A Diary recently on the Rec list had a large number of comments trying to interpret the memo. The memo uses a lot of standard military language common across services, and hits on common themes used to train DoD civilians and soldiers alike. For those who are not the target audience of the memo, let me parse out some of the themes and tropes Mattis is hitting on.
www.dailykos.com/…
Note: Mattis comes from the Marine Corps, and I’ll be doing an analysis using Army terms. The themes will resonate across services.
MEMORANDUM FOR ALL DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES
August 4, 2017
Subject: Ethical Standards for All Hands
Those entrusted by our nation with carrying out violence, those entrusted with the lives of our troops, and those entrusted with enormous sums of taxpayer money must set an honorable example in all we do.
This opening theme reads like a classic military ‘yes, this means you’ invocation with USMC flavor. The military is full of ‘boring’ bean counting jobs where it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. Every admin assistant, every bean counter, every engineer, every scientist, every item manager is working towards the national defense goal. There are lots of training videos that start with a dramatic scene of fighter jets, bombers, or troops fast roping into combat, and then ‘zoom back’ to show how all of the support and logistics jobs were integral to making that dramatic scene possible. The ‘for want of a nail’ saying
en.wikipedia.org/… is often repeated in some flavor.
I expect every member of the Department to play the ethical midfield. I need you to be aggressive and show initiative without running the ethical sidelines, where even one missstep will have you out of bounds.
Standard football analogy. However, there is something significant here. He’s upping the stakes from ‘not prohibited’ activity to ‘gold standard’ activity.