Donald Trump Presidency discussion thread III

kilns wrote: »

So would you be happy to go into War and put your life on the line for the ego of an overly sensitive man?

Not particularly, no. At least if it can be shown that that's the reason, in which case I would hope that my senior leadership (SecDef, SecArmy, CCdrs etc) would not pass down such orders.
That is beside the point, however. Our job is to be prepared to fight and win the nation's wars, not to pass judgement on the merits of those wars. Military preparedness does not start or end with the particular person sitting in the oval office, it is something which needs to be conducted on an ongoing basis regardless. It should be noted that our morale problem did not start with the Obama administration, it's been coming down for quite a few years. The difference is that this is the first administration in quite a long time which has placed people in charge who are determined to reverse it.

Big difference between defending against aggression and being the aggressors

Not to the soldiers in action. We exist to carry out government policy by force of arms if necessary. That means we train to fight. Go watch the recent RTE show "The Recruits", how much time do they spend teaching "conflict resolution" vs "Section-in-attack"? We have a set expectation as to why we are in the military. Not meeting that expectation can both demoralize and risk lives.

Of which of the six wars America is currently actively engaged or actively supporting are american troops "defending the state"?

Which of the dozens in the last 70 years for that matter?

How holistic a view do you want to take? The security of a nation and its people does not begin at its borders, under this philosophy we have had combat troops in Europe for the last 70 years. It's the same reason we ended up in Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait or Grenada. It's why we ended up in Afghanistan.
However, the point is that whatever we end up using the military for, be it facing down the Russians in Latvia or delivering humanitarian supplies in Japan, we want to be trained and equipped to do the best job possible.

"It doesn't matter that the commander-in-chief is mentally unstable; all that matters is that we're suitably equipped to fight the pointless wars he's idiotically dragging us towards."

We can't control that. We can control how we perform when we are in operations, whether it is pointless or not, whether it is tomorrow or 2021. We are not Thailand or Turkey. It is not our function in the US to conduct coup d'etats or refuse lawful orders because we disagree with them. Civil control of the military is the absolute bedrock of the US military structure, and honestly, I don't think many people would prefer it any other way. So, we place trust in our civilian structure, we place trust in our senior leadership, and in the meantime, we get cracking on what is important at our level.

The problem is that just carrying out orders is not always a defence.

It is not, agreed. But it can be depending on what the soldier in question does or does not know. The question of "Do we attack this country" is not one which it is the place of humble line soldiers to question, that is something with which only the highest echelons have to wrestle. As long as we trust that there are sufficient checks in the system to prevent unlawful orders from filtering down to us, we have no moral or morale quandries on the matter.

Given that your own commander in chief openly shows disdain and ignorance of the Constitution and thus, your own oath, why is morale high?

See above commentary. We have faith that we will not be mis-used (Even if only because we have no other alternative), and we are being treated like adults again.

That is a very disturbing post.

Sexual violence within the US military is a major, real problem. 32% of female members have experienced assault, a multiple of that sexual harrasment. A DoD study indicated that over half of those who report sexual violence face retaliation. The idea that sexual violence doesn't impact on unit cohesion and military readiness and effectiveness is rather hard to give credence to.

As to the idea that the motivation or origins of the war don't have an impact on soldiers... I think a few Vietnam veterans might disagree

OK, you've apparently focused on a sort of trigger word and missed the larger context. It's not that sexual harassment isn't an important issue to address, it's that it is being addressed in a counter-productive way. We can either address it by holding commanders responsible for the climate on sexual assault in their unit, and by creating a culture of professionalism, or we can address it by mandating that every three months, soldiers sit through the same hour-long lecture. Which of these two is better suited?

And every three months we had (Requirement changed to every two years about two months ago) to sit through the same hour-long lecture on suicide awareness. Equal Opportunity. We have to find room for every good idea from Anti-Terrorism Level 1 training through the Army Accident Avoidance Course to Trafficking in Persons training. As mentioned, the Regular Army are mandated to train 20 months' worth of man-hours every year. I'm a reservist, we only get 20 hours a month, on average, to train. Every quarter, we lose (Well, lost, as of this quarter they reduced the rules) half a day teaching the same stuff which has already been taught. Indeed, Decembers we don't even train, we just sit through our mandatory annual briefs in an auditorium (or aircraft hangar) so we can get the checkboxes checked.

The pilot quoted in one of the articles about there being more paperwork to go on leave than engage in combat wasn't joking. When I was in Ft Knox, we would be given passes on weekends. Most of us drove places. We had to use the Travel Risk Planning System. (TRiPS). Here, you don't need to be logged in to use it, go look at it. https://trips.safety.army.mil/ (Select "army").

As you can see, it's an eight-page form. Now, when I was a humble civilian in UCD, I did not need to fill out risk assessments with contingency planning in order to drive to see my girlfriend in Galway. And God help you if you have a motorcycle. As, at the time, a commander of a combat unit with 100 soldiers, it's downright insulting. (Fortunately, it has also been cancelled as of two weeks ago) .The idiocy of having to wear reflective belts on top of clothing already designed to be reflective (or better yet, wearing them in combat zones) has become a cultural reference point equal to the Huey of Vietnam or the Iwo Jima flag raising of WW2.

Somehow the solution to every issue in the military has become bureaucracy as opposed to common sense. Instead of empowering leaders to fix identified problems, and putting some trust in soldiers, we are more and more micromanaged to address the topic-du-jour, in an organisation which by its very function is supposed to be as un-micromanaged as possible in order to be effective. If we don't empower soldiers to make their own decisions in peacetime, how are we expecting them to do so in combat?

This is now, thankfully, being addressed. We're not saying that race relations, sexual harassment, transgender acceptance, whatever, in the army isn't important, but we are much happier simply reaffirming "Respect the rank, respect the uniform, be a f***ng professional. Now let's go into the field" instead of having repetitive briefs on each individual subject for hours. Being harassment free and reserving sufficient time to train for combat are not mutually exclusive propositions. We are seeing in this last year a focus back on warfighting instead of administration, and we're happy for it.

briany wrote: »

If any other politician had been accused of paying off a pornstar, colluding with the Russians and belittling a Vietnam veteran, their political career would be over. They'd be a punchable punchline living in exile somewhere. Trump wasn't lying when he said he could shoot somebody and not lose any voters.

Sacramento Bee had an article this week asking a similar question about Gavin Newsom, the current leader in the race for California governor, Democrat.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/marcos-breton/article210409949.html

If one of Newsom's opponents – say, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or State Treasurer John Chiang – were bankrolled by one of the richest men in California for most of their lives, as Newsom has been by oil heir Gordon Getty, they would be answering for it every day on the campaign trail.
...
If another gubernatorial candidate, Delaine Eastin, had slept with a subordinate while she was state superintendent of public instruction, and if the subordinate had gotten thousands of public dollars in a payoff not seen before or since, would the public even accept her as a candidate?
...
The narrative became that Newsom was going to rehab. He let everyone believe that he was going into legitimate alcohol rehab. It was all part of the Newsom redemption tour.

And then suddenly, as reported by Hart last month, it turned out he didn't. He went to some encounter group meetings run by one of his enablers. But real legitimate alcohol rehab? Nope.

As Mr Breton observes, nobody cares about the actions, the sex, the payoffs, the bankrolling. They just care about party affiliation and what they might get out of him being in charge.

Cheers for the little 'trigger' dig Manic,

Wasn't meant as a dig per se, if you took it as such I apologise. I do note that of all the issues mentioned, and it's not as if we don't have a suicide problem, etc, you (and others) all zeroed in on sexual harassment for some reason.

There is no source of confidence that briefs work either. We know for a fact that they take up training hours and that they royally irritate the hell out of troops, so if there is or is not a benefit on the matter of the various subjects being taught, they certainly have a negative effect on training and morale. The running joke was that all the suicide awareness briefs were driving us to suicide.

However, unlike, say, 20 years ago, we are now aware as an organisational culture that there is a significant harassment issue, suicide issue, PII issue, phishing issue, and whatever else. Besides, it's not that all such training is being removed entirely, we still have our mandatory SHARP and ACE which has to be done, for example, but it's a far more reasonable once-every-two-years instead of the 'once every three months' which got slapped on us when it was a political hot button. We have never really had a period of time when these things were both an active consideration and when briefs didn't keep getting added on, and there are more factors to be concerned about than we can reasonably schedule into formalised training. Thus, let commanders run their units and schedule their training as they see fit, with the understanding that these are factors which are being evaluated. Speaking of, I only get space for a few lines in the annual officer's evaluation report. Last I checked, one of them had to state "Supports the Army SHARP program". More important than expanding on leadership or tactical capabilities, apparently.

As the pilot said, how many times do we need formal training (with a certificate to be printed out upon completion and turned into the unit training NCO) to not put a random CD into a government computer?