Oliver North framed his lawbreaking as loyal submission to a commander in chief

Evidence

In six days of televised testimony, North affirmed that he had acted to advance the president’s foreign policy, but he refused to implicate Reagan directly. “This is a dangerous world,” North attested, and covert operations were necessary to protect the country. He confessed to lying to Congress and shredding documents, but this was all for the greater good. Moreover, as a good lieutenant colonel, he was “not in the habit” of questioning his superiors, least of all his commander in chief: … This lieutenant colonel is not going to challenge a decision of the Commander in Chief for whom I still work, and I am proud to work for that Commander in Chief, and if the Commander in Chief tells this lieutenant colonel to go stand in the corner and sit on his head, I will do so. And if the Commander in Chief decides to dismiss me from the NSC staff, this lieutenant colonel will proudly salute and say “thank you for the opportunity to have served,” and go, and I am not going to criticize his decision no matter how he relieves me, sir. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 270

Categorization

• DEFINE: North’s testimony is the display case for the book’s definition of ‘militant masculinity’ as the logic of obedient, unquestioning submission to legitimate male authority — even to the point of lawbreaking.
• BMF: North’s rhetoric of unquestioning obedience to a commander ‘even to stand on my head’ echoes Sergeant’s soldierly loyalty rhetoric in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where submission to institutional authority is framed as duty rather than judgment.