It's not the 24 days Michael Flynn was a national security adviser that worry me, it's the 33 years he was an Army officer.
How does a guy spend his entire adult life a commissioned soldier and still compromise himself and his position so completely and cavalierly?
When a tree bears bitter fruit, you wonder about the tree.
Michael Flynn clearly used his position to enrich himself, and he actively violated policy to do so. He failed to get permission to receive money from a foreign and hostile power, and then engaged in deception to conceal his conduct.
In doing so, he made himself subject to coercion or blackmail by that foreign power and its intelligence services.
And coincidentally -- or not -- when describing to the vice president of the United States the nature of a conversation with the ambassador of that foreign and hostile power, Michael Flynn lied.
It is clear this man was a compromised bad actor who had rendered himself unworthy of his position and the trust of the American people. This sort of conduct should put people in Fort Leavenworth.
And what's troubling to me is that this sort of full-blown and dangerous misconduct was engaged in by a man who had 30-plus years of supposedly being steeped in the Army values of integrity and trust. Further, over his career he was primarily an Intelligence officer, meaning he has dealt with secrets and security matters for decades.
He ultimately led the Defense Intelligence Agency.
And how such a person, understanding what's at stake and how things are supposed to be done, can sit next to Putin and take a check, and have a chit chat with the Russian ambassador that he keeps on the down low, is unfathomable.
It's the sort of conduct any soldier would be warned away from. It's the sort of conduct any person of integrity, honor and patriotism would know to avoid. It is the sort of conduct that violates regulations, ethics and the law.
And yet Michael Flynn chose to engage in it.
That makes me worry about the culture of Army leadership that produced Michael Flynn. It either failed to root out his sinister predilections or it encouraged them.
This man was commissioned in 1981, at the latter height of the Cold War, and he knew specifically the evils of the Soviet Union and Russian imperialism. And yet he chose to -- for money -- sit beside Vladimir Putin. It was two longtime intelligence officers sitting beside one another and one was giving money to the other.
Such high-level contacts might not necessarily be bad. They might actually be spycraft. It is possible a retired three-star American general was trying to influence or surveil the leader of Russia. That would be a reasonable intelligence operation.
But it's something that would be disclosed to the American government, and which would comply with American law and Army regulation.
Michael Flynn's Kremlin moonlighting did neither of those things.
And then he lied to the vice president, completely disqualifying himself.
And my question remains: How could our Army have had this man for three decades and not have either discovered him or ennobled him? How did a person of such easy virtue gain such rank and become the nation's top military intelligence officer?
And if he was crooked in 2016 and 2017, how was he in 2001 and 1995 and every other year and day of his military career?
Donald Trump has said that he wants to rebuild the military's numbers and capability. He may also want to re-examine its culture. After decades of political generals and ass-covering officers, and eight years of the force feeding of political correctness and social engineering, and a general pussification of training standards and rigor, it might be good to look into the military heart and see what it's all about.
Michael Flynn -- like David Petraeus before him -- has shown us that brass on the shoulder does not mean character in the heart. We need to make sure this isn't a broader problem of senior military culture.
Like I said, it's not the 24 days Michael Flynn was a national security adviser that bother me, it's the 33 years he was an Army officer.