Coming Soon: Military analysis of the VA Senate race (George Allen vs Jim Webb)

It's taking too damn long to transcribe my notes. Especially with all those "WTF?!"s splattered in the juicy parts. Please check back soon...

Intro

HOOOAH! yut yut objective -- forward hmmfffp hoorah the daggone crew-served utilitize the latrine hrr hut yut -- T-70 advance rate hrrr Appendice C shift fire hooyah.

That was to honor The Onion's "Ask a..." feature, which initially inspired this: "Ask an unintellible soldier" heh heh.
Although now that I'm slowly transitioning to civilianhood, I realize that translating into that "gruntspeak" is no longer important. Now I need to start remembering "powder room" for latrine (and not "head" either... silly Navy), proper words instead of hastily improvised sounds (in most situations anyway), and that not everybody finds fart-jokes as hilarious as my former soldiers always seemed to.

I've loved many things about my time in the army so far. Contrary to public opinion, boot camp doesn't include brainwashing, and most soldiers are unique, relatively "normal" 18-25-year-olds. Except for the deployment parts, this can be a great place. I don't buy the standard-issued line here that "you'll never find comraderie like this again"--because I know plenty of teams on "the outside" are damn close. Not to mention the fact that some military units are as dysfunctional as they come...with god-awful results now that everybody's exhausted and the leadership's guard is down.

It was good as a bored 18-year-old to have something bigger than myself to believe in, bust my ass for. And for a while, every aspect of the lifestyle seemed to relate directly to the ability to someday, somehow, help someone else. I think most of us join for that. For some, the financial incentives carry more weight than for others, but it'd be crazy to do this for the money. I calculated one time that dividing my salary by the actual hours worked yielded around $3 an hour. Dear Uncle Sam would go broke if it had to pay us for overtime. (OK-- I know this much debt implies "broke plus" regardless) But quaint as they seem, the "duty, honor, and country" that used to mean quite a bit in the army were an appealing set to live by. Life was extremely busy but pleasantly simple.

Recent events have been far more disappointing. My morale crashed hard in 2003, though as a leader I did everything I could to "fake it" so it wouldn't cloud my ability to take care of my guys. Now overall morale is suffering too. Many Americans don't realize that there isn't a single person in the military that makes policy. Generals can "advise" after 25+ years of service, and they make up only around 4% of actual "troops" (and seemingly 96se% of public or TV interviews). But even those 4% of our power-elites can't make a single strategic decision. That's up to the civilian leadership, whose orders we are all bound to obey. Which causes huge conflicts when those orders conflict with what most troops know about war, motivations, and our own capabilities. But objecting in public is (pretty much) prohibited by UCMJ. Those of us willing to "fall on our sword" over one point or another are very rare. Some of us would gladly if it would do any good; but with so many heads yapping away already, who'd listen to a random 25-year-old--even one who happens to be in uniform with first-hand information?

So. A few of us are trying to connect with this blog. I hope it becomes a resource to cut through some of the spin and bullshit. I have no political agenda, other than trying to get us out of the mess we're in globally. With so many standard doors of communication now slammed shit, the only option left seems this "baby step" of citizen-to-citizensoldier communication.

Any relevant points will be passed either to senior leaders we know in the military, or senior leaders' aides we know in DC. Or, they'll stay right here if you'd prefer. Bottom line: the US military in theory belongs to you. We swear to "uphold and defend the Constitution" -- which means our loyalty must first be to the American people and our rule-of-law, not any one office or leader. And, since the US has chosen to use the military to affect "the world"--then all non-citizens have a stake in our actions too. So please take a baby-step to fixing this FUBAR situation and send a random question or comment. Thanks and sincere best wishes.