for reporting sexual assaults...really hard to believe http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/14/health/military-sexual-assaults-personality-disorder/
the thing that I don't get is why this is not being widely reported...oh yeah I completely forgot for a second all about the "liberal" media
It's an extremely upsetting story. It reads like something out of a dystopic sci-fi novel, in which bureaucratic institutions hold all the power and the individual has no recourse for justice. They can say that day is night and 2 + 2 = 5, and by saying it they make it so. I'm impressed with the women who've come forward and distressed by the realization that it's probably not going to do much good.
You are asking for civility from an institution singularly designed to kill people and break shit. I have little sympathy for what happens to trained murderers whatever sex they might be.
That's really a matter of semantics, your defensive forces will still essentially constitute a force of "trained killers", as you called them. So it seems to me you aren't really opposed to armed forces as much as you resent their deployment outside of your borders.
The motive as to why you are killing makes all the difference. I said "trained murderers" for a reason.
I agree, it should be a much bigger story. As for the "liberal media," I'll play. One could argue the following: Perhaps because this could end up reflecting poorly on Obama as it goes up the chain of command. (Not that Obama is in any way culpable, but he could, rightly or wrongly, be blamed for not taking action). Hard to push the GOP's "war on women", when the military, under a Democrat Commander in Chief, allows this to happen. This same media was rightfully all over the Tailhook scandal when Bush was in charge. To what do you attribute the disparate treatment of these heinous scandals?
the tailhook scandal took a long time for the media to jump into as well, it was quietly being dismissed by most of the armed services papers at the time, and only persistence finally got the media involved, then they were all-in. It sure as hell had nothing to do with who the commander in chief was at the time The military is run very poorly, but very authoritatively - when I was in, it seemed the thing it most wanted to protect was itself; its chain of command and its budget - the public was secondary at best. When it does something wrong, it doesn't look to expose (or usually even fix) the actual bad parts, it looks to protect them instead. Friendly fire incidents such as Pat Tillman, Abu Ghraib, the various other bad things about Iraq's "mission", etc. Not to worry, they'll find a very low-ranking member or two to blame everything on, they usually do. A committee will be formed, a paper will be drawn up - a paragraph will be inserted in the Basic Training Manual. Any sort of personnel issues, especially with enlisted folks is usually ignored unless you can get a member of Congress interested, one in the majority at the time preferably. Heck only knows how much stuff they got away with back when the media didn't dare ever question them at all; back in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam (where some questions were finally starting to be asked after a while).
Is any bureaucracy really any different? Anyone want to do anything that would achieve actual efficiency? Here's a proposal from a decade ago, to reduce a bloated total of officers: http://www.g2mil.com/shrinkofficers.htm A few years later: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/05/airforce_military_officers_051710w/ "(during) Vietnam ... there was one general or flag officer for every 2,615 people in other ranks ... March 2010, the 1.4 million service members on active duty were being led by 950 generals and flags — or one for every 1,489 troops. ... 38 four-stars, 149 three-stars, 299 two-stars and 464 one-stars." "More than 20 years ago, astronaut and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, was convinced the force had too many senior officers. ... calling it “brass creep.” “I am not sure it takes more generals to wage peace than to wage war” Ratios of general and flag officers to other troops over the years: • August 1945: 1 to 6,000 • September 1967: 1 to 2,615 • September 1994: 1 to 1,742 • September 2000: 1 to 1,572 • March 2010: 1 to 1,489 http://usmilitary.about.com/od/promotions/l/blofficerprom.htm
There are three, no actually four, separate illusions operating to make this look like a terrible problem when it really is not. First, choosing August of 45 is surely choosing a peak rather than average point-- the slowdown as it became apparent that peace was at hand had not yet really kicked in, and the last year of the war involved the development of new units to operational readiness faster than they could be officered-- at a guess the realistic ratio would have been more like 1-5000 if the necessary promotions had had to take place. Second, as a standing army is reduced in strength during periods of reduced needs, only a fool would try to maintain a stable officer to enlisted ratio. The officer corps is the skeleton on which the flesh of any expansion will be hung when times of need return. Third, the ever-improving technology of slaughter tends to reduce the need for boots on the ground in favor of supporting fire almost to the vanishing point-- if it is going to be increasingly possible to defeat an enemy by drones and offshore rocketry, one wants the people controlling those things to be technicians, not grunts, and as much as possible career officers who have as big a picture in mind as possible.. So one would hope that modernization would contantly increase the effect complained of. Finally, extended periods of peace and quasi peace always increase the numbers of senior command, and for good reason-- officers are are aging and nothing but old age is killing them. The old guys need to be moved up and out of the way of the young men and women of initiative to keep the force effective. They can serve valid purposes in the beauracracy, but for the most part they need to be gotten out of the field, Occasionally there will be a Farragut who will be heroic at an advanced age, but in general you need to get the Winfield Scotts to positions where their experience can be an advantage, but they won't be holding back the Grants and the Shermans and Sheridans who actually have the energy needed to arrange for "the other poor bastard to die for his country instead." To discard men and women in their 60s who have made a career out of developing the knowledge and skills to protect the country is an awful breach of faith; it makes far better sense to move them up and out to desk jobs where they can top off their service constructively without constricting the opportunities of those just at their peak of energy and initiative. Inevitably you will add some topheaviness this way, and some of it will be in people who have been passed by by the profession; but it is better than the alternatives... and if one of them is Farragut or Scott you won't have lost him to General Motors or the Republic of Berzerkistan just when you really need him.