Ethical Leadership during War - Essay Example

The three ways a commander can ensure a proper ethical environment are through living ethically, teaching ethics to others, and keeping up the ethical standards of his unit.

The first factor, that of living ethically, is easily visible through the commander’s attitude. Talking about Lt Col Nathan Sassaman, he was termed to be an extremely aggressive commander, in fact, the most aggressive one in Iraq. He wanted to get done with the enemy through killings and to put down anyone who resisted him. When he had this on his mind he did not have any regard even for the second and third orders of effect. For instance, the case study “Fall of the Warrior King” relates that Sassaman closed down the entire city of Abu Hisham by sealing it off with barbed wire. No person was allowed to enter or leave the city without showing the identification card which had been provided by his unit to the entire city population. This cannot be termed as an ethical act. It only paved inconveniences for the city people and they hated the Americans even more. Sassaman ended up making more enemies but he did not care about it, which was wrong.

While a commander should live ethically so that his unit sees and follows his actions, he should not hesitate to teach ethics to his subordinates. He should continue this during the war as well because that helps with keeping him in the game and prevent desensitization towards any dubious acts. Sassaman, however, does not fit the description of such a commander. After SSG Dale Panchot was killed due to an RPG, and when a company commander also died, Sassaman got hyper. He could not tolerate any misbehavior on the part of the soldiers under him. He cared for his men and probably wished to avenge the two deaths by making people pay for it. However, this is not how things work. The commander should have taught ethics. If so, Sassaman would have been able to actually pay attention to the ongoing game and maintain an ethical environment.

The chaplain could also have talked to the commander and helped him stay calm. While giving any kind of advice to an aggressive commander like Sassaman is pretty difficult it is not exactly impossible. In any case, the chaplain was supposed to help out the commander. It is, however, not known whether he did that or not, so the blame cannot be placed upon him. But the commander is just a human and the chaplain and the staff should be concerned with taking care of him and even assisting him with maintaining a proper ethical environment.