This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Military issues

  • Army Times; the military’s shift Left

    The Army Times writes that members of the military are slowly shifting to the Left in their political leanings. That’s because they’ve begun to accept the social engineers’ programs like gays in thee military and women in combat. But it also states that support for the President has fallen from 30% to 15% in their poll.

    At the same time, they report that “44 percent think both major political parties have become less supportive of military issues in recent years” which is what they should really take away from their little poll, not that military folks are more liberal.

    The military has always supported gays in the military – I knew of a few who were in when I was in and as long as they did their job, I didn’t care. My views on women in combat haven’t changed either and I think I’m in line with most members of the military when I say that all women should have the opportunity to prove that they can meet the current, time-tested standard and serve with men. I knew a few of those women, too. But, I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being a liberal. So, the folks at Army Times are reading what they want in the poll. Conservatives are defenders of equal opportunity for all Americans, in the traditional sense, not the new liberal backwards definition where everything is normed to groups.

    The truth is that members of the military are as conservative as ever, but they’re not Republicans. The GOP has lost our faith. The first people to call for cuts to personnel costs during the current wars were Republicans – Bachman, Graham, McCain, Coburn – the same people who sent the troops to war in the first place.

    Republicans didn’t have the political and testicular fortitude to avoid sequestration and they’ve done nothing since the White House plan took effect to change it and restore funding to the military. They’ve done little to hold the Pentagon’s feet to the fire to cut wasteful spending. Republicans cleaved to the personnel cuts because it’s the easiest thing to cut without much thought or plan.

    Chief Tango, who sent us the Army Times link, also sends this from the National Review, which picks up on what I’ve written above;

    Those service members who consider themselves Republicans have slowly dropped from nearly half of those surveyed to just 32 percent this year. The Times poll notes that “increasingly, readers are more likely to describe themselves as libertarian (7 percent) or independent (28 percent).” Democrats and liberals make up some 8 percent of the poll respondents.

    The take away is; people in the military don’t trust politicians, and that’s not new. What’s new is that we used to trust Republicans more than we trusted Democrats to fight for us while we’re fighting for the country. That’s not true anymore, at least in the perception of the troops. The Democrats have been very good at saving welfare and food stamps for their traditional constituents, but the Republicans have been very bad at representing their traditional constituents – the military and veterans, the people who earned what they expect from the government.

  • That crazed vet thing again

    That crazed vet thing again

    The Christian Science Monitor writes about how terrible vets are, using Bradley Stone, the crazy ginger from Pennsylvania as an example;

    While the vast majority of veterans, studies show, resume peaceful lives upon returning from the front, some turn to violent crime at higher-than-average rates.

    Middle East war vets who struggle with PTSD and alcohol are seven times more likely than a healthy veteran to engage in acts of “severe violence,” according to a University of North Carolina School of Medicine study done with the cooperation of the Department of Veterans affairs.

    According to court records obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stone had been arrested twice for drunk driving and was taking medications as part of mental health treatment. During his testimony after his 2013 arrest, he claimed to be fully disabled by PTSD, in what he testified was a combat-related ailment. Taking pity on Stone, the judge allowed him to go into a Veteran’s Treatment Program instead of going to jail or having to pay a large fine.

    The thing is that, despite Stone’s claims, he wasn’t rated as disabled by the VA, in fact the VA and the Marines say that there’s no record of Stone being injured or even witnessing any combat during his grueling four months in Iraq. CSM goes on to admit that Stone was a “combat meteorologist” – the weather forecasting must’ve been traumatic in Iraq.

    But other witnesses say they saw a difference in the man who returned from Iraq.

    Lisa Andrey, a neighbor of Ms. Stone’s mother, Patricia Hill, who also was killed on Monday, told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “He was a great guy and an excellent father. And then he went away to Iraq and came back and was a completely different man.”

    Four months of predicting weather in the sandbox, never hearing a shot fired in anger made him a completely different man. Got that? Just being in Iraq is so traumatic that it makes you hate your wife and kill her and everyone related to her. Except that he wasn’t so crazy that he killed his kids.

    It sounds to me that Stone was just using his brief time in Iraq as an excuse to be a bad man. It’s what the civilians expected, so he played the role to the hilt. The article says that his ex-wife that Stone killed told the police that she thought he would do bad things, the police say that he was on their radar, but that’s as far as it went. I noticed the article doesn’t mention a protective order. A protective order might have got Stone’s guns taken from him and prevented him from buying more, but we’ll never know.

    I guess it’s too easy to say that his military service and his four months in Iraq caused this, but the facts remain that he’d been battling his ex-wife for years, as opposed to four months predicting the weather in Iraq – they’ve been divorced for five years and locked in combat over custody of their children.

    Oh, yeah, CSM mentions that this happened just weeks after Eric Frein was catured after his manhunt – emphasizing that Frein was a “war re-enactor” as if pretending to be an East German soldier somehow caused his murder of a State trooper. It must be the uniforms that cause PTS episodes – right before their mention of Frein, they tell us that Stone was wearing “military fatigues”.

    Did anyone else notice that no one is telling us what job he’s had since he left the Marine Reserves? I assume that if he was in the Reserves, he had another job, but none of the media are calling him a janitor at MacDonald’s or a financial planner, or whatever job he’s held recently. Every news story starts out “Iraq veteran” even though that is the briefest portion of his life.

  • Karl Eikenberry on the draft

    Some of you know that former Lieutenant General and Ambassdor to Afghanistan Karl Eickenberry was my first platoon leader a lifetime ago. I didn’t like him very much and I’ve made that fact known. Well, he was interviewed in the National Journal recently in regards to the reinstating the draft. He begins by telling about his first unit, before I knew him, when he was a platoon leader in a unit which had draftees recently returned from Vietnam. He tells how pulling staff duty officer required him to carry a loaded firearm on his rounds. I remember those stories, especially from my squad leaders who had been in the 82d Airborne Division during that era.

    It’s a very long article, but it’s worth reading the whole thing, if the discussion of whether we should reinstate the draft or not. Eikenberry blames the professionalism of the military on our involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Lt. Col. Eikenberry, a battalion commander in the 10th Mountain Division, again had a serious morale problem on his hands. In contrast to his early days as an officer trying to quell outright rebellion in the ranks, the current headache was that the 10th Mountain had not been deployed for Operation Desert Storm, and those under his command were nearly despondent about not participating in what would prove to be one of the most lopsided military victories in the country’s history.

    Eikenberry’s response was to send 10th Mountain units to the Army’s high-tech, force-on-force training centers, where they substituted for units that had deployed unexpectedly to the Persian Gulf War. They responded enthusiastically, and were thus trained to a fine edge when called on to deploy to Somalia a year later. The experience drove home two important points about the military circa the 1990s: that it was one of the best forces the United States had ever fielded, and that, from a political perspective, it was tailor-made for the coming cycle of near-constant deployments.

    From a platoon leader in the post-Vietnam Era, to a battalion commander in the post-Desert Storm Era, Eikenberry had witnessed the attitude change among the troops from people who tried to avoid participation in a war to their polar opposite – because of the professional all-volunteer Army. That seems to be a problem somehow.

    Eikenberry stops short of advocating for reinstating the draft, but he does blame the disconnect between the folks whose families traditionally join the military and the rest who traditionally find something else to do.

    I blame the culture for that. At the beginning of the war against terror, President Bush told us that all we needed to do in order to win the war is continue shopping at the mall. And the slacktivists decided that sticking a yellow ribbon on their bumper fulfilled their patriotic duty to the country.

    Now all of the members of society who didn’t take the time out of their lives to actually kill terrorists pat themselves on the back when phonies and criminals pretend to be victims of the wars for their bad choices and the non-military folks use that as an excuse for their own choices. they teach their children to avoid being part of something bigger than themselves.

    But, yeah, the draft is a bad idea, at least Eikenberry and I can agree on that. It was tough enough leading volunteers into combat, future leaders don’t need a bunch of Johnny Beas in the ranks.

  • EXACTO; guided small caliber bullet

    EXACTO; guided small caliber bullet

    DARPA EXACTO

    Stars & Stripes reports that Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in conjunction with Teledyne Scientific & Imaging, LLC has developed a .50 caliber bullet that can change direction after it’s left the muzzle of the gun. It’s call the EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) program;

    “The objective of the EXACTO program is to revolutionize rifle accuracy and range by developing the first ever guided small-caliber bullet,” DARPA officials said in a July statement accompanying the video. “The EXACTO .50-caliber round and optical sighting technology expects to greatly extend the day and nighttime range over current state-of-the-art sniper systems.”

    The specially designed ammunition can change direction in midair.

    How that is done remains a tightly held secret. The Defense Department and its related agencies declined to comment.

    A short DARPA video of the two test firings;

    I’m not naming names, but I’ve seen some of you shoot and you need this.

  • AF Secretary: time to review transgender ban

    AF Secretary: time to review transgender ban

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which reports that Deborah Lee James, the Secretary of the Air Force, thinks shes ready to lift the ban on transgendered airmen;

    “From my point of view, anyone who is capable of accomplishing the job should be able to serve,” James told USA Today’s Susan Page.

    It’s a crying-ass shame that she doesn’t feel the same way about the A-10 Thunderbolt.

    The Williams Institute, a think tank that studies the gay community, estimates that there are 15,500 transgender members of the military. Over the past two years, advocates say about two dozen people have been dismissed for being transgender. At the same time, many military members say they have noticed a greater openness within their ranks, with some transgender people serving with the knowledge of their peers, superiors and doctors.

    Yep, at a time when the Defense Department is cut to the bone, let’s add some unforeseen expenses that it will cost pandering to yet another special group of Americans. But, as with the release of the “torture report” this week, you know this is a done deal before the elections in 2016 to buy some more votes. Since the beginning of this administration, despite the fact that the Department of Defense should be focused on fighting the myriad wars with which they are faced, the objective has been to destroy the only governmental institution that the American people could always count upon. Brick-by-brick.

  • Chris Barra, wrongly terminated, gets paid

    Chris Barra, wrongly terminated, gets paid

    Our reader “Ohio” sent us a link to an article about Chris Barra, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Reserves and a stock broker at Goldman Sachs who was wrongly terminated by his civilian employer.

    A financial industry regulatory panel ruled Friday that Goldman Sachs must pay Chris Barra, a West Point graduate and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, and his partner, Luis Sampedro, $7.6 million.

    Barra and Sampedro worked as a team at Goldman Sachs Los Angeles for nine years until 2007 when they were fired.

    The panel found not only wrongful termination, but discrimination against military personnel, because Barra was “chastised and retaliated” against by the LA offices’ Branch Manager because he went on reserve duty.

    Brother got paid. Well, not yet. Goldman Sachs disputes the panel’s judgement according to Reuters;

    “We do not believe that the law or the record remotely supports the finding on liability or the amount of damages awarded and we are considering our options, including an appeal,” a Goldman spokeswoman said.

    The arbitration panel’s ruling includes $2 million in punitive damages, a rare type of sanction intended to punish and deter misconduct.

    The two brokers alleged that Goldman forced them to forfeit deferred commissions upon their terminations, according to their lawyer, Rogge Dunn.

    Goldman changed its compensation plan during their nine years at the company, requiring that a percentage of their commissions be held as restricted stock units that would vest over time. But Goldman fired the two before the stock vested, Dunn said.

  • SFC Alwyne Cashe and the MoH – Maybe We Can Help

    SFC Alwyne Cashe and the MoH – Maybe We Can Help

    I trust everyone reading this saw Jonn’s article about SFC Alwyne Cashe the other day. If not, you need follow the link and read it – now – along with the LA Times article to which Jonn links.

    While I trust that the Army will eventually do the right thing, that’s not a lock. Even then, doing the right thing may take a long time unless there’s significant external interest in the matter.

    With that latter, maybe there is something we can do to help.

    One thing that the Five Sided Asylum seems to notice is inquiries from Congress. And one thing that Congress seems to notice is stuff that makes the mainstream press. Hell, most Members of Congress appear to pray daily at the Altar of the Media Gods.

    Well, SFC Cashe’s story has now hit one of the larger media outlets.  So, tell me: what do you suppose would happen if a large number of Congressional Representatives and Senators started receiving mail from their constituents consisting of a polite letter asking them to look into SFC Cashe’s case – with a copy of that article attached?  (I’ve archived a copy in the event it ages off the LA Times’ website.)

    I can’t say for sure whether that would make a difference.  But I’d guess that if the Pentagon gets forty or fifty inquiries from different Representatives and Senators, they just might decide to move out smartly – if for no other reason than to “stop the pain”.

    This link seems to be a good source of contact information for Members of Congress.   (E-mail contact is found by clicking the state; you have to click individual names next to get “snail mail” addresses.) I’ve also taken the liberty of drafting a sample letter to Congress as a starting point. You can download the draft text for a letter here.  You’ll need to format/alter it to suit your own ‘druthers and situation.

    The above link for Congressional contact info has both electronic and USPS contact information. However, if you decide to send your Senators and/or Representative correspondence and can afford to do so, I’d suggest going the hardcopy route – or maybe doing both.  I understand hardcopy still gets more “weight” in Congressional offices these days.

    Again, this might or might not do any good.  But IMO, it’s certainly worth a shot.

  • Military Morale Today

    I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Military Times family of publications. But on occasion, they manage to provide worthwhile military-related news.

    Their website yesterday published an article titled “America’s Military: A Force Adrift”. The article is long, and I’m not going to try to summarize it here. As is often the case, IMO the Times here perhaps exaggerates things a bit, and accentuates the negatives.

    Still, IMO the article seems fairly accurate – and informative.

    Suffice it to say that it doesn’t really tell us anything most of here don’t already know. Short version: morale in the military has taken a major hit since 2009, for various reasons. Today, it’s in the toilet. And Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen/Marines expect things to get worse – almost certainly for good reason.

    Recommended reading, and IMO definitely worth your time.

     

    (Hat tip to the Drudge Report for pointing me at the linked article.)