity aims to foster between spouses!
Many people are aware of the following verse in the Epistle to the Ephesians of Saint Paul:”Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands” (Eph: 5:22) but far less people are aware of the verses which comes right after that:”Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it . That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. (Eph: 5:25-28). Not only does Saint Paul say that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church (!), but he even adds that a husband should sanctify and cleanse his wife making her holy and without blemish. In other words, even if the wife has “spots” (defects, sins, weaknesses, etc.) Paul exhorts the husband to not only not turn away from such a wife, but to endeavor to make her “without blemish” by his Christ-like infinite love and self-sacrifice for her. Amazing, no?
There are no excuses here for “my wife is fat” or “she is a bitch”, or “I need companionship”. Just as in a special operations unit you do not leave a fellow-operator behind because he is a “jerk” or somebody with whom you had a conflict. Both in marriage and in elite combat units the “other” is more important than the “self”.
The reality is that personal immorality in general and sexual immorality in particular, has devastating effects not only on society in general, but also for the military as in institution. Sure, our leaders still speak of “honor”, but what kind of honor can they be speaking of when they basically deny the very existence of the concepts of “right” and “wrong”? How can a sexually immoral person be a national leader or a commanding officer? How can a sexually immoral person even pretend to be a father?
If sexual immorality is debasing for society as a whole because it undermines the very core building unit of any society – the family – it is also especially devastating for the military whose corporate culture is based on the concepts of honor, duty and self-sacrifice. It is really no wonder that the actual performance of the US military has been so bad since, at least, Korea, when it is mostly lead by men with no principles and no morals.
Admiral Fallon called Petraeus “an ass-kissing little chickenshit”. This is as good a definition of an immoral person as I have heard. Think of Clinton, of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of Sarkozy, of Moshe Katsav, of Berlusconi and all the rest of them: aren’t they all ass-kissing little chickenshits?
I strongly believe that real men (yes, I believe in that concept), at least in my definition, do not cheat on their wifes and I also believe that real men are by definition always deeply moral and principled in all their actions, be it as officers, as husbands, fathers or friends. Ideas such as “God is dead” or “beyond good and evil” sound very “cool”, but their practical application always means the decay and eventual death of the entity which attempts to live by such fallacies. You begin with such nonsense, and you end up being ruled by an entire generation of ass-kissing chickenshits.
The Saker
Not really related to the post but I thought I would post this about the absurd situation in Kosovo.
“Kosovo Prime Minister owns Harem with 52 slaves
November 14, 2012 – 8:35 am
MIA Agency 13 November 2012
A Ukrainian woman who managed to escape from what she called “World’s hell hole” gave an interview with details about Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hasim Thaci and his harem in which 52 slaves ‘worked’ day and night serving the prime minister as well as other politicians and businessmen.
The location of the harem was on an intersection of streets Shaip Spahija and Bedri Shala, in the basement of a large building specially designed to serve as a ‘harem’.
“None of the girls were from Kosovo, there were few from the Balkans, about ten from Russia, one from Cameroon, two Chinese women etc” stated the Ukrainian.
According to her, the building has several VIP areas where Thaci and his friends have orgys.
“Most of the people who arrive here are older, very few are younger. Many of them are foreign diplomats, including officers from EULEX and KFOR. The girls are not allowed to say “No”. One of the girls called Dolores from Colombia protested the conditions during our lunch time in the cafeteria. She was shot dead by Thaci’s bodyguards” says the Ukrainian witness, who went by her initials N.M.
N.M. stated she was ‘involved’ with Thaci only once when he came to the harem heavily intoxicated and drugged.
The Ukrainian gave an interview for multiple Balkan newspapers. She claimed it is virtually impossible to escape Thaci’s harem as there are always at least five armed bodyguards securing the area. Out of the five, there is always one from Chechnya. It was the man from Chechnya who eventually agreed to help her escape, after she bribed him with money as well as sexual favors.
http://serbianna.com/blogs/michaletos/archives/1286
Just reading a biography of the British Liberal politician David Lloyd George who had many affairs. According to the narrator the standards of Victorian and Edwardian England in such matters were that the only breach of sexual morality that a public man had to avoid, if he wished to stay in public life, was any that had the effect of breaking his own, or somebody ele’s marriage. Fornication and adultery were not, in themselves, a threat to his career.
But the institution of marriage was regarded as sacrosanct even by the relatively irreligious for the sound practical reason that its stability was thought to be vital to the happiness, welfare and proper upbringing of children, and to that extent vital to the stability of society. Public men were therefore required to set an example and paid the extreme political penalty if they failed to do so. No doubt the system was hypocritical but surely it was better than one in which those who break marriages suffer no interruption of their careers, whereas those who are exposed by a lubricious Press in casual but compromising situations are as likely as not to be forced to resign.
As far as Lloyd George is concerned his sexual behaviour may not have been very admirable, but at least he was free from the worst defect that a glamorous man can have in his dealings with women, that of romanticising his lust. He did not lead them astray by making them believe he would sacrifice everything for their sakes. He was brutally frank to his lovers about his priorities. Any woman who succumbed to him therefore had no right to claim that she had been deceived.
Politicians are one thing, whether officers and generals should be held to a higher standard is another question. There are obvious security implications if they start sleeping around and it potentially leaves them open to blackmail.
I was taught Latin at school and although I’ve forgotten most of it now I studied Virgil’s Aeneid in which the hero Aeneus, the mythical founder of Rome is always described as “pius Aeneus” or Aeneus the True. In pagan Rome the ideal of “Pietas” meant carrying out your duty to your family, friends, institution, country and gods. There is the famous scence in which Aeneus has to forsake the beautful Dido, queen of Carthage because the gods have ordered him to continue in his mission and voyage to Latium in order to bring about the founding of the city of Rome. He is in emotional torment when confronted by Dido but doesn’t allow himself to show emotion but obeys the command of the gods. For the Roman ideal duty was more important than emotional gratification never mind sexual.
@Saker: “Amen! Preach it, brother!”
I have always believed this, from “day one.”
As I have said before, I was baptized Orthodox in my mid-forties, so I was not a Christian for much of my adult life. However, as Saint Paul also says “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves” (Rom. 2:14 – KJV). In other words, you don’t have to be a Christian (or even explicitly believe in God) to know that some things are just plain wrong – period.
I never did find a wife, so I cannot comment from direct personal experience on how easy or hard it is to stay faithful. However, I, like you (and like Ross Perot) have always “cut off” anyone (man or woman) who either cheated on a spouse or divorced a spouse for frivolous reasons. That also includes women who divorce their husbands because “they aren’t ha-a-a-apy.”
That is also why I resolved, early in life that I would never consider marrying a woman who was divorced, even if that reason was “justified.” I only wavered from that resolution once, but God protected me, when the woman in question reconciled with her estranged husband (happy ending for all concerned!).
Divorce (and, for that matter dating or “hookups,” as opposed to Christian courtship) is not practice for a better marriage. It is practice for divorce. Second marriages have a lower success rate than first ones do, for a reason. Even if I myself did not deserve any better than that, any prospective children of mine certainly would have. When children have to be the “parents” in the family (as children of divorced and/or alcoholic parents so often do), bad things happen.
The current situation in the West will change, one way or the other. That which cannot continue, will not continue. Either the West gets its basic morals back, or the peoples of the West will be “replaced” by those who do, whether by conquest, demographic extinction, genocide or some combination thereof. God is not mocked.
As Kipling said in his wonderful little poem:
“On the first Feminian Sandstones, we were promised the Fuller Life,
(Which started by loving our neighbour, and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children, and the men lost reason and faith.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said, ‘The Wages of Sin is Death.'”
@Michael:I would never consider marrying a woman who was divorced.
That is the highest possible standard, but I want to clarify for the non-Orthodox who might be reading this that Christ did allow for once exception to this rule when He said: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery (Matt 5:32). In other words, the Christian ideal is only *one* marriage or celibacy, yet Christ and His Church do allow the spouse who has been betrayed to re-marry and the same goes for a widow(er). However, even the marriage ceremony of a 2nd marriage is very different from the one of the first marriage, because re-marriage is always a lesser evil but an evil nonetheless.
you don’t have to be a Christian (or even explicitly believe in God) to know that some things are just plain wrong – period.
Of course not. At birth each human being has the “law of the heart” inside, and it is only training (I can’t call that “education”) by a degenerate society which makes so many people insensitive to this law of the heart.
Divorce (and, for that matter dating or “hookups,” as opposed to Christian courtship) is not practice for a better marriage. It is practice for divorce.
Yes, or as the Fathers say “fornication is not the beginning of marriage”.
The current situation in the West will change, one way or the other. That which cannot continue, will not continue. Either the West gets its basic morals back, or the peoples of the West will be “replaced” by those who do, whether by conquest, demographic extinction, genocide or some combination thereof. God is not mocked.
Absolutely. This explains, at least in part, the rapid rise of Islam in post-Christian societies: when all there is left of “Christianity” is a (pseudo-)Christian facade completely emptied of its original substance, a religion with a solid sense of right and wrong automatically becomes a very attractive proposition.
@Jack:
As a man who has been “adopted” by my local Serbian Orthodox parish, I always look for ways to explain to outsiders what is “wrong” with an “independent Kosovo.”
Most people in the Anglosphere have no idea of Balkan history, so trying to explain this stuff to the man on the street is usually a waste of breath. However, I have found that the following statement generally gets people’s favorable attention:
“Look, regardless of who you think was right or wrong in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s, does anyone really think that establishing a gangster narco-terror state in the heart of Europe is a sensible answer?”
In my neck of the woods, most people are pretty cold on the idea of independent Kosovo, not because they know anything about Serbian or Balkan history, but because they are aware that “Kosovo” is a criminal enterprise, and that it was created out of thin air for geopolitical reasons.
@Michael:“Kosovo” is a criminal enterprise, and that it was created out of thin air for geopolitical reasons.
Absolutely. I would also argue that *all* the parties to the war in Bosnia (including the Serbs, by the way), were also primarily criminal gangs. But I am afraid that there are very few people out there willing to accept that all that religious or nationalistic fervor was just a facade to manipulate people for criminal purposes. Most people really took sides in these wars, and they are unwilling admit that they have been had…
Oh! I think I’ll ask the Saker…
The subject of Kosovo jogged something in memory.
Recalling the 1999 Kosovo War when Gen Wesley Clark was in charge and the Russians suddenly and almost inexplicably crossed the border and raced to Pristina.
The Russian troops raced to a military base that had bunkers hardened against nuclear attack. I always suspected (and this is where I am asking for your opinion) that the reason the Russians did this was that Russian generals had stashed WMD, likely nuclear WMD, in Yugoslavia in violation of existing treaties with the US.
@Anonymous21:39:the reason the Russians did this was that Russian generals had stashed WMD, likely nuclear WMD, in Yugoslavia in violation of existing treaties with the US.
Nonsense. The Russian generals would *never* do that. As for the move of the Russian paratroopers from Bosnia to Pristina, it was a desperate attempt by a few officers to force the hand of the Kremlin to act. The idea was to seize the Pristina airport long enough to fly in reinforcements from Russia. Needless to say, the pro-US Eltsin regime did nothing of the kind, as for the Central European serfs of the US Empire, they closed their airspace to Russian aircraft (knowing full well that no aircraft were coming). I would note that while that imbecile cowboy General W. Clark attempted to order NATO troops to seize the airport by force, the British commander refused to execute such a dumb order replying “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you”. Instead, the British simply surrounded the airport and calmly waited for the Russians to have to leave. That day this British general – Mike Jackson – saved many lives.
@VINEYARDSAKER
I thought seizing Pristina airport was to stop the transfer of drugs and fighters into Kosovo that has a direct effect on Russia as Chechen warlords started buying up Kosovo real estate and forging ties to the KLA in 97.
Kosovo is also used to forge links between Chinese mafia and Uyghur separatists in Xinjing.
@I thought seizing Pristina airport was to stop the transfer of drugs and fighters into Kosovo
Nope, that is not at all what happened. Besides, and let me repeat that one more time, the decision to move the paratroopers from Bosnia to Kosovo was not, repeat, *NOT*, made in the Kremlin, but by a group of officers with, shall we say, “informal” ties to each other. Their goal was to create a “fait accompli” on the ground and try to force the political leadership to reinforce the paratroopers by airlifting more paratroopers into the area and, eventually, deny NATO a total control over Pristina and Kosovo. With a different political leadership this could have worked…
(from Anonymous21:39)
the Saker responded:
Nonsense. The Russian generals would *never* do that
Thanks! Message *understood*.
Also you said:
imbecile cowboy General W. Clark
You have a higher opinion of him than I do. I considered him the stuff of nightmares – a Jekyll and Hyde character.
There was the Pristina airport incident you mentioned and, “According to the lawmakers, Clark suggested
the best way to handle Russia’s supply of oil to Yugoslavia would be aerial bombardment of the pipeline that runs through Hungary. He also proposed bombing Russian warships that enter the battle zone.” And these are just the incidents the public knows about.
When he became possible presidential material…now that was spooky.