Friday, May 23, 1997

Pilot's backers miss the point of ethical code

From the moment of her promotion as the Air Force's first woman B-52 pilot, 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn has been in the national spotlight. And so it is no surprise that her scheduled court-martial for committing adultery with a married civilian attracted nationwide attention.

Flinn's sympathizers, including such prominent and powerful members of Congress as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, said the Air Force abused Flinn in its proceedings against her and should accept her offer to resign with an honorable discharge. Others argued Flinn was being judged by a double standard that has for years winked at male officers' similar philandering.

And besides, why should the U.S. military be wasting time poking around in people's private sex lives, anyway?

Flinn's well-intentioned supporters missed the point.

More important charges

She was not simply charged with sexual indiscretions - which are, however, serious military code violations - but more importantly with having lied to her superiors about having an adulterous affair and then refusing their order to end it.

Thus, Flinn's case was not simply one of government intrusion into individual privacy, but of the military discipline and standards of honor that remain the backbone of the structure of our fighting forces.

To put it simply, the world would be on shaky ground if the men and women entrusted to fly aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons didn't abide by an unimpeachable code of personal ethics. In the cockpit of a B-52, there is no room for flaws of character.

In urging the Air Force to take it easy on Flinn, it's almost as though some members of Congress were saying, "Hey, it's OK to mess around, lie and cheat. What's wrong with that? We do it all the time."

Obviously, there are situations in which that's not OK. Piloting a bomber with nuclear weapons is one of them.

No vendetta against women

As Kathleen Parker points out in a column on this page, viewing the charges against Flinn as part of an Air Force vendetta against women is absurd. The military stood to lose more public relations points in prosecuting Flinn than it could possibly gain. In fact, prosecuting her was not something the Air Force undertook with pleasure.

But the Air Force invested a lot of capital in Flinn, and she let the Air Force down. She should consider herself fortunate to have been given a general discharge. Dismissing the charges against her or granting her an honorable discharge would have weakened the structure of the entire chain of command and tarnished the very standards that every officer - man or woman - must be expected to live up to.