{"id":29019,"date":"2012-03-07T01:55:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T05:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29019"},"modified":"2012-03-07T13:21:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T17:21:35","slug":"zero-trust-in-the-professional-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29019","title":{"rendered":"Zero trust in the professional force"},"content":{"rendered":"

This next stroke out of genius of the Department of the Navy’s leadership is along the same line of thought as that targeted by my recent rant<\/a> over Lt. Daniel “Lock ’em Down” Durdin’s desire to rescind the boot-leave (and, realistically, massively popular PR program) for the 99.987% of bootcamp graduates who make it through that ten day minefield unscathed.<\/p>\n

According to Fox News<\/a>, the Navy and the Marine Corps are planning to install breathalyzers<\/a> on their ships and in their units for Sailors and Marines as they report to duty. No sarcasm, no hyperbole. That’s a 100% true statement, irony free. From Fox:<\/p>\n

The U.S. Navy will start giving Breathalyzer tests to Marines and sailors reporting for duty aboard ships and submarines and at squadrons, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Monday in a worldwide call to forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another winning initial from Obama’s new Navy Secretary. One would think that only a severe and immediate crisis would prompt such a dramatic and service wide effort. Instead it’s this:<\/p>\n

The testing is part of a new 21st Century Sailor and Marine initiative…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I trust everyone’s alarms bells are sounding at this point, yes?<\/p>\n

a multi-prong program aimed at reinforcing healthy lifestyles both on and off-duty. The program emphasizes healthy lifestyles through nutrition, responsible alcohol consumption, zero tolerance for drug use and fitness programs as well as suicide prevention, family and personal preparedness and financial planning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, yes. Of course.<\/p>\n

Not only will sailors reporting for duty watch have to submit to alcohol testing, random Breathalyzers will be done elsewhere “to reduce the occurrence of alcohol-related incidents that can end careers and sometimes end lives,” the Navy confirmed to Fox News.
\n“This is not done to punish, but to help. We want to help sailors and Marines make good choices before something happens that can’t be undone,” Mabus said during remarks given aboard the USS Bataan in Norfolk, Va., which were televised and web-streamed live to the fleet.
\nMabus said the goal is to maximize readiness, fitness and safety.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

According to Federal News Radio, a senior Navy official said the Breathalyzer tests would be non-punitive nor legally admissible, and is intended to let commanders of individual vessels get a heads-up about potential alcohol-related problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now anyone that knows anything about the US military knows there are no such things as non-punitive actions when it comes to this sort of thing, especially when it’s constructed in the paradigm of “integrity checks” or “substance abuse”. Then again probably the only worse thing than a sailor or Marine hit by this “wellness” program getting ran up the flag pole for not quite sleeping all of last night off is a sailor or Marine failing a breathalyzer when reporting for duty and getting a good long talking to about living a balanced lifestyle from someone with a ponytail.<\/p>\n

When I read about things like this my mind goes to dark places. Is this another attempt at infantilizing Americans? Is it an ideologically motivated initiative to “cleanse” those of the old school who don’t embrace the Left’s New Military? After all, I’m not exactly old salty over here and when I came in the Marines our SNCOs were still complaining about not being able to have a couple beers at lunch at the E-Club anymore. Or maybe, most frightening of all, the people at the top of the DotN really do think so little of their sailors and Marines.<\/p>\n

Because, ultimately, this isn’t about “sometimes young sailors and Marines can make bad choices”, as we all know is true. This is about replacing NCOs with a piece of technology and treating the entire force as pending miscreants. It says, “I don’t trust my enlisted leadership.”<\/p>\n

Regarldess of how you cut it I can’t say that we’re sending the message that we have a capable and trustworthy force of professionals guarding our nation when the Navy finds it prudent to make sure the 155 Officers and Petty Officers it has entrusted a $2 billion dollar vessel with enough nuclear weaponry aboard to incinerate a quarter of the world’s population be given a breathalyzer first. Or that the Marine Corps needs treat the Marines who just spent 9 months living in blood, sweat and shit while making truly life and death decisions everyday need to be treated like DUI offenders trying to start their car in the morning.<\/p>\n

Hopefully it’s more cock-up than conspiracy and this can just be chalked up to stupidity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This next stroke out of genius of the Department of the Navy’s leadership is along the … Zero trust in the professional force<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,84,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marine-corps","category-military-issues","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}