Category: Military issues

Apparently, the military is struggling with the question of whether or not they should punish military members for a serious but failed suicide attempt according to McClatchy;

Last year, the 301 known military suicides accounted for 20 percent of U.S. military deaths. From 2001 to August 2012, the U.S. military counted 2,676 suicides.

It’s also becoming more common among veterans. Though timely numbers are elusive, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that 3,871 veterans who were enrolled in VA care killed themselves in 2008 and 2009.

Active-duty members of the military who succeed in killing themselves are treated as having died honorably. Active-duty members who try and fail may be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice if the suicide attempt is deemed conduct that causes “prejudice to good order and discipline” or has a “tendency to bring the service into disrepute.”

“You don’t think people will think less well of the military if people are killing themselves?” Judge Margaret A. Ryan asked rhetorically.

It’s a tough question. On the one hand, you don’t want to encourage suicide by decriminalizing it, but on the other hand you don’t want to in effect tell the troops that unless their suicide attempt is successful, they’ll be punished.

COB6 sends a link to a short article by the Associate Press which reports that four female soldiers have filed a law suit in a San Francisco federal court challenging the Pentagon’s policy that excludes women from combat assignments;

The lawsuit alleges the ban on a single gender violates constitutional equal protection rights and unfairly blocks women from promotions and other advancements open to men in combat.

[…]

Two of the four women who filed the lawsuit have received Purple Heart medals for injuries sustained in Afghanistan. The women are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

No! The ACLU is involved? That’s impossible. COB6 says they should join the Marine Corps and volunteer for the Infantry Leaders’ Course. or at least pay attention to the fact that the Marines are having trouble finding volunteers among the younger generation, despite what the media would have us believe.

No, actually, these four women are hoping to get the opportunity to be combat arms leaders without having to do the hard part, because everyone knows that a court order is just as good as going through infantry training, right? Just ask Shannon Faulkner, the fat chick who thought her lawsuit against The Citadel would insulate her from the hard work, but she washed out after four hours.

If I’m not mistaken, Panetta is expected to make recommendations to Congress next week, so what’s their hurry? Well, unless this is just another lawyer employment opportunity for some ambulance chasers in San Francisco. The women have probably already commissioned an artist to carve their images in stone somewhere.

ADDED: Stars & Stripes has a more complete story now, including the women’s names;

Major Mary Jennings Hegar, a combat helicopter pilot in the California Air National Guard; Staff Sgt. Jennifer Hunt, a civil affairs soldier in the Army reserves; Capt. Alexandra Zoe Bedell, a logistics officer in the Marine Corps reserves; and 1st Lt. Colleen Farrell, an active-duty Marine air support control officer, are the plaintiffs in the suit, along with the Service Women’s Action Network.

Two of them are already Marines, so why don’t they just volunteer for the Marines’ program? The article we read yesterday said that that the Marines are having a hard time finding volunteers. They just don’t want to do the hard stuff, they just want it given to them without earning it like men have to do.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Breanna Manning (hey, it’s not my fault that he preferred that name and the media isn’t abiding by his wishes) and his lawyers are planning on asking that the charges that he released hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material to the world be dropped;

At Quantico, where Manning was held from July 2010 until April 2011, he was singled out for punishment before his case had been heard, his lawyers say. At Fort Meade this week, they plan to ask a military judge to dismiss all the charges against him.

During Manning’s first five months at Quantico, the lawyers say, he was held in “the functional equivalent of solitary confinement:” Confined to a six-by-eight-foot cell, with no window or natural light, for more than 23 and a half hours each day.

He was awakened at 5 a.m. each morning and required to remain awake until 10 p.m., his lawyers say. He was not permitted to lie on his bed or lean against the cell wall. He was not allowed to exercise in his cell.

Guards were required to check on his well-being every five minutes. If they could not see him _ if he was asleep under his blanket or turned to the wall _ they would wake him.

It sounds to me like they had reason to suspect that he was a suicide risk, and if he’d been successful, we’d still be hearing about it. Funny thing about basic training, though, they woke me at 5 AM and wouldn’t let me sleep until after 10 PM. I wasn’t allowed to lie in my bed or lean on the wall. But they did PT the living shit out of me, so I guess it wasn’t really punishment.

I guess if he gets a life sentence for his treason, Breanna can ask for the time served to be subtracted from his sentence.

Kristina Wong writes in the Washington Times that the prospect of having a female infantryman in the Marine Corps any time soon is unlikely. Not because of the course standards, exactly, but because volunteers are few and far between;

Only two of about 80 eligible female Marines have volunteered for the course — a grueling, three-month advanced regimen conducted at Quantico, Va., that was opened to women to research their performance.

Of the two female volunteers, one washed out on the first day, along with 26 of the107 men, and the other dropped out two weeks later for medical reasons, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

The research effort was launched after the Pentagon opened to women more than 14,000 jobs that could place them closer to front lines and combat.

The Marine Corps wants to test at least 90 more women in the course before making any decision about women serving in infantry roles, the spokesman said.

But, we were told that there were just oodles of females chomping at the bit to join the infantry, that they were disillusioned because they couldn’t get into the infantry because of the restrictions placed on them. Much like the gays were supposed to be swarming the recruiting offices after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was lifted from the social burdens that the military had placed on them.

Of course, most of the people who were telling us those obvious fallacies had never served a day in uniform and the people who had served were merely making excuses for their own personal failures in their respective careers. it had nothing whatsoever to do with equality or opportunity, it had to do with unwavering acceptance of those things that didn’t really matter anyway.

The only recourse that the Marine Corps has at this point is to either lower their standards or force women to participate, neither of which is acceptable or conducive to producing an effective fighting force.

The Pentagon ordered the services to issue a progress report on the jobs it opened to women and to look into other areas, including the infantry, that could be opened to women.

Those reports and research are to be sent by the end of this month to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who will issue any policy changes and recommendations to Congress.

So, time is getting tight.

Courtesy of the Washington Times and the Associated Press;

An Internet buddy, who’s retired in Guam, a former USAF E-8, senior master sergeant, refueling boom operator, who naturally goes by the handle, Boomer, sent me a link to a video with the comment that this would be an excellent video from which our recently re-elected commander-in-chief could learn a lesson in leadership. Retired Brigadier General Steve Richie, who is delivering the talk on the rescue of a downed Air Force weapons officer in Vietnam, is an excellent, almost charismatic, speaker. After checking BG Richie out on Wikipedia, I learned that he is in fact, a bit of a charismatic warrior, who once was a youthful, wise guy, hotshot jet jockey with cojónes of steel, the kind of brash, self-confident young warrior who can scare hell out of his comrades and his commanders, but who gets results. In that regard, he is one of only three Air Force aces from the Vietnam War and recipient of the Air Force Cross, an award for valor second only to the Medal of Honor.

Take time to watch this short very entertaining video, The Rescue of Roger Locher, and see if you don’t come away feeling a bit better about our country, our military and even generals, a couple of whom having cast a pall upon their brethren recently. Watch it and I believe you will also agree with my buddy Boomer that our president and some of the perfumed princes in the Pentagon could pick up some pointers from General Richie and his colleagues. As someone who is in contact with other members of our military community on a frequent and ongoing basis, I can tell you, our younger warriors, both troops and leaders, don’t need those pointers.

This is code by which they have always and still do live.

Crossposted at American Thinker.