{"id":22130,"date":"2013-04-11T01:48:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T04:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=22130"},"modified":"2016-11-26T01:39:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T04:39:17","slug":"the-easy-thing-for-the-air-force-not-always-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/11\/the-easy-thing-for-the-air-force-not-always-the-right-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easy Thing for the Air Force not always the Right Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LtGen Craig Franklin is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/information\/bios\/bio.asp?bioID=15521\">3rd Air Force Commander<\/a> and the convening authority for the court martial of LtCol James Wilkerson, the Aviano F-16 pilot who was convicted of sexual assault at court-martial.<\/p>\n<p>LtGen Franklin vacated the ruling and dismissed the case, a move that has been strongly criticized.<\/p>\n<p>A few have missed the fact that Gen Franklin had to make either an affirmative or negative decision on the recommendation of the court-martial &#8212; there was no neutral position.\u00a0 He chose not to approve the ruling, as was his authority, and he explained <!--more-->why in a letter recently obtained by the press.<\/p>\n<p>Most interesting, however, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/article\/20130410\/NEWS\/304100018\">the line the Associated Press chose<\/a> to close their article with.\u00a0 LtGen Franklin said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It would have been exceedingly less volatile for the Air Force and for me professionally to have simply approved the finding of guilty.\u00a0 This would have been an act of cowardice on my part and a breach of my integrity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Taking a path that doesn&#8217;t rock the boat (or eliminates external criticism) may, indeed, be &#8220;easy&#8221; or &#8220;less volatile&#8221;\u00a0 for the military.<\/p>\n<p>Just because its an &#8220;easy&#8221; decision, however, doesn&#8217;t mean its the <em>right <\/em>one.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, the military generally strives (sometimes successfully, other times not) to follow the lessons it teaches in its own ethics courses:\u00a0 to take the harder <em>right<\/em>, rather than the easier <em>wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LtGen Craig Franklin is the 3rd Air Force Commander and the convening authority for the court martial of LtCol James Wilkerson, the Aviano F-16 pilot who was convicted of sexual assault at court-martial. LtGen Franklin vacated the ruling and dismissed the case, a move that has been strongly criticized. A few have missed the fact that Gen Franklin had to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,1897,3961,186,3962,2],"class_list":["post-22130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-court-martial","tag-craig-franklin","tag-f-16","tag-james-wilkerson","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}