Some general by the name of Lt. Gen. Mark Hertlin told a gaggle of reporters that a “cancerous” lack of discipline infects the modern force;
Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling told a group of reporters over breakfast that only a small percentage of soldiers lack proper discipline, but he stressed his concern that it be fixed, now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down and more troops are returning to their home bases.
“In some cases there are discipline problems that we have not paid as much attention to as we should,” he said, adding, “If you allow that to go unnoticed it becomes cancerous.”
Hertling said soldiers need more training in the Army’s professional values. And he said officers and commanders are guilty of too frequently overlooking what he called “acts of indiscipline.” He cited as an example a failure to adequately punish soldiers for offenses such as drunken driving.
My problem is not that the general sort of paints with a broad the entire force, it’s the fact that he thought it was a good idea to tell reporters. The same type of indiscretion damaged the public’s perception of the military after Vietnam. The military always rebounds of it’s bouts with disciplinary problems, it certainly doesn’t need the press, who don’t know an MRE from an M16…and certainly not the SFGate.
it took 6 years for the Army to decide that drunk driving was bad after Vietnam. It took four years before they decided that enforcing weight standards was better than threatening to enforce the standards. It took ten years for them to put emphasis on the NCO professional education system.
I’m pretty certain that the discipline problems the military is facing today are not as bad as they were after Vietnam, because the military is packed with professional NCOs and officers who learned their lessons from the post-Vietnam generation. But the leaders who stayed in the military after Vietnam didn’t need the media to help them rebuild the professional force, and they certainly don’t need it now.
Thanks to Tman for the link.
