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Better Late Than Never

Good news for this Memorial Day!

Good news on this Memorial Day; news that to Bill’s mind is long overdue. Some 160 retired Flag Officers serving in the US Armed Forces — that would be generals and admirals — signed a letter, addressed to Congress, demanding the IMMEDIATE removal of all DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — from the US military. And it’s about time, and past time, we heard from these officers. Will Congress follow through?

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27 replies on “Better Late Than Never”

It’s about tiem that these political boot-lickers spoke up for America!! However, please don’t forget the fact that the sewer rat Leftist Fifth Columnists aren’t unaware of the effects on our effectiveness. These Trojan Horses had weakening our nation’s defenses as their goal when they purged the Americans from active duty during the Obama-nation Regime. These are not stupid people. They are traitors. Thank God that the Americans finally took Congress back o that this has SOME chance of being listened to.

Cuz he was talking about Military services, not puddle pirates!

(Former Navy. I’m duty bound to insult the Coasties!)

Coasties are kinda-sorta “naval police,” rather than “military,” except when mobilized. And I still don’t have Space Force implanted in my memory for these things when speaking extemporaneously. No disrespect meant to either!

You are absolutely correct not to include the U.S. Coast Guard when listing America’s Armed Forces. The Coast Guard is armed, it is not a military force. Not even close.

The Coast Guard is not administered by, nor under the control or budget of the Department of Defense. Until the big terrorist panic after 9/11 the Coast Guard was an arm of the Dept. of Transportation. Since 2002 the Coast Guard has been an arm of the Dept. of Homeland Security.

When needed, resources can be allocated from the Coast Guard to the Armed Forces and committed to combat operations. That has not happened in a long time. Not for nearly 20 years now, since Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Even then, there was only ONE single casualty among Coast Guard personnel. ONE death is still an American who gave a life for his country and I do not diminish that sacrifice even a tiny bit.

That said, it’s important to keep the Coast Guard’s risks and losses in perspective. I hardly think they belong on the same page in the same book as the losses suffered by personnel from actual combat military forces.

Coasties in maritime combat roles are the exception that proves the rule. I’m not saying they haven’t served well and valiantly when called upon, they certainly have. It’s just not their job nor raison d’etre.

As such, the Coast Guard may be classed as a military service (Coasties are eligible for VA benefits) but is no more a military force than Customs & Border Protection. Coast Guard is the maritime wing of DHS. It is and I repeat myself, NOT AN ARMED FORCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

It is an insult to actual military forces to include the Coast Guard along with the four main branches of the U.S. Military forces. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Coast Guard, it’s not that they don’t do vital and indispensable work. The Customs and Border Protection of the Dept. of Homeland Security also do vital and indispensable work and no one would even dream of including them in the list of Armed Forces.

I like the Coast Guard, I see them out checking life jackets and safety gear on the water all the time. I appreciate their maintenance of buoys and markers and all their efforts to keep America’s waterways open, safe and secure. Very little of what the Coast Guard does could even be remotely considered military in nature, the vast bulk of their services have nothing at all to do with anything military. I have nothing against them as a service but they are not a FORCE.

Coasties on the other hand will brindle and bridle and get their hackles up if they’re not included with real Forces like the Marines. I’m a Marine, I find that very amusing. They don’t send people like me out to check life jackets and expiration dates on emergency flares, they send people like me out when something absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight.

When I look over in a fighting hole and see a Coastie leading an assault on armed bad guys in a foreign land, I’ll revise my opinion. When the Coasties launch their own fighters off their own aircraft carriers in support of a Marine amphibious assault, I’ll make a place for them in the list of American Armed Forces.

There’s nothing wrong with the Coast Guard at all. They’re just not fighting men and they don’t belong in the same list as fighting men.

Just like fighting men don’t belong in the same list as Customs and Border Protection. I’ve known a few and those C&BP guys back when it was just the U.S. Border Patrol and they are some tough hombres. I’ve met Bill Jordan and admired him greatly. Bill was a Marine before he joined the Border Patrol and he’d be the first to tell you that they’re not even remotely close to the same thing.

On the rare occasions where Coasties do actually get into a real knife fight that’s a very, very uncommon and largely unintentional circumstance.

The Space Force crack I made was just me being funny. For me. Which is a kind of funny that a lot of people don’t get and never will. Not that I care, it changes nothing.

The Vikings had “Berserkers”; crazed, naked, maybe intoxicated, wild-eyed, screaming front-line warriors they’d send straight at the heart of the enemy. The A-hole in me would like to “commission” the DEIs to DIE in this manner. My concern is the same as that of women on the front lines. The compassionate among the men would take risks they normally wouldn’t if these “not-men” became endangered.

The argument made by all three assume something that can no longer be taken for granted. They assume our current government, and I do NOT mean JUST the Biden administration, actually WANT a military capable of winning the next war.

I don’t know how the FO/GO (“Flag Officer” is USN and USCG only) see things, but I can say those wearing oak leaves on down tend more towards the beliefs behind this letter.
BTW, regarding the Army’s pre-boot-camp program, if you’ve ever seen Danny DeVito’s “Renaissance Man,” it’s well worth while.
Point number three – you cannot talk about Col. Olds without mentioning that glorious mustache!

I enlisted in the US Army in January 1975 at the age of 18. Bill, I want to dissuade you from your desire to “know” the “hearts” of those joining, should you be in charge of recruiting.
The average 18-year-old doesn’t have a freakin’ CLUE about things like “heart” and “patriotism.” There are exceptions, of course.
I didn’t learn those things until I saw communism up close and personal. And this was years later.
Fully agree that Barry Soetoro did more to destroy the US military than ANY enemy could possibly have done. But even going back a bit, I knew my time to retire occurred when Bill Clinton decided that “Don’t ask, don’t tell” would be the watchword and legacy of his presidency. I knew then that it wouldn’t be long before we would see the debacle that is now in front of us couched as “wokeism” but otherwise known as a detriment to readiness.
The Chinese are laughing in their won ton soup.

You must be about a year older than me. I joined the Marines in August 1975 just a few days after my 17th birthday. Back then they (and for all I know still do) had a thing called the “DEP”, which stood for Delayed Entry Program. If you were 16 and had your parents consent you could sign up to go active duty as soon after your 17th birthday as was feasible.

I think I was one of the exceptions you mentioned as far as patriotism goes. I have always been a strong patriot as far back as I can remember and well preceding my enlistment. This was a reflection of my upbringing no doubt, my Dad served in Korea in the Army. Probably not so much as far as “heart” goes. You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into when you do something that life altering at that age.

Even with my Dad trying to educate me about what I was getting into. I still had false preconceptions and romanticized ideas about military service. As it turned out, reality got a lot more immediate and interesting after I enlisted.

I remember going to a gun show after Clinton established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. I saw a bumper sticker for sale there, which I did not buy, that said …

“Lonely? No Friends? Bill Clinton says ‘Join the Navy, you’ll have friends up the ass'”.

When I went active the military had not yet begun a policy of regular drug testing. There were a LOT of dopers, even in the Marine Corps. After the drug testing policy went into effect that all got cleaned up real quick.

I was not a bit sad to see those people go. To this day I detest addicts and know quite a bit about what makes people abuse substances. It’s not a disease, it’s a personality disorder and unless someone goes into and stays in treatment of some sort the rest of their lives they generally become a thing called a “dry drunk”. Meaning that the objectionable personality disorder(s) that caused them to become addicts in the first place is/are still predominate in their personality even if they are no longer abusing any substances.

Those people were messing up the Marine Corps badly. After the drug testing was implemented I had sincere hope for the future of military service.

Clinton and Barry Big Ears dashed those hopes.

I haven’t given up all hope yet but as the Left progressively continues to undermine the military those hopes grow ever fainter.

Thanks to Clinton and Obama one dangerous problem has been replaced with another even more dangerous.

Bravo for your background and your foresight – no snark. I spoke for myself when I said I didn’t have a damned clue and even after 5 years of active service — including 3 years spent in Germany where I was confronted with the Soviet threat on a daily basis — I still didn’t quite “get it” until I got to Berlin. OMG. That’s when the brick hit me in the head and I saw the waste, abuse, and laziness inherent in GOVERNMENT “service” and resolved then to adjust my voting accordingly. I have YET to see a professional politician worthy of my vote.
But more to the point – there is no question that Obama and his acolyte SharterJoe have done more to destroy the military than even I could’ve imagined even in my “damn, I’ve got to get out of this” in the mid-90s.

I wonder how many of these 160 officers would be willing (and still qualified) to come out of retirement to man the required posts in senior military and civilian cadres of DOD once the dead wood is removed.

There will certainly be a DIVERSITY of experience and viewpoints among this group, all EUITABLY represented in the fact they signed this letter, and every reason of patriotism to INCLUDE them in these post retirement roles.

From a 2017 link: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/1325984/are-there-too-many-general-officers-for-todays-military/

  • “There are approximately 900 Active-duty general/flag officers (GO/FOs) today of 1.3 million troops. This is a ratio of 1 GO/FO for every 1,400 troops. During World War II, an admittedly different era, there were more than 2,000 GO/FOs for a little more than 12 million Active troops (1:6,000).”

Several other sites said there were legislated statutory limits of 652 general or flag officers for the 4 main services. Another link gave 6 active for the Space Force. I did not bother to try to understand the disconnect.
There may be something “fishy” about my Duck Duck Go search (or my searching skills), but I did not find mention of the 160 officer letter the guys are discussing when I tried to find recent data on # of retired general officers, but perhaps it is in range of 4000 or so, based on an earlier link?
Several links on 200+ officers signing letter in support of Biden’s 2020 election, etc.
So this group of retirees is also all over the map (in both number and outlook), along with suspect reporting by the media and others. But 160 is a lot, while still a small fraction of the total. It would be damning enough if only 16 had signed that particular letter.

The answer to your question is virtually none of those officers could return to active duty for any reason. Retiring from the military is not the same as retiring in civilian life. You don’t generally decide to retire, the military decides that for you. There are several factors that go into that decision, I’m not going to get into all of them here.

Having made that decision, it’s very unlikely that the military would take someone back for any reason.

REGARDING THE NAVY AND THE DRAG QUEEN THAT IS A POSTER??? FOR RECRUITING. WHEN i SERVED FOR 21 YEARS SOME OF THESE FOLKS ACCIDENTALLY FELL OVERBAORD.

I don’t know about anyone ‘accidentally’ falling overboard but I was MarDet aboard CVN-65 as I was being relocated to a TDY. So I was among other things working the brig. This was during the days of the old “Red Line Brig”. In those days the brig was not a pleasant experience at all.

While I was there someone (not sure who) caught 3 sailors pulling a train in a crew berthing space. They didn’t even send them down to us in the brig. They helicoptered them off the ship immediately and as far as I know expedited a general discharge for all of them.

Back in those days it was bad enough for a straight sailor to end up in the clutches of MarDet Duty Escort Supervisors in a Red Line Brig. We talked about what we’d do to them if they’d sent them down but of course that was all speculation.

The speculation wasn’t very pleasant. I doubt the reality would have been a whole lot better if we’d gotten our hands on them.

My point here is that it seems Command didn’t want to risk an incident by confining those sailors to the brig. Whatever officer (I assume the XO, might have been the Captain) made that decision apparently wasn’t confident that the sailors in question would emerge from the brig in the same condition they went in.

This was long before Bill Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and yeah, if you were a gay sailor in the U.S. Naval services you’d best control your impulses and limit your sexual adventures to discrete time ashore. Faggotry was about as close to zero tolerance as anything in the military can be.

It’s important, I think, to make some distinctions here. If someone is gay and wants to live that lifestyle, they should not be abused by straight people. No one has a right to go around beating up other people ashore in a civilian venue.

That sort should also not join the military and if they do then they knew they’re in violation of doctrine and they knew that they wouldn’t be treated kindly if they didn’t behave themselves aboard. (In the Marines, “aboard” means both on land at a base or at sea on a ship.)

That’s the way it used to be, I think it was a mistake to change that doctrine.

Bear in mind that what I’m saying here applied to my time in the Marines, things may have changed since then. People who have not served in the military often have some preconceptions that I find puzzling …

They don’t cut all your hair off when you get to boot camp so as to ‘make you the same as everyone else’. That’s what wearing a uniform does. They cut off all your hair because recruits report to Boot Camp with head lice. The barbers make a note of any recruit they find with head lice and those recruits are then referred for delousing treatments.

Lice are a larger problem than most middle class people realize. These recruits come from all walks of life, from the poorest inner-city schools to the wealthiest suburban schools and some from no school at all. Head lice can be an issue for any of them and it’s something that will spread like wildfire in a barracks environment.

If having no hair to speak of were to ‘make you like everyone else’ then ALL military personnel, at least all enlisted personnel, would never be allowed to grow more than 1/8th inch of stubble during their entire careers. That’s not so, there are grooming standards that are relatively strict but you don’t have to go bald and stay that way just to ‘be like everyone else’.

The Marines have had a program to bring recruits up to physical fitness standards for decades. This idea of getting someone ready for the physical rigors of Boot Camp is nothing new. In the Marines, in my day, It was called “PCP”. That stands for “Physical Conditioning Platoon”. We used to jokingly refer to it as “Porky C_nt Processing”.

When you arrive at Boot Camp you get your issue, your unit assignment and as soon as possible you do a thing called an “IPFT” which stands for “Initial Physical Fitness Test”. If you fail that test for whatever reason running the gamut from being too fat to being too weak, you get dropped from the training cycle and sent to PCP.

Training normally takes 3 months if nothing goes wrong during the training cycle. If you can’t train for whatever reason, or you fail a phase of training, you are dropped from your training unit and “recycled” by being moved back to a newer unit to repeat that phase of training. This applies to any reason you are unable to train or you fail the test at the end of a phase of training. One example would be a failure to meet a minimum marksmanship standard on the Rifle Range. If you can’t shoot, you stay at the Rifle Range until you can.

If you’re too fat, too weak or whatever, you don’t even get that far. If you fail your IPFT you get sent to PCP where you are essentially in limbo until the PCP personnel release you back into a training cycle. In PCP you exercise all day, your diet is strictly controlled and you suffer whatever other measures are deemed necessary for you to enter a training cycle.

You don’t get to training until you can handle the training. By the time you enter or re-enter the training cycle the training is ‘easy’ by comparison. You don’t want to get sent to fat body school.

There’s another special segment of Boot Camp called “CCP”. I get irritated when people use those initials for “Chinese Communist Party”. That’s wrong, Chinese Communists are “PRC”, People’s Republic of China”. “CCP” stands for “Correctional Custody Platoon” and it’s where they send you if you violate any part of the UCMJ (or Uniform Code of Military Justice) which is military law. Or if they feel like you need an attitude adjustment. In CCP you make little rocks out of big rocks all day with a sledge hammer that has a stainless steel handle. Unlike the normal wooden handle you can’t break the stainless steel one to get a break for a few minutes while someone gets you a new hammer.

You can get sent to CCP for smarting off to a Drill Instructor, which is something I never once saw happen in Boot Camp. Being a smart alec is as rare as hen’s teeth in Boot Camp, despite what you might have seen in movies. Those people are freakin’ serious as hell. Part of your training is to rid you of the impulse to say and do stupid things. It never once occurred to me to be a smartass about anything in Boot Camp, at least not in view or hearing of a Drill Instructor.

Those men are training you for a very, very serious job. If you aren’t serious about it, they’ll help you understand the error of your ways.

There is only one place in the United States Marine Corps where physical fitness standards do not apply. That is in the recruiting field. If you have a fat recruiter he’s been on recruiting duty for a long time. Which means he’s really good at it. So if you have a fat recruiter you want to be very, very careful what you agree to, or what you think you are agreeing to.

Lol, good story Harry. They probably wouldn’t have taken you in the Marines and if they did you’d have been bone miserable.

Yeah, lots of tobacco smoking. I’m a cigar nut to this day and smoke 2-3 every day. Sometimes more. I got a call today from the place I buy my cigars, they had a special on the ones I buy for my “everyday” cigar. I stocked up, it was a good deal. I’m a good enough cigar customer that they call me when they have something I might like.

My son wanted to go in the Marines, he was very fit and extremely athletic. I talked him out of it and he went in the Navy instead. It’s not that I didn’t think he’d make a good Marine, he would have. It’s that he is my kid and I wanted him as safe and comfortable as possible aboard a really big ship. So he became a Naval aviator and flew helicopters for the bulk of his career. Still dangerous, not the same sort of danger.

(One time he sent me a screen shot from his phone. It had connected to Iran Telecommunications. He was maybe a little closer to shore than he should have been. We both got a giggle out of that.)

I knew damn well what kind of danger he would have been in had he joined the Marines and while I have no regrets, that’s not what I wanted for my kid. I lived through it, surprisingly to me most of all. He might not.

All worked out well, he spent his whole career in the Navy, the old man (me) giving him grief about being a “Squid” and all. He’s retired from the military now; good skills, good civilian job, good pension, good benefits. And he’s not only still alive, he’s given me 4 top notch grandkids to dote over. The youngest named after me …

The Marines are not the place for everyone and if it’s not the place for you, then you should not go there.

As for you not joining the Navy, even on purpose, I don’t hold that against you even a tiny bit. Most of my close friends have served in either the Navy or Marine Corps but that’s not due to any bias on my part. We just understand each other well and naturally gravitate to the same sort of environment.

That said, I have friends who didn’t serve and I think just as highly of them. Good men and true are not only those who have worn a uniform. It’s not a matter of regard, I hold those people in equal regard to my military friends. It’s a matter of experience that they didn’t share but they love hearing we who did talk about it and we try not to disappoint them 🙂

I know I’d have been a different person if it were not for being in the Marines. I used to sing pretty well, the Marines blew my voice out decades ago. (Any damage the cigars did came after not before that.) I don’t even sing in church anymore out of respect for those around me. I was a fair hand at poetry, I was even published a few times. Not that mush and bilgewater romantic stuff … The other kind. The Marines took my poetry from me and I haven’t seen it, nor had an urge to write any, for decades.

Etc. It was a life changing experience and it colors my thinking and my attitudes to this very moment. I don’t miss the poetry because rather than write about that stuff, I lived it. The Marines gave me other things that I now cherish in the place of those things. I think it was a fair bargain.

I am totally with Bill on this…BO has done a “fabulous” job with his “fundamental changes” and the current status of our military is the scariest!
Our enemies are having to do nothing but “wait” so we MUST do something and that can only happen with a change in leadership. 2024 cannot get here fast enough and that is too much time for Austin and Miley to continue this DEI Bullshit! But, as Scott said, nothing will probably come with this, as our Congress has other priorities. Any and all elected officials who served in our military MUST be aware of this, and MUST do that something to wake up their constituents! WE can start by calling and writing…..everyone…..
GOD Bless America!
Remember all those who served!!!

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