If special operations leaders are serious about ending a troubling trend of bad behavior in the ranks, they must be transparent about the ongoing ethics review and allow troops a break from their never-ending deployment cycles, operators and those who study the command say.
Army Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, last week called for a sweeping review of the community’s culture and ethics following several high-profile events he said threaten the trust Americans place in their military’s most-elite forces. The review will not only look at what’s going on across the command’s units, he wrote, but also how they’re recruiting, building leaders, training the force and addressing ethical failures.