Tag: US military

A recent poll shows that the U.S. public is strongly supportive of the U.S. military’s Asia pivot:

New analysis of the Chicago Council survey results on Asian issues by Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura shows that over three-fifths of Americans now express support for the U.S. rebalance to Asia and that American favorability toward its two closest American allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, have reached their highest levels since the poll was started. Sixty-two percent of Americans recognize that Japan is one of America’s top ten trading partners and 64 percent support a long-term U.S. military presence in South Korea. (Defense One)

Though a high percentage of the public supports troops in Korea, less people have a favorable opinion of South Korea compared to Japan:

Analysis of the Chicago Council poll results for Japan by Michael Green of CSIS underscores the high level of trust among Americans toward Japan, rating Japan fourth globally in favorability (at 62 out of 100) behind only Canada (79), Great Britain (74), and Germany (65). …………

My review of the Chicago Council poll results for Korea shows a growing gap in American favorability toward South Korea (55 out of 100) versus North Korea, which at 23 out of 100 scored the lowest favorability among nations included in the poll.

You can read more at the link.

Is this a microcosm of what could happen if the US military was to drop its physical standards for women in the Infantry just to appease the feminists?:

The Secret Service has been under fire for failing to stop an armed man from jumping the White House fence and running through the president’s home, and some critics have begun asking if political correctness is partly to blame for the extent of the security breach.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, the jumper, Omar Gonzalez, “overpower[ed] a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance” of the White House and then ran past the stairway to the presidential living quarters and into the East Room where he was finally tackled by an off-duty agent. Without explanation, the Times deleted the word “female” from the opening paragraph of its story (the Washington Post similarly edited the word “female” out of its story).

Few details have been reported about how precisely Gonzalez overpowered the female agent, but it’s certainly possible that the Secret Service’s disparate physical strength requirements for men and women may be endangering the life of the president.  [The Weekly Standard]

You can read more at the link, but I do find it interesting how the mainstream media has kept the fact that the overpowered agent was female quiet.  First of all we do not know how Gonzalez overpowered the agent which could mean the lower physical standards were immaterial.  If she was overpowered simply because Gonzalez was stronger then her then we would never hear about it anyway.  However, I have repeatedly advocated for women to be given the opportunity to serve in the Infantry just like they should be able to protect the President if they can meet the same current standards that men have to meet.  If the feminists were able to get lower standards for women that protect the President then how long will it be before they demand lower standards to get women into the Infantry as well?

A US Army general was forced to retire at a reduced rank due to a sexual assault accusation:

A general fired in March 2013 after allegations he sexually assaulted a female civilian adviser said that while he denies the charges, he “accepts the responsibility for becoming intoxicated that evening” and that “due process was followed.”

Then-Maj. Gen. Ralph O. Baker was relieved of his post as head of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa after the investigation, a copy of which was provided recently to The Washington Post via a request under the Freedom of Information Act and served as the basis of an Oct. 1 report. The Army did not respond by press time to a subsequent Army Times request for the investigation.

The Post, citing military documents, outlined the accuser’s account of an alleged July 22, 2012, incident in the back of an SUV headed to Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, after a private party. She said Baker, who’d been drinking, put his hand between her legs. She said she fought off the alleged advances and reported the incident to the Defense Department inspector general the following January, according to the Post, after feeling too embarrassed to notify any other passengers in the vehicle. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link, but here are some quick thoughts. First of all the accusation did not bring criminal charges likely because it was another one of those he said she said cases especially since she told no one in the car of what she claims happened to her. Secondly the term sexual assault has been furthered cheapened. Having someone put their hand up your thigh is inappropriate, but should it be equated with violent rape? Thirdly why is this general drinking and fraternizing with subordinates on a deployment?  I am willing to bet that is the real reason for his relief since there was no evidence of the inappropriate contact in the vehicle by the General.  With that all said good riddance to this General because the Army does not need senior leaders that think they are still reliving their frat house fraternity days.

This author makes a good point that the Pentagon has a creditability problem in regards to complaining about unscrupulous lenders praying on military servicemembers:

Would an E-6 careerist nearing retirement accept a $30,000 car loan if forced to pay back a total of $390,000 in principal and interest?
Would an E-7 accept a $30,000 loan to make a down payment on a home or to wipe out credit card debt if the lifetime cost of that decision were $386,000 in lost retired pay?
The answer to both questions, regrettably, is: You bet.
Hundreds of career servicemembers every month make a comparable choice while in their 15th year of service. That’s when, in return for an immediate cash bonus of $30,000, they make an irrevocable decision to opt out of “High-3” retirement and accept the less generous “Redux” plan.
The loan shark here is the federal government, the same Congress and Department of Defense that like to get tough with payday lenders outside of military bases who prey on young or naïve enlisted members. Meanwhile, they offer their own rotten deal, which every year gets a little worse, say economists at the defense think tank CNA. (Stars and Stripes)

You can read more at the link.

Here is an article about the trial of a dirtbag drill sergeant that was sentenced to 20 years in prison for forcing trainees to have sex with him. What I found of interest is another example of why these cases are hard to prosecute:

A medic Sanchez deployed with to Afghanistan accused Sanchez of forcing her to have sex with him while they waited to get evacuated from a combat outpost.
She testified that she didn’t fight back and didn’t report the incident until months later, when she faced repercussions for assaulting a military policeman while drunk in Alaska where she was based.
She mentioned three other men in the military who had assaulted her, but those claims didn’t result in charges. She said the relationship with those men had been consensual at one point.
Pressed for more details about the alleged incident involving Sanchez, the woman testified that she had memory loss from being exposed to three roadside bombs.
“I don’t remember step by step” of how it happened, she told Judge Nance from the stand. (Stars and Stripes)

It is a good thing the prosecution had plenty of other witnesses because if this soldier was the star witness he probably would have gotten off.

I guess joining the military is another one of those jobs that Americans supposedly won’t do:

A small number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally will have an opportunity to join the military for the first time in decades under a new Defense Department policy unveiled Thursday.

The new rules will expand an existing program allowing recruiters to target foreign nationals with high-demand skills, mostly rare foreign language expertise or specialized health care training.

For the first time, the program — known as Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI — will be open to immigrants without a proper visa if they came to the U.S. with their parents before age 16. More specifically, they must be approved under a 2012 Obama administration policy known as Deferred Action for Child Arrivals, or DACA.

The new DoD policy may be the first phase of a broader governmentwide effort to ease pressure on immigrants and create new paths to citizenship. President Obama, frustrated with the failure of Congress to pass any substantial immigration reform, has vowed to aggressively use his presidential authority to change the way immigration policies are carried out. (Military Times)

You can read more at the link, but I am sure this is just a coincidence that this was announced shortly before an election.

I have not discussed the Andrew Tahmooressi case here on the ROK Drop because of how little information there is out there about it. The usual suspects have been using it to bash the Obama administration, but now people need to seriously consider if he intentionally drove into Mexico with those weapons:

If the judge throws the case out on technical grounds, we’ll probably never know for sure whether Tahmooressi was telling the truth when he claimed that he crossed the border by accident after making a wrong turn out of a parking lot in San Ysidro.

But if the trial goes on, that question will be very much at issue. To find Tahmooressi guilty, the judge will have to determine that he intended to break the law by bringing military-style weapons and ammunition into Mexico, which has strict anti-gun laws.

In May, sources showed the arrest video to a reporter for Tijuana’s fearless weekly magazine Zeta.

In a story headlined “Ex-Marine did not enter Mexico by mistake,” Ines Garcia Ramos reported that around 10:30 p.m. on March 31, as Tahmooressi began to drive into Mexico, border officers who noticed a mattress and other large items in his truck waved him over to an inspection area, where his weapons were discovered during a search. Contrary to his assertion that he stopped to ask how to return to the U.S., she wrote, he appeared to be driving away from the border. (After his guns were discovered, he called 911, telling an American operator he had crossed the border “by accident … and they’re trying to take my guns from me.”) (LA Times)

You can read more at the link, but before Tahmooressi drove into Mexico he walked across the border earlier in the day and checked into a hotel. So if he had no intention of driving into Mexico then why did he check into a hotel and then go back to get his truck?

Odierno must get frustrated by members of Congress complaining to him about Army cuts when they are the ones responsible for it:

Fiscal 2016 is the breaking point,” Odierno said, warning it would bring “a significant degradation of readiness.”
Complicating matters is an unusual burden on Army headquarters units, Odierno said. Each one has been cut by about 25 percent, and yet he is sending them to Iraq, to Europe and to Africa to help with coordinating the Ebola response, as well as maintaining the normal rotations in Afghanistan and South Korea.
Enough is enough, he said, and the Army’s tasks aren’t going to get any easier. “I’m not seeing, in ‘16, peace breaking out all over the world.”
Defense advocates on Capitol Hill hope voices like Odierno’s, as well as the enduring crises in Europe and the Middle East, put sequestration back on Congress’ priority list. The world has shown that it’s too dangerous for Congress to permit sequestration to return, as it would under current law, hawks argue. (Politico)

You can read more at the link, but I agree with Odierno that the government needs to figure out a security strategy for the military then properly fund and resource the military to carry out.

That is what one former General thinks:

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 11, 2014) — As football season kicks off, the public is focusing on favorite teams and athletes and making predictions. That same focus needs to be on “our Soldier-athletes,” perhaps even more so, said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commander, Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Brown spoke at the Association of the United States Army’s Institute of Land Warfare Medical Forum, Wednesday.

Before kicking off his discussion on “The Soldier Athlete,” Brown walked around the audience of mostly Soldiers and former Soldiers, asking them to describe traits of good athletes. “Leadership,” “disciplined,” “talented,” “teamwork,” “commitment,” “hard work,” “determination,” “competitiveness,” “physically fit,” and “resilient” were some of the attributes given.

Then, Brown asked the same question about Soldiers. The similarities of their answers were striking.

Brown has some insights into soldiering and athletics. He was the number two basketball recruit from Michigan, playing for Coach Mike Krzyewski at the U.S. Military Academy. He was commissioned in 1981, and went infantry.

“We need to be more proactive in the way we treat Soldiers,” he said. In many ways, Soldiers have to deal with situations more difficult than athletes, particularly on the battlefield, but also at home station.

The battlefield of the future will be even more confused and chaotic than ever before, and a mature, well-trained Soldier who is adaptive and quick-thinking will be required.

Who could have imagined just a few months ago that a civilian airline would be shot out of the sky, the barbarism of ISIS and the situation in Ukraine?” he asked. The only predictable thing is that the future will be even more confused and chaotic, he said.

In Brown’s early career, he said the “fog of war was not having enough information. Now, the fog of war is too much information — in overwhelming amounts.” Soldiers will need to process that information much more rapidly than ever before and to do that will require a lot of realistic training. What is certain is that “the enemy will adapt” and they won’t play by the same rules and moral values. [Army.mil]

You can read more at the link.

I definitely agree with the information overload, but as far as training soldiers as elite athletes I would just be happy if the Army became committed to keeping soldiers healthy.

It looks like next year there is going to be more attempts to reduce servicemember benefits if another round of sequestration is not repealed in 2016:

An already tough fiscal environment prompting proposed benefit cuts would get far worse if Congress does not repeal another round of sequestration in 2016, a top U.S. Defense Department official warned military spouses and civilians at town meetings here.

“If not, everything is on the table,” said Jessica Wright, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The uncertainty means it will be difficult to predict funding for child care, family services, traumatic brain injury and other benefits, she said.

Wright is one of a number of DOD officials who have warned of impending cuts that they say will cut the size of the armed forces and take money from necessary equipment upgrades, placing readiness and national security at risk.

In fact, Wright said, the Pentagon’s proposed 2015 budget represents an attempt to reduce benefits to spend the savings on readiness. The budget includes a reduction in the housing allowance, a 1 percent military pay raise, massive cuts to commissary subsidies and potentially increased medical fees. “Quality of life is higher,” she said. “Quality of service is on the skids.”

A proposed change in commissary funding, which the Pentagon says would reduce the savings on groceries from 30 percent to 10 percent of the cost compared with groceries bought on the economy, has proved highly unpopular.

“Why did we want to do that?” she said. “None of us wants to send a servicemember into combat unprepared.’’ [Stars & Stripes]

You have to love how all the cuts are justified by the language of “readiness”.  What does bloated, over budget acquisition programs have to do with readiness?  Likely what is going on is that the Pentagon is using benefit cuts as leverage to get Congress to repeal the sequestration cuts.