This is the Story of Lieutenant Colonel Lance Annicelli, United States Air Force. It is told in the first person in his own words. No one could tell his story better. What comes across in his telling of this unbelievable nightmare is his decency, compassion, and plain speaking. This is also a shocking story. It is frank and honest but with an under tone of anger. It cuts against the grain; it strains credulity. It is one of many similar stories being told concerning the purge of the American military senior officer corps during the period between 2008 and 2016. In American History, this period is known as the Time of The Obama Administration. Colonel Annicelli was the embodiment of the American Dream. He was a success story. He had risen to dazzling heights. He had a traditional American Family. His life story and record of achievement was anathema to the radical Liberal Left. He became a target and collateral damage in a Culture War. Colonel Annicelli had achieved his success the old fashioned way; he had earned it through hard work and higher education. He believed in strict discipline, personal responsibility, and individual accountability. His style of leadership had resulted in his meteoric rise through the ranks. To many in the modern military it was out of fashion and reprehensible. When he found himself commanding a company of marginally qualified slackers, they closed ranks against him in an undeclared conspiracy. His curriculum vitae was threatening to his new Supervisor. The malcontents circled the wagons and undermined the his authority. He was not a Toxic Leader. He was a traditional leader. He expected his orders to be obeyed. He expected seniors officers above him in the Chain-of-command to support his authority. He found that arm-chair senior officers would do whatever was expedient to get promoted. Their loyalty was not to traditional military values, but to personal friendships. Colonel Annicelli was swimming against the tide. This Top Gun pilot was flying into a strong headwind. Some senior officers in Obama's Military had reversed the flow of the river. The Liberal Social agenda had caused many to look at the World through the wrong end of the telescope. They had become accustomed to "Leading From Behind", as their Commander-in-Chief had so often advocated on the World stage. The Air Force abandoned him. Many distinguished senior officers were purged from all branches of the American military services during the period 2008 to 2016. What was a noticeable purge of commanders, by 2016 had topped 250. In isolation, if one were to look at each of these cases individually, it would at first appear that these officers were singled out for their own personal transgressions. But taken together and looked at as a whole, it appears that there was something more sinister at work. There was a Cultural War going on. The extreme political Left had declared war on traditional America. What appeared to be "social engineering" was in fact a full frontal attack on our most sacred and cherished institutions; such as, the core values of the American Military (duty, honor, loyalty, moral purity), the traditional heterosexual family, Judeo-Christian values, morality, the heterosexual white American male, free speech, respect for each other, religious tolerance, and gender separation. The family, the church, and the military were the three institutional pillars of American Culture. The virtues we hold sacred were imbedded in these institutions. George Washington, John Adams and Abraham Lincoln have all noted in one form or another that, "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Until we accept that as a nation, we are destined to continue to flail about rudderless in a tempestuous sea. The Story of Colonel Lance Annicelli is a window into an unhinged system careening toward irredeemable corruption.
About the Author: Judge London Steverson, USALJ(Ret) is a 1968 graduate of the United States Coast Guard Academy and a 1977 graduate of the National Law Center, George Washington University. He was a Coast Guard Law Specialist until he retired in 1988. He became U. S. Administrative Law Judge and retired again in 2009. He made a personal donation of his private collection of new and used books to the American Corner in Hungary. On 23 April 2009 at Opening of Steverson Collection Book Club in Veszprem, Hungary, he was awarded a Cultural Diplomacy Award by the U. S Ambassador to Hungary. He lives with his wife and family in Hungary and Virginia.