After a third of the century in the law mines few things get me angry. It is a survival mechanism of course. With what I routinely deal with, if I allowed myself to become angry, I would be perpetually outraged and unable to do my job effectively. However, a few things set me off, and one of them is when I hear about officers in the military sacrificing the well-being of their troops for their petty careers, and this piece I read at Instapundit has me grinding my teeth:
KURT SCHLICHTER: The Real Reason Our Troops at Chattanooga Were Unarmed Is Absolutely Infuriating.
So, the idea that military leaders have their hands tied is nonsense – the governing directives and regulations expressly allow senior leaders to arm their troops when there is a threat. And there is a threat – as we saw in Chattanooga, as we saw at Fort Hood. These freaks are not picking military personnel at random. They are continuing the radical Islamic war against America here on our soil, and our warriors remain stubbornly disarmed and defenseless.
So why would a commander not order troops who have qualified on their M9 pistols to draw sidearms and ammo and carry them during their duties, at least until this crisis passes? Perhaps their discretion has been withdrawn from higher command – that’s possible, especially with this toxic administration. But more likely it’s because of fear.
It’s the fear that some solider is going to have an “incident” carrying a weapon, and that that incident is going to lead to questions, and in an environment where the Armed Forces are shrinking, the mention of an incident on an officer’s annual evaluation report can mean the difference between a career and a pink slip. It’s the same zero defects mentality that is keeping our military leadership from being an audacious, aggressive band of warriors and morphing it instead into a timid, passive pack of timeservers.
Yeah, troops do dumb things sometimes. During my 27 years leading soldiers, I was consistently amazed by their creativity both in solving problems and in getting into trouble. But while real issues are rare – negligent discharges, lost weapons – they do happen. I dealt with them myself. But that risk is the price of doing business, and when our men and women are being shot down in the street without even a chance to defend themselves, it’s not too high a price to pay.
You train your troops and then you trust them. You punish the knucklehead who screwed up and then you drive on. You don’t turn everyone in uniform into a sitting duck because you don’t want to have to explain to the two-star why Private Snuffy misplaced his Beretta.
In a politicized military, under a politicized administration, this is how things work. Luckily, American civilians are up to the job of defending our military.
UPDATE: Citizen Militia stands guard in front of Tyler military recruiting offices.
Also: ARMED CITIZENS IN TN STAND UP TO GOVERNOR AND GUARD RECRUITING FACILITY.
Plus: Armed volunteers guard Colerain Twp. recruitment center.
Doing the jobs American soldiers and Marines aren’t allowed to do.
Go here to read the comments.
A good officer will look out for his men, take care of them. A bad officer looks only out for himself and his career, and his men can go pound sand as far as he is concerned. Such officers are worse than useless and are a disgrace to the uniform they insult by wearing it.
“Luckily American civilians are up to the job of defending our Military.”
A harbinger if ever there was one. Unbelievable times.
Solution, sarcastically speaking, more transgender and gay military!
While we’re at it, rainbow uniforms… and sling-shots.
We have every right to be upset!
This political correctness bs is killing our sons and placing fear where honor should reign.
Fear of demotion or pink slip? If that’s true shame on the power’s that be.
Remain calm and resist.
That’s why we have political commissars and jack-asses, not warriors, mismanaging the US military. If they fought war like this in WWII, most of Europe and the eastern half of the USA would be speaking German; the west speaking Japanese.
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To date, the regime has purged over 200 senior military officers who had the cojones to try to do the right thing.
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Re: officers: there is a young infantry PL, 1Lt doing 20 years in Leavenworth Prison for lighting up a hadji (refused to stop, but wasn’t allowed to blow up our troops) on a motor-bike at an Afghanistan checkpoint. His only consolation is that that day his troops lived.
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In a famous (book and movie) incident, they spared the lives of three taliban sympathizers so as not to go to jail. The result: the team failed the mission (to eliminate a major terrorist threat). And, three of the four on the ground were lost as were a Chinook helo with a SEAL rapid response team and its crew also were killed. See” “Lone Survivor.”
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Because of the so-called rules of engagement, scores more GI’s in Afghanistan and Iraq are dead, and the US is losing the wars because it jails warriors for trying to fight. The results of these asinine, PC rules are that the military is run by shit heads and the hadjis think the great Satan is a joke.
Maybe if they unionize……?
Maybe if they wear pink high heels for a day as to be “sensitive” to others. Oh..let’s make sure they are sensitive to the plight of Isis, the poor misunderstood jihad Freedom Fighters.
Oh one more….let’s make sure our Military personal is treated like crap and shunned when they return from service.
OK. That about sums it up.
I make these observations with all the charity I can muster. The current administration is a seeming house of cards. They, from the current President on down are apparently informed almost entirely by ideology rather than matters of fact. Their ideology seems to consist in an amalgam of Marxism, Fascism and our domestic brand of witless, simpering, and out of date progressive politics. They are not patriots. They are internationalists. One cannot be both. They have little regard for the military, and for that matter, the very idea of national sovereignty. Unchecked, they would disarm the military in favor of the Blue Helmets of the United Nations. They also seek to disarm civilians as well. Progressivism regards the very idea of subsidiarity with contempt. For them, it’s all top down totalitarian control. We arrive at this dreadful state due to the lazy-minded ignorance of over one-half the population. We need to impeach the people and elect another.
Their ideology seems to consist in an amalgam of Marxism, Fascism and our domestic brand of witless, simpering, and out of date progressive politics.
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It’s simpler than that: let lawyers, social workers, and sundry krill suspended in the foetid waters of the higher education apparat run everything. That way, everything will run just as well as the court system, the school system, and the welfare system.
Are there any Generals left to chew out the yellow bellied Air Exec Colonels? I suspect all are wearing red heels and waving rainbow flags supporting “courageous” sexual perverts like Caitlyn Jenner, all are effeminate pieces of liberal progressive refuse!
I saw an interesting op-ed this morning on keeping US Armed Forces members unarmed while off base and in capacity as members of the armed forces, namely that doing so preserves the distinction between the armed forces and the civilian population. Recruiting centers should either be designated as part of some base, or placed inside the base. However, federal law should be reviewed and modified as necessary, or if we wish to go there, the U.S. Constitution.