The Army’s Real War 

                The Army has been at a constant state of war or conflict since that despicable day on September 11th 2001. A day that a radicalized group decided to bring a war to America’s door step. The United States Army was then called into action in Afghanistan. Next there was a perceived threat from Iraq about weapons of mass destruction. Now my blog is not here to debate whether this threat was true or merely perceived, it is to simply state that the US Army and other armed services were again called into action to do what we have always done and that is to fight and win our nation’s wars.

Twin Towers           

We have now been fighting these wars for close to 15 years, and it is hard to remember a time that we were not at war, but at some point during those 15 years a new war has started to rage inside of our own beloved Army. This war is what I like to call the war on hurt feelings. You see apparently the Army must fight and win the nations wars so long as we also ensure that we don’t hurt any of the soldiers’ feelings while we do it.

                Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO’s) are now in the business of winning our nations war on hurt feelings. When most soldiers raise there right hand and swear into our organization it seems as though someone has said that they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States so long as everyone’s feelings are considered. I didn’t observe that particular statement but you can read below to see if I am accurate.  If you don’t believe me I challenge you to go into your ranks and observe how much time is spent on training soldiers and leaders how not to offend any other soldier and how all soldiers should be treated equally, then compare this to the amount of time actually spent on the training that they will need in a deployed environment. If a soldier or leader does something wrong, leaders must document it, counsel them (on paper), and ensure every instance of that infraction by every soldier is handled in the same manner.  The days of leading are over! The days of looking at the individual soldier assessing their past performance, and who they are, and then coming up with an appropriate answer to the situation are over. There is no trust in the NCO corps to handle discipline in the unit and actually lead soldiers.

u-s-military-oath-of-enlistment

Go ask a few older NCO’s how things were handled in their day. Sure there was paperwork every once in a while if the infraction really called for it, but many times it was getting smoked until you couldn’t raise your arms to take a sip of water. Today that might hurt someone’s feelings, and NCO’s aren’t capable of making the discretionary decision about which form of discipline is the best for that particular soldier in that particular instance. There is actually a regulation that covers which exercises can be used as a form of discipline, although you can only use one exercise per instance at a moderate pace. The maximum number of push-ups for a given act is 5-4 count push-ups. What lesson is this teaching our soldiers? They do more than that for a warm-up at PT in the morning.

I for one am sick of the wussification of the military. We need to get back to the basics, treat soldiers like soldiers, and ensure they are ready to fight our nation’s wars. Because I assure you the enemy does not care about their feelings, and isn’t going to “put things on paper”. We are not a Fortune 500 company regardless of what others would like to think and we are not in the business protecting soldiers’ feelings. We are in the business of protecting the freedoms of the people of the United States and that is the mission we need to start concentrating on again. Anyone who is offended by this article please feel free to utilize the comment form below.

Hurt Feelings

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