A long time ago (now) in my universe which seems so far away (removed by 20+ years), I recevied training in Soviet Doctrine. The instructors were very knowledgeable regarding the attachment of Soviet political officers to virtually every unit, and how the indoctrination into Communist Party thought took primacy over tactical training.
With our somewhat justified arrogance, we felt quite superior in our ability to train for the fight first and then there were some other details to be discussed. I read the news these days, and see we have become much like those we won a major war against, the war to save people from the subjugation under socialist totalitarian rule.
Not to say there are not some issues that needed to be addressed, but somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that most everyone who has served, or is serving in the US Military, are good and decent people with fine moral compasses that work well. We also seem to have forgotten that bad things happen, but the normal condition is good, and the very abnormal conditions don’t show up very often in our society, and therefore within our Military as a whole.
The society of “me” has taken over and the team mentality has been left for professional sports it seems, if you do see any evidence of it reported. In actuality, that isn’t the truth, for major natural, and not so natural disasters in this country and even outside of our borders, show that Americans can roll up their sleeves and collectively get their hands dirty to “git ‘r done.”
The MSM/HBM would have you believe otherwise, not by telling you that teamwork has died, but negelecting to ever report it often, possibly hoping you’ll forget and then filter your other decisions through data points of what is being reported.
Back at the ranch the purpose of this post:
Because of an incident, or which little reality has been sorted out just yet, in the manner in which any of us, being in the boots of the Marines and Corpsman, would certainly want to be, the Marines (and I’ll predict the Army will soon “follow in their wake”) will all get “core values” training.
My response: Great. Just. Flippin. Great. Great idea: Lets stop everything we are doing, and tell those who had nothing to do with this, that they need to be mindful of a set of standards that has been successfully serving them for years. No doubt, some handsome checks will be written to some egghead, never wore a uniform types, to pull from pop current cultural info just what it is Marines need to know about how to react in battle, or around civilians. Just what’s needed: Pile more money on people to create a “cirriculum” to be presented (no doubt with a strong warning to do it by reading it exactly), so the Marines can then tell the people of the nation “we told them!”
Hey! Note to Generals: You’re supposed to lead, not react. Marines in an ambush are to react. Get a clue and tell the world your Marines are already the most well versed warriors, in terms of how to handle a war where the enemy has no flag, no uniform, uses actual civilians as ablative shielding and “PR” fodder, has been known to purposely set up multiple IEDs to continue attacks, etc, etc, etc, in the entire world, if not the best versed in all of the history of mankind in conflict….Don’t shield murderers, but don’t you dare fry the innocents just to keep the public opinion polls up for the war and the President.
So, to wrap up, back to the Soviets. They had their brain washing sessions and had to toe the party line. The consequences were not just being passed over for the next promotion, but they could be far more terminal. There are a variety of issues in the past decade that have caused us to halt when one person, or small unit, goes “off the reservation,” be in in dating realtionships, community “get togethers,” sexual encounters, or just because someone got their feeling hurt over a word they didn’t like, and use up valuable man hours that could be used to train warfighters to be even better.
What a message we send to the troops in the field? Maybe something like this:
Generals of Marines: “We will not have you embarassing us!”
Troops in the Open: “What did we do now?”
GOMs: “Well, we know it wasn’t you directly, but…(note the “but” – “disregard everything I said before “but” but) if one did it, then one more of you may do it and we want to make sure you understand not to do that.”
TsIO: “It wasn’t us, it was a few guys somewhere else.”
GOMs: “Not to worry, we can’t afford another publicity attack like this again, so, this is an order: Sit down, listen to the training we are sending out. report up the chain of command attendance, and if some don’t receive training on the appointed day, follow up and report completion of training to all hands. Make service record entries to document attendance. And, in case it wasn’t clear, we do mean this is ‘All Hands’ training, with NO EXCEPTIONS!”
TsIO: “Aye, aye, sir!”
The more I think about it, the more I realize this is becoming a very lawyer-like approach to damage control, and more like the way civilians, private sector businesses handle things: Give the employee a book/manual/seminar. Write down they went. If they do anything to violate that, hands have been washed in advance, and management can declare: “It wasn’t my fault!” It helps in keeping law suits away in the civilian sector….
I personally was involved in one such follow up, whcih I intend to blog about during the anniversary of the time frame when it occured. Suffice it to say I travlled the entire East Coast fleet, to include chasing some ships as far as the Red Sea, just to be able to file reports saying “that will never happen again” when it was one ship that failed and killed people in an exercise. It was a fairly costly trip for four of us, not to mention the four jobs that had to be covered by others for a period of almost three months.
We have become, in this case, our former enemy. I guess I’ll continue to wonder at what is causing us to continue to adopt the methods and procedures of failure….
The solution: Get the general and flag officers to let the American people know, and the President, that it will be handled properly, in accordance with the UCMJ, and that our military is well equipped to do the right thing. Oh, yeah, people with stars on their collars: Act like you believe in abd trust your people. It was you who trained them….
Note to the more refined readers: One “label” above was picked for the symbolism, not by accident…
Fianl note to BGCol Karpinski: Shut up and shit down. You’re not in the loop or the game. You failed, take it like and officer who was given great responibility. Many have been in your shoes, so quit whining.
Thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.
