A somber farewell to General Shinseki
Mike walker, Col. USMC (retired)
All,
Regardless of his failures as head of the Veterans Administration, General Shinseki is a great American.
He was an average guy who, many times over, led from the front in extraordinary circumstances.
When he had a goodly piece of his foot ripped away in an explosion in combat in Vietnam, he could have taken the easy road.
Poor, poor, pitiful me! Where is my government handout? I WANT others to pay my way, today and forever. I am a victim.
Instead, he sucked up who knows how much pain and suffering and carried on for our country. In a business that demands physical as well as mental excellence, General Shinseki gutted out the hurt of a crippled foot and led the way.
People criticized the Veterans of Foreign Wars for not condemning the General. That is because they knew the full measure of the man. Their decision was an example of courage under fire.
Why did he fail?
He was a fish out of water.
At its worse, the VA is a narrow-minded management-union shop with the usual corporate culture that believes it exists for the employees, not those it serves.
General Shinseki never grasped that reality.
He never understood that selfish organizational interests were not distractions to be overcome, but a cancer that could kill when threatened.
After all, the vast majority of VA employees served unselfishly. Regardless of political outrages, VA employees really do care. We cannot lose that truth.
And given that truth, how could General Shinseki have seen through the fawning “leaders” who said everything was fine (and out of earshot muttered: where is my pay raise/bonus)?
That was his failing. That is why he lost his job.
He saw the good and was blind to the bad. He gave too much weight to the employees and not enough to the veterans.
And sadly, too many senior VA mangers and union leaders, like the greedy everywhere, live for power, money and self-aggrandizement. They sold him down the river.
General Shinseki lived his adult life in the U.S. Army, in a culture that always put mission before self, that prized the values of duty, honor and service.
He proved incapable of grasping the self-serving mind-set of giant governmental bureaucracy and the technocrats “ate his lunch,” tarnished his honor, and most painfully of all, betrayed his trust.
He is gone and his reputation in ruins but this Marine salutes the General and to says hell with the VA mangers and union leaders who betrayed him.
Semper Fi,
Mike Walker
