Jeff Edwards may not quite be a household name… yet. But you might very well know some of his work already. If you have seen, read or forwarded an email which highlighted the Mainstream Media's apparent stance that whatever the military does, it's wrong… then you've probably come across Jeff Edward's commentary titled "The Wrong Army". It has been seen in some circles under the title, the "No Right Answer Game".

Jeff Edwards is a retired US Navy Chief Petty Officer, and a current author. He's also been caught up in a bit of Internet confusion – as we'll talk about. I have found him fascinating, and I expect you will too, as we begin our discussion:

Doug: Thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions, Mr. Edwards. Or would you prefer being addressed as “Chief”, or Jeff?

Chief: These days, I usually ask people to call me Jeff. With that said, I still answer to 'Chief,' and I probably always will. Feel free to use either.

Doug: You wrote an article of commentary on www.military.com called “The Wrong Army”. Without reprinting the entire article here, can you give a brief synopsis?

Chief: In November of last year, I watched a broadcast journalist criticize Air Force leadership for allowing their fleet of fighter jets to age. He as much as accused the Air Force of endangering its pilots by letting them fly aircraft that were past their prime. A few weeks later, I watched the exact same journalist criticize Air Force leadership for trying to procure new jets. He called it 'shopping for toys.' I realized that he was prepared to believe that they were wrong, no matter what they were doing. Then I looked around and saw that a lot of media personalities share his belief. They operate from a default assumption that the military is screwing up, regardless of what the military is actually doing. It made me angry, so I decided to write about it. The result was 'The Wrong Army.'

Doug: What kind of direct response (letters, emails, phone calls) did you get to that posting? Did you have any immediate sense of how people were reacting?

Chief: I haven't gotten many phone calls, but the CNO’s Public Affairs Office has gotten a flood of them. I don’t think I’ve gotten any letters about this either, but I’ve gotten thousands of emails. They're still coming in. It dries up to a trickle for a week or two, and then I’ll get another batch.

From the start, the response has been about 90% positive. The other 10% either hate it, or don't catch the satire. A handful of readers miss the irony entirely, and think I'm insulting our Armed Forces. That’s not true of course. I have tremendous respect for our men and women in uniform. That was the entire point of the article.

Doug: The text of the article soon began spanning the internet via email. But before long, it was morphed somewhat. Tell us about that.

Chief: Someone copied 'The Wrong Army' off of the web and began circulating it as an email. They attached the header "A Navy Chief Lets Loose a Broadside." That was true enough. I am a retired Navy Chief, and you could certainly argue that I was loosing a broadside.

After a few hundred bounces around the Internet, the header of the email became "Navy Chief of Operations Lets Loose a Broadside." Now we were starting to get into the danger zone. Someone could look at that header, and easily conclude that the words that followed were straight from the mouth of the CNO. Not good.

But the header of the email wasn't through changing yet. A few hundred bounces later, it had acquired another headline: "Speech by the Chief of Naval Operations." By this time, all mention of retired Navy Chief Petty Officer Jeff Edwards had vanished from the email. It was squarely marked as the work of the Chief of Naval Operations.
And that’s when things started to get out of hand.

Doug: Did you find the CNO mix-up humorous, or disconcerting?

Chief: It was both funny and disconcerting. Funny because it’s hard for me to
imagine my words being mistaken for those of the CNO. Disconcerting because we have every indication that ‘The Wrong Army’ has reached millions of people. It’s – by far – my most widely read piece, and it’s got someone else’s name on it.

Doug: Who learned of the mis-attributing of the piece first: yourself or the office of the CNO?

Chief: The CNO’s office knew about the mix-up long before I did. They were getting hammered with emails and phone calls from journalists before I had any inkling that anything had gone wrong.

I first learned about the whole mess when a reporter for the Navy Times contacted me to see if I had any comments about the CNO debacle. I didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about, so he put me in touch with the CNO’s Public Affairs staff. By then, the CNO’s people were jumping through hoops to kill the rumors and get the real story out there.

Doug: The story has taken on such a life of its own that both the CNO and yourself seem to have gone to great pains to set the record straight on its source.

Chief: I’m not sure I’d say that the CNO has gone to any pains over this. As far as I know, Admiral Mullen left it to his staff to handle this, which is as it should be. The CNO has much bigger issues to deal with, and he needs to keep his eye on the ball. His people, on the other hand, had to hop for a while. And so did I.

Doug: Your website has a section, “I am NOT the Chief of Naval Operations”, written in good humor but clarifying the origin of the article. Has the office of the CNO also kept good humor about this affair, or has there been greater consternation on their part. What has been your experience with them?

Chief: I admit to having a certain amount of fun with this. It’s not every day that a retired Chief Petty Officer gets mistaken for the Chief of Naval Operations. But I’ve tried very hard to set the record straight.

The CNO’s people were professional and extremely courteous, even when things were hitting the fan. They handled the job beautifully, and they definitely seemed to see the humor in the situation.

Doug: You are also a first time novelist, having written a ‘Surface Warfare Thriller’ called “Torpedo.” It has garnered some excellent reviews, and I must confess that I enjoyed it myself more than most books I've read. Tell us a little about it.

Chief: I like to think of Torpedo as a twenty-first century retelling of the classic sea-chase novel. It’s got action; it’s got suspense; it’s got controversy. It even has a bit of humor. But the primary themes in the story are teamwork and dedication. The hardware in the novel is at the cutting-edge of technology, but – in the end – everything comes down to people. The mission of a warship and the safety of a nation can depend just as much on the Third Class Operations Specialist operating the radar as they do on a Captain or Admiral. Every link in the chain is vital, from the Seaman Apprentice standing the Starboard Lookout watch aboard a guided missile cruiser, to the Chief of Naval Operations.

As a society, we tend to reward individuals. But, more often than not, heroism is the collective effort of many people. I tried to bring that out in Torpedo. I guess you could say the book is a celebration of the ordinary Sailor.

By the way, I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s the other reason I wrote the book.

Doug: Your expertise in naval warfare is apparent in the pages of the book. What are your credentials in this area?

Chief: I’m a retired Chief Sonar Technician, and an Anti-Submarine Warfare specialist. For people who don’t speak the lingo, that’s a submarine hunter. I spent twenty-three years on active duty hunting submarines, talking about hunting submarines, and thinking about ways to hunt submarines. Back in the early nineteen-eighties, I even designed a gyro-angle computer for launching torpedoes at submarines. Now, I’m a civilian consultant to the defense industry, and I spend a lot of my time researching new ways to hunt submarines, and new ways to train Sailors to do it.

Doug: Are there any plans for a movie based on the book?

Chief: In August, Torpedo was optioned by Hollywood Producer Paul Sandberg (The Bourne Supremacy). He’s working to put together a movie even as we speak. Beyond that, I don’t think I’m supposed to comment.

Doug: Is there a sequel in the works? Can you spill any storyline details without spoiling either “Torpedo” or the new book?

Chief: I’m about chin-deep in a new USS Towers novel. I don’t think of it a sequel, but I guess it is, since several characters from Torpedo are back and some of the plot lines carry through. I don’t want to give too many hints, but I will say that people who’ve read Torpedo have already seen some clues.

Doug: Getting back to your article on Military.com: Are you a frequent commentator, or was “The Wrong Army” a one-shot deal that took off?

Chief: I’m a frequent commentator for Military.Com, and for other websites and several print publications. ‘The Wrong Army’ was just one of many columns I’ve written.

Doug: You seem to have quite a circumspect view of current events. How do you view our current military situation in the middle east?

Chief: My concerns in Iraq go back to well before the first Gulf War. We should have gotten the message in 1987 when one of Saddam Hussein’s Mirage fighter jets made an unprovoked missile attack on the USS Stark, killing 37 American Sailors. For that matter, I can’t understand why we didn’t get involved in Iraq when Hussein’s regime was massacring Kurds during the Anfal Campaign in 1988.

Doug: In “The Wrong Army” you raked the mainstream media over the coals for their “no right answer” coverage of all things military. What is your perception of the media in general?

Chief: I don’t subscribe to the theory that there’s a left wing conspiracy at work in the media. But I am disappointed in many of the people who call themselves journalists these days. I can remember a time when you could watch an entire news program and never catch a whiff of the politics of the anchorman or the research staff. I know those people had opinions. You can’t be that smart and that plugged into the pulse of world events without developing opinions. But they tried very hard to keep their personal beliefs out of their work. They managed to provide something very close to objective news coverage, even though you know they had to be dying to voice their own views. If they wanted to vent their opinions, they did editorial commentary and made sure that they labeled their opinions as such. You didn’t see commentary disguised as objective fact.

Doug: What is your preferred source of news and information?

Chief: I watch, read, and listen to mainstream news. I also follow stories on the Internet, although it’s not exactly a bastion of objectivity either. Where possible, I actually talk to people who’ve been there and done that. Then I try to piece the fragments together into a coherent picture.

Doug: Do you think the American Public is well served by its primary news providers?
Chief: Sometimes. There are some journalists out there trying to play by the rules. I figure if I can’t tell how a newscaster or print journalist voted in the last election, or how they feel about a particular issue under scrutiny, they’re probably trying to give me unbiased coverage. If their personal beliefs are clearly readable, objectivity has gone out the window. When objectivity is gone, all that’s left is subjectivity.
I write opinion columns. When you read one of my pieces, you’re getting the-World-According-to-Jeff. I don’t pretend that it’s news. It’s not journalism; it’s commentary. There are more than a few professional journalists out there who do exactly what I do, but they advertise their work as objective fact.

Properly packaged opinion invites you to explore a point of view, and then decide to agree or disagree. Opinion packaged as objectivity is activism, or social engineering. It’s not news.

Doug: What is your assessment of President Bush as Commander in Chief? What do you think of him in General?

Chief: I agree with some of the President’s actions, and disagree with others. I don’t think he’s a saint, nor do I think he’s the devil incarnate. For some reason, people seem to be inclined to demonize the man, or deify him. I don’t think he’s an angel or a demon. I think he’s a man trying to do the hardest job on earth.
I will say that I agree with him more often than I disagree. I support most, but not all of his policies. With regard to the Middle East, I believe in what he’s trying to accomplish. I get a fair amount of email from people who accuse me of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ People love to tell me that I’ve been hoodwinked by President Bush. In fact, my views on the Middle East have been evolving since the eighties. I’ve been over there a lot, both in peace and in war.

I’ve seen a lot to admire about Middle Eastern cultures. There is a beauty, and a richness of spirit, and a humanity that many Americans know little or nothing about. But oppression is evil. Period. If freedom and self-determination truly are the birthrights of all people, then any system that takes them away is wrong.

I recently finished an opinion piece about this very issue. In it, I summed up my beliefs by saying that it is the ethical responsibility of all free men and all free women to carry the torch of liberty into places of darkness. I’m fairly certain that President Bush and I agree on that point. I can live with it that we disagree on others.

Doug: If you had an hour in the Oval Office with him, what would you want to tell him?

Chief: Stay the course. It may not be popular at the moment, but it’s important.
Doug: Thank you, Chief. I have no doubt we'll be hearing, seeing and reading much more about you and from you in the future.

© 2005 Doug Edelman

Doug Edelman is a conservative political commentator by avocation and passion, based in the western suburbs of St. Louis, MO. He is a contributing editor for The Conservative Voice, and his work is also seen on The American Daily, News by Us, The Post Chronicle, Capitol Hill Coffee House etc. None of these pays him, so for the support of his family, he is also an IT Consultant/Contractor and owner of a Computer Services Business. He has taught PC Maintenance & Repair and Networking at his local Community College, and maintains a blog at http://edeldoug.blogs.com/