The world today is a very, very dangerous place. I won’t start listing all the danger points, but a nuclear Iran is a good place to start. So we really, really need a military that is sharp and ready to rock when, not if, something bad happens that we must deal with.
But our military, at least our Army, is just plain un-ready and getting less ready. The case in point is a message from the grandson of a friend. This young man is a Staff Sergeant (E6) in the US Army Reserves. He just returned from a month of Reserve training at Fort McCoy, WI. His message is frightening—even though we could all see this coming.
“Training was just absolute crap. We are now the safety army. Everything we did had to have a safety officer, emergency personnel (EMT type, not even our own medics counted), and we all had to wear safety belts…doing tactical training…. We weren’t even allowed to shoot blanks as some soldiers had no ear plugs and brass could cause fires to start. Also not enough equipment was fielded so some soldiers had to pretend they had body armor on….and we did sexual harassment training….three times. Two hours of power-point each time. And suicide training. And environmental protection training. All death-by-power-point blocks of instructions. I think I sat in training more than I physically did anything. And as always, didn’t actually train for my actual MOS the entire time there. Lots of litigation, lots of overhead crap from civilians running our training environments, and LOTS of “cease all training and review the risks and safety of the mission parameters” every time some poor bloke stubbed his toe. We aren’t an army anymore. I had a platoon of soldiers freak out over mock rounds of mortars going off a quarter mile away. I think I’m done with this grandpa.”
This is a very sad day for our Army. I fear that this letter describes the typical situation across our military. It’s a disaster for our nation. And it raises serious doubt about either the intelligence or the integrity of those active and reserve officers wearing stars.
