Another Military travesty

[layoutshooter]

My dad was disappointed cos he was Navy, as were so many of my Uncles ..... but I rebelled and joined the RAF

LOL!!! Yeah, I bet he was "disappointed" but bursting with PRIDE. I worked with a few RAF guys. They were GOOD at what they did. I enjoyed working with them. What did you do with the RAF?

 

[cheri1122]

T-hawk hit the nail right on the head ...

Any enemy of ours past, present and future doesn't take in account who they are going to kill, male female, white black, gay straight - it doesn't matter to them, they want to damage our ability to fight any way they can.

The problem is the world has yet to change to conform to some political correctness and according to some who think that it is outright unfair that we don't have gays in the military or that some brat should be given a break because mommy feels a certain way they can't comprehend what it takes to actually fight. We live in dangerous times and always have, but the difference between then and now is we worry about trivial social issues within the military now while it is not what we should be worrying about.
Conduct unbecoming an officer is a trivial social issue?
So how long did YOU last in the military?

Sue the world has not changed.

But attitudes, knowledge, and understanding have.

 

[Tennesseahawk]

But attitudes, knowledge, and understanding have.

Yes... they've all gotten worse!

 

[jaminjim]

Captain Honors also said "Over the years, I've gotten several complaints - never directly, but gutlessly, through other channels."

A Captain who doesn't see that complaining about a video he made & starred in would take not guts, but a death wish, for anyone under his command, has no business commanding anyone.
The Commander of a NUCLEAR aircraft carrier must have judgment beyond questioning - and this man does not appear to have the judgment to lead a pack of Cub Scouts.

A death wish... Horse poop. Most everyone that has been interviewed that served with him say that they couldn't wait until they saw the next installment, and that they thought he was a great Commander.

and this man does not appear to have the judgment to lead a pack of Cub Scouts.

And you base this opinion on your years of combat experience and how you kept the morale of your subordinates high even when they have been away from family and friends for six months????

Question for you, if memory serves me correctly you have mentioned that you were a nurse, right? If you were, then my question to you is. Did you ever say or do anything at work that a family member of someone in your care would be offended by..... anything, anywhere, at any time???

 

[layoutshooter]

Well, I lasted 3 years in the military. I went from Pvt E1 to Spec 4 with only ten months in service. I turned down Spec 5 to get out.

I last 17 years with the Agency going from GS5 to GS12 on my talents and work ethic alone.

I think I have a pretty good idea of what military life is like. I am in touch with many active duty military to this day. The views I see are NOT all that different than when I was in. Most of them cannot wait to get out. They have NO USE for their current CIC and will leave the service rather than serve under him and the stupidity that is going on. I can't say that I blame them. I would not serve under him either.

From what they tell me the press is about as accurate today as it was during my career. Half truths, lies and an attitude that military people are somehow not as bright as those who refuse to serve.

I wish your daughter well. I hope that she is going in with NO preconceived ideas. She will have many surprises and adventures. Assuming she has the right attitude she will come out a better person for the experience.

 

[greg334]

Cheri,
See the thing you forget is you are judging someone you do not know and you do not have a clue what the situation is like. You have never been on a ship to understand even the most basic issues they face, let alone be able to make a judgment call on what is right or wrong. There is no standard you can apply to this guy or others who have to be stuck on a ship for 3 to 6 months, pretty much isolated from friends and family while trying to do a job they seem to want to do for us. The standard that has been used is one of political correctness that has been used several times against those who have been on the front lines fighting - a purely political one.

NO attitudes, knowledge and understanding haven't changed, what has is a preconceived notion that what the military should accept is the same thing that the civilian population has been forced to accept. Like women in combat, I can tell you from being friends with a few who saw combat up close and personal, they chenged their mind about the issue, especially when the people they faced would do a lot of harm to them just because they are women. Most of the people who scream how unfair it is not to have women in combat or even in the military just don't get what this is all about. Again our enemy is what should be a focus, not some incident that did no one harm or left anyone hanging themselves over. Unlike Tailhook, which I do agree that there are some serious issues, this is a case where it happened in a situation you refuse to understand.

Like I said, the enemy does not give a sh*t what you are, they see you as a uniform and want to kill you. DO you honestly think that their rules of engagement will allow them to make allowances on social standing of the individual?

AND don't you mistake my position on this as some sort of man thing, it is a life thing. by the way, the military evolves without the help of the president and social progressive idiots, it did when we had a fully integrated military until 1913 when people, liberal people, changed our military and in effect screwed it up.

 

[cheri1122]

A death wish... Horse poop. Most everyone that has been interviewed that served with him say that they couldn't wait until they saw the next installment, and that they thought he was a great Commander.
True. But as has been pointed out a brazillion times, many, many many people can be wrong. And have been.


And you base this opinion on your years of combat experience and how you kept the morale of your subordinates high even when they have been away from family and friends for six months????
I base this opinion on the belief that people [even in the military] are entitled to be treated with respect, not humiliated without just cause. Had the Commander made videos without humiliating a segment of his subordinates, and acknowledged that those subordinates weren't likely to risk the repercussions of complaining about the humiliation, he would be the superb officer he appeared to be.

Question for you, if memory serves me correctly you have mentioned that you were a nurse, right? If you were, then my question to you is. Did you ever say or do anything at work that a family member of someone in your care would be offended by..... anything, anywhere, at any time???

Of course - gallows humor is a coping mechanism, and outsiders would undoubtedly have found the nurse's description of their loved one as a cabbage offensive. So we were very careful about where exactly such humor was used, because disrespect to those who would be offended was not tolerated.

 

[RLENT]

What a load of crap...............

So you apparently consider the UCMJ a load of crap ?

Or is it simply that you have no idea what the word gentleman means ?

Or maybe it's "bring discredit upon the armed forces" that's giving you trouble ...

Perhaps a course in remedial English would help .......

From some of the comments here, it looks like such a thing wouldn't hurt a few others as well ...

Let's say if we applied this same logic to Patton, to Bradley, to Ike back in WWII, and followed todays Political Correctness BS, then the only choice we would have had for Commanders out on the battlefield would have been Sgt Carter and Gomer Pyle. Outcome of WWII would have been a farce with US soldiers laying down their weapons as quick as the French do.

Possibly one of the more dimwitted comments I've seen recently ... so you really figure that gay jokes and simulated masturbation is gonna win the war, do ya ?

Is that your understanding of what it takes to be a leader of men ?

Let me suggest to you - and probably just about anyone else in this forum - that those who are making the decision to discipline this guy are well above the pay grade that any of y'all attained .... and there's probably a very good reason for that .....

This is PC run amuck with decisions made by civilians that have no real valued interest in trying to learn about Military life, that's all.

You got any actual evidence of "decisions made by civilians" .... or are you just flappin' yer yap ?

I am going to direct one saying to the blossomed one here. Cheri, either serve our country as a Mlitary person or get off the soapbox, got it.

Pizz off ..... she has a right to say whatever she **** well pleases .... got it ?

I'm gonna say one as well ..... although not to Cheri - if you - any of you - have some problem with civilian control of the military please consider correcting your apparently deficient education as to why the Founding Fathers decided that this was a wise choice ...

I respect the hell out of your daughters decision to "voluntarily" join the Navy, even if it is the Navy, but if she goes into the Navy with Mommas outlook, she may last 6 months. If she does not make it, YES, she will have to pay back that signing bonus and will not be eligible for all that tuition money she's going after. Of which, IMO, is the only reason she's "voluntarily" joining.

What a fantastically stupid thing to say ... when one has essentially no data on which to base such a statement on, and never even met the particular individual involved, and so has no real insight into their motivation might be .... absolutely pure genius ....

Personally, I tend to view it as a rather underhanded and cowardly attack on a woman - who isn't even here to defend herself BTW - to that woman's mother ...

Not real hard to imagine why the word gentleman poses such a problem ...

My opinion, live with it.

Thanks anyways - but I don't have to .... and neither does anyone else really ....

If there is anything that is a shame in this whole episode it is simply this: it may be the case that those who were above this cretin in the chain of command, who held far greater responsibilities, and were under far greater of a burden than Captain Dipwad, possibly took the easy route - the one that didn't require them to stand for some principles they professed a belief in, and make the tough choice to discipline one of their own.

If that is true, a possible consequence of that may be that Honors (oh what irony there can be in a name) will have caused, at least to some extent, the downfall of those above him - who may well have been very good men, of very high moral character.

Nice job there Owen

This thing isn't over yet - the investigation is still ongoing - particularly with respect to what, if any discipline, Captain Retard received at the time this was originally discovered.

If it turns out that he received none, expect further heads to roll ...

 

[layoutshooter]

Different world, Cherrii. In the hospital, as when I was and EMT, the job was to SAVE lives if possible. In the military the job is to break things and KILL people. Nothing compares.

 

[RLENT]

True. But as has been pointed out a brazillion times, many, many many people can be wrong. And have been.

Entire nations have been wrong ... to the point of being complicit in genocide .....

 

[layoutshooter]

Entire nations have been wrong ... to the point of being complicit in genocide .....

Oh you mean like Iran, North Korea, China, Russia. Just ask Tibet, Burma, the Kurds. Easy to ignore that since many think that those fine countries are the victims and the "good guys" in the world.

 

[cheri1122]

Different world, Cherrii. In the hospital, as when I was and EMT, the job was to SAVE lives if possible. In the military the job is to break things and KILL people. Nothing compares.

Even if I agreed with your description of the military's job, [which I emphatically do not], it wouldn't matter: whatever the job is, the goal of civilized people [and the military is still that, I hope] is to accomplish it without deliberately heaping humiliation on people who do not deserve it.
Commander H failed to do his job.

 

[RLENT]

Oh you mean like Iran, North Korea, China, Russia. Just ask Tibet, Burma, the Kurds.

Well, what I actually had in mind was Nazi Germany ..... though there are certainly others that would qualify ...

Easy to ignore that since many think that those fine countries are the victims and the "good guys" in the world.

Who's ignoring it ?

And who says they are the good guys ?

Are you so desperately searching for some sort of a "strawman" argument, simply because you couldn't control the hair-trigger long enough to formulate some sort of a cogent response that was at least in some way remotely germane to what I actually said, and what is being discussed here ?

 

[layoutshooter]

Well, what I actually had in mind was Nazi Germany ..... though there are certainly others that would qualify ...


Who's ignoring it ?

And who says they are the good guys ?

Are you so desperately searching for some sort of a "strawman" argument, simply because you couldn't control the hair-trigger long enough to formulate some sort of a cogent response that was at least in some way remotely germane to what I actually said, and what is being discussed here ?

Oh many in this country believe that those places are the "good guys" I did not mean to imply the you did.

 

[layoutshooter]

Even if I agreed with your description of the military's job, [which I emphatically do not], it wouldn't matter: whatever the job is, the goal of civilized people [and the military is still that, I hope] is to accomplish it without deliberately heaping humiliation on people who do not deserve it.
Commander H failed to do his job.

Well Cheri, the military is there to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. They do that by killing our enemies. The military is NOT "peacekeepers" They are NOT rescue squads. They are not there to deliver aid or food. That IS their primary mission. Sorry if you don't understand that. Your daughter will soon.

 

[jaminjim]

So you disrespected the dead and their memory, probably on occasion mocked their physical appearance so that you could cope. Did you ever say something inappropriate to a new nurse or did a new nurse ever over hear your disrespectful comments of the injured or dead?

It's odd to hear you justify your disrespect of the dead and maimed but when a Commander of men in a war plays it light and loose you want to have him and anyone else who was insensitive to be fired and ruined for life. Who the heck did he cause so much pain too? Gays, you mean the ones that are so wonderful and hard working and deserve our respect and dare I say love? Oh thats right we now embrace them in the military. Well the people that never were in the military embrace them, they don't belong there, and this is just one example of why they don't. HeII the Commander is probably guilty of hate speech. Lets make an example out of him.... oh wait that is what they are doing.

 

[cheri1122]

Well Cheri, the military is there to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. They do that by killing our enemies.
Killing our enemies is part of what they do, but not the whole of it, so characterizing their job as "killing people and breaking things" is false. And sophomoric, IMO.
The military is NOT "peacekeepers" They are NOT rescue squads. They are not there to deliver aid or food. That IS their primary mission. Sorry if you don't understand that. Your daughter will soon.

This isn't the first [or second, or third, etc] time you've "replied" to a statement I never made, nor implied. If you can't take the time to read and comprehend what someone else says, please don't respond, because you've got it WRONG AGAIN. I understand the purpose of the military, but that's NOT the topic of discussion.

 

[RLENT]

Even if I agreed with your description of the military's job, [which I emphatically do not], it

Yeah .... pretty funny ... how the actual purpose of something can be confused, by some (even those who were apparently served) with what is, at least to some extent, the activity of it

Purpose and activity are not the same thing.

And BTW, just for those who seem to be confused about the matter - the purpose of the military/armed forces is: to defend this nation

 

[layoutshooter]

This isn't the first [or second, or third, etc] time you've "replied" to a statement I never made, nor implied. If you can't take the time to read and comprehend what someone else says, please don't respond, because you've got it WRONG AGAIN. I understand the purpose of the military, but that's NOT the topic of discussion.

"Even if I agreed with your description of the military's job, [which I emphatically do not], "


Your statement I believe?

From what you write is seems that you believe that the military's primary mission may be different that what it really is. EVERYONE in the military has a job. Some are combat, everyone else is there to support the combat troops. Anything else that they do is secondary to the primary mission.

The topic of this discussion is the videos that a commander made. Some understand them, some don't. I do.

Due to the horrible reality they face every day their "humor" tends to be different than those who have never faced their reality would understand.

That is the difference between first hand experience and the other kinds.

One of the FIRST things your daughter will be taught in basic training is how to kill. That IS her job once she joins. She will have another job, whatever that is, that is designed to insure that those combat troops are more effective in their job. IF NEEDED she WILL be required to pick up a rifle and know how to use it. Even in the Navy.

 

[cheri1122]

So you disrespected the dead and their memory, probably on occasion mocked their physical appearance so that you could cope. Did you ever say something inappropriate to a new nurse or did a new nurse ever over hear your disrespectful comments of the injured or dead?

It's odd to hear you justify your disrespect of the dead and maimed but when a Commander of men in a war plays it light and loose you want to have him and anyone else who was insensitive to be fired and ruined for life. Who the heck did he cause so much pain too? Gays, you mean the ones that are so wonderful and hard working and deserve our respect and dare I say love? Oh thats right we now embrace them in the military. Well the people that never were in the military embrace them, they don't belong there, and this is just one example of why they don't. HeII the Commander is probably guilty of hate speech. Lets make an example out of him.... oh wait that is what they are doing.

In medical terminology, a cabbage isn't dead - just their brain.
Much like those who find nothing wrong with humiliating undeserving people, for no good reason, even.
Had any one who could have been hurt, upset, or offended heard me say such things, and complained, I'd have been fired. Deservedly.
Every person who works with tragedy, accidents, and death, has to cope with it somehow - gallows or black humor is a universal mechanism for that, used by police, firefighters, paramedics, doctors, etc, but NEVER when or where it could be overheard by anyone who would be [rightfully] upset.
PS Very often, the new nurses were worse than the rest, cos they had fresh jokes.