Posted on 12/17/2017 9:04:52 PM PST by pboyington
You are an eyewitness with a front row seat, watching the death of the US military right before your eyes.
What’s happening right now in the US military is the final act, in a Shakespearean tragedy filled with gutless leaders lacking in moral courage, perfumed princes who only care about punching a ticket on their way up the army ladder, feminist and liberal fools who think that they’re providing equal opportunity, even if it’s obtained fraudulently, and finally, a few brave souls who know the hour of the total clusterf**k is near and are desperate to do something before a lot of young Americans are sent home in body bags.
For those who have never served, remember one thing and remember it well; you are living in freedom because in prior times, when the US military was run by warriors, it fielded the roughest, toughest SOB’s the nation could find to do battle with our enemies and send them straight to the gates of Hades.
We’ll not anymore…
It’s Ranger School déjà vu at Fort Bragg.
You remember what happened at Ranger School, dear reader; in order to have evidence that women could hack it in the combat arms and special ops, the army conspired to ‘graduate’ three female officers, after they received special pre, pre, pre Ranger training at Fort Carson, had dieticians, were given endless chances to pass patrols, were allowed showers every three days and what is the most obvious example of the complete fraud that took place at Fort Benning, they looked plump as a Christmas goose on graduation day. Anyone who has graduated from Ranger School, or knows anything about the training, is more than aware that men crawl out of the front gates of Benning, 50, 60, 70 pounds lighter, looking like concentration camp inmates.
To this day, the army denies anything shady took place before or during the Ranger School classes. Yet, strangely, they admitted they destroyed the records of the three female graduates, including, the 37 year old Mommy Ranger, while refusing to turn over the Green Cards, aka the Ranger School report cards on them to Congressman Steve Russell.
And, now it’s happening all over again at Fort Bragg, the home of US Army Special Forces, or as they are commonly known, the Green Berets.
Last week, Smoke Bomb Hill was hit by multiple barrages of shake and bake rounds fired for effect from the pen of one or more irate Green Beret training cadre, who have had enough of feather merchant officers lowering standards to accommodate weaklings and women.
Below are several passages from the 14 page anonymous letter:
To our fellow Active Duty and Veteran Green Berets,
Our Regiment has a cancer, and it is destroying the SF legacy, its capability, and its credibility. SWCS has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior Officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders. They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces more prolific, but dangerously less capable than ever before. Shameless and immodest careerism has, in no uncertain terms, effectively destroyed our ability to assess, train, and prepare students, or to identify those students that pose very real risk to Operational Detachments.
We consistently and concretely identify dozens of graduates every year who are incapable of ever being ‘value-added’ to ODA’s yet are pushed forward to you. THAT NUMBER IS SET TO RISE DRAMATICALLY in the very near future.
The actions of SWCS leadership have created a new era of Special Forces that are; increasingly incapable of actualizing SOF attributes; markedly and demonstrably weaker; and quantifiably projecting measurable risk and liability onto the teammates with which they serve.
The recent systematic dismissal of course standards and continuous violation of regulations at the Training Group and SWCS echelons makes student failure nigh impossible.
In the last 24 months, Commanders and/or Sergeants Major at the Group and SWCS level have systematically removed numerous fundamental SF standards, lowered and undermined the grading metrics for others, all while simultaneously ensuring that a gagged cadre population was expressly prohibited from holding students accountable for their academic, physical, and character performance.
The letter’s author(s) go on to get to the real point for the lowering of standards; something we knew was only a matter of time. Since no woman has made it through the Special Forces Q or qualification course in two years, it’s time to make the standards go away, so that even your 100 year old grandma with a walker could graduate.
The letter continues:
Regardless of one’s opinion on the topic, a universally accepted truth recognized by all parties is that if women yearn to join the force, they should meet the same standards achieved by those men they wish to serve with. Yet the current leadership has taken it upon themselves to inject an end state no one wants, to achieve personal endeavors that benefit no one. They have stated through continuous action and policy implementation that they do not want women to meet the standard. What they want is to markedly lower the standards enough to ensure that any woman attempting this path will have absolutely no issue achieving it. Consider the time-line of events:
What follows is a summary of the time line in the letter:
July 2017: MG Sonntag dismisses all SFOC (Special Forces Orientation Course) testable events. Students will take the physical tests, but they can no longer be relieved for them as they are considered diagnostics. Students can no longer fail SFOC except for Voluntarily Withdrawing or getting injured.
So, your only way out of the orientation course is feet first on a gurney. So what if you can do only a couple pushups, it’s the new army.
September 2017: All graded SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course or the Q Course) PT events including the SFPA, APFT, diagnostic APFT’s, and Diagnostic SFPA’s still banned from being conducted. -Revision introduced that there will be ZERO graded physical tests.
Why in the name of God would the Special Forces Q Course not be administering physical fitness tests? Is it because they know women can’t meet the standards and the goal is to make women Green Berets to placate idiots in Congress like Clair McCaskill and Kirsten Gillinbrand?
The author(s) continue and what they say is frankly frightening for the future of the Green Berets and our country’s national security:
November 2017: The culmination: It has just been announced that graduation for students will be held immediately after they graduate Robin Sage (culminating field exercise). Language phase is no longer a requirement for graduation. Aside from passing selection, there are LITERALLY no physical gates or standards required of students in order for them to graduate the Special Forces Qualification Course. This is the state of the entire SFQC as it stands today.
Students do not need to be able to pass a 2-mile run at an 80% standard. They do not need to pass a 5-mile run in under 40 minutes. They do not need to be able to pass a 12-mile ruck march in under 3 hours. They are not required to find ANY points during their land nav training and assessment.
In the old army, they wouldn’t even let you out of ROTC if you couldn’t do land nav!
They do not need to be able to perform 8 pull-ups. Translation, women don’t have the upper body strength to do pull ups, so forget that little requirement. Say goodbye to the old days where you couldn’t eat unless you knocked out ten pull ups.
God help us all.
They do not need to be able to perform 57 push-ups, or 66 sit-ups. They no longer need to be able to climb a 15 foot rope with weight on. Students are no longer administered any form of physical or administrative punishment. After passing a 19-ish day selection process, there are no physical barriers to earning the coveted Green Beret.
These all were standards for EVERY Green Beret in modern history prior to this month. To say that standards have not been eliminated would be laughable, were it not so tragic.
As long as one shows up for training, there is virtually no way to fail this training. Major General Sonntag said it best: “Once they’ve been selected, there is no reason they should fail a single portion of the Q-course.”
So, the Green Berets are like traffic school online. Everyone will qualify…
Finally, the author(s) conclude the letter with a desperate plea from desperate men who are watching one of the country’s and the world’s premier fighting and training forces literally be flushed down the toilet by politically correct martinets bowing to pressure from feminists.
This is the next generation of Special Forces. In just a few years, most of our regiment will be a product of this foundation. We will become a brotherhood of parasites: devoid of any real character, feeding off of the achievements those before us earned, and consuming the heritage as a whole. We can cure it, but it needs to happen now. We need to take back ownership of our profession. Help us fix this mess. The Regiment’s legacy depends on it.
The army’s response was typical and full of what soldiers like to call bravo sierra. Major General Sonntag, in a memorandum stated:
“Many of you have seen the anonymous letter calling into question the integrity of our training standards and the quality of the Soldiers being produced. Let me be clear, I would be proud to serve with each and every one of our Special Forces Qualification Course graduates, and I stand behind the quality of every Soldier we send to the operational force.”
The general went on to say that “no fundamental SF standard has been removed. No academic or character performance standards have been adjusted.”
The good general must be at a different Fort Bragg than the one being described by the author(s).
I think it’s safe to say that the Green Berets of Aaron Bank, Chargin’ Charlie Beckwith and Nick Rowe are long, long, long gone. They are representative of a US Army that was focused on winning wars, not on placating soccer mom senators from New York.
If nothing changes down at Fort Bragg, the Green Berets will be no more valuable to the national defense than the Girl Scouts.
In combat, the grunts have a way of cleaning up the ranks of their leadership that can’t hack it and endanger their commands, and it’s not pretty.
Very interesting, but very alarming.
Thanks for posting.
If we subtract out the rapidly expanding numbers of gays and lesbians, transgenders, and women in the U.S. military, their combat-trained manpower advantage will probably go from 7-to-1 to 10-to-1 in the not-to-distant future. All without the having to increase the actual numbers of men serving in their military.
There can be little confidence that, outside of some few small special groups, there is any part of the current military ground forces that would be able to stop 1-2 million screaming chicom fanatics pouring down the peninsula.
The types of heroic men that did stop them (under inhuman conditions) in the KW no longer exist in sufficient numbers in the current American forces.
If we subtract out the rapidly expanding numbers of gays and lesbians, transgenders, and women in the U.S. military, their combat-trained manpower advantage will probably go from 7-to-1 to 10-to-1 in the not-to-distant future. All without the having to increase the actual numbers of men serving in their military.
There can be little confidence that, outside of some few small special groups, there is any part of the current military ground forces that would be able to stop 1-2 million screaming chicom fanatics pouring down the peninsula.
The types of heroic men that did stop them (under inhuman conditions) in the KW no longer exist in sufficient numbers in the current American forces.
Grade inflation hits special forces training, with disastrous consequences WHEN special forces will be needed in the future.
Special forces doesn’t have room for snowflakes, regardless of sex or “gender”,
2017? That would mean this nonsense is happening under the watch of Twinkle Toes Mattis and Trump. Is the careerist military brass now part of the Trump hating Deep State? Sure seems like it.
Below is the full text of an anonymous letter whose author (or authors) claims to be a Green Berets trainer (or trainers). NPR has redacted name, rank and unit of individuals cited in the letter to protect their privacy.
To our fellow Active Duty and Veteran Green Berets,
Our Regiment has a cancer, and it is destroying the SF legacy, its capability, and its credibility.
SWCS has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior Officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders. They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces more prolific, but dangerously less capable than ever before. Shameless and immodest careerism has, in no uncertain terms, effectively destroyed our ability to assess, train, and prepare students, or to identify those students that pose very real risk to Operational Detachments. I cannot stress how systematic and severe the effects on the force will be if the standards, recently implemented here in the Special Forces Qualification Course, remain in place.
We consistently and concretely identify dozens of graduates every year who are incapable of ever being ‘value-added’ to ODA’s yet are pushed forward to you. THAT NUMBER IS SET TO RISE DRAMATICALLY in the very near future. To clarify, we instructors recognize that none of us graduating the Q-Course were fully competent Green Berets when we first arrived to our teams. We are also acutely aware that senior generations derisively judging their juniors is a tradition as old as humanity. So this address is not being written because ‘cherries are so much more cherry than we were when we were cherries’. We do not expect them to be assets yet, we only expect that they possess the basic qualities necessary to become assets.
I am asking for 20 minutes of your time because many students graduating the Q-course now do not possess those qualities and, from this moment forward, determining if ANY students possess them is not possible. The actions of SWCS leadership have created a new era of Special Forces that are; increasingly incapable of actualizing SOF attributes; markedly and demonstrably weaker; and quantifiably projecting measurable risk and liability onto the teammates with which they serve.
Before this paradigm shift, cadre due diligence was capable of some risk mitigation in these aspects. We could, did, and often still do reach back to teams and prepare them for those [inevitable] outliers that slip through the course unimpeded due to cronysim, nepotism, or malfeasance. But the recent systematic dismissal of course standards and continous violation of regulations at the Training Group and SWCS echelons makes student failure nigh impossible.
Assessing, Identifying, and mitigating prolonged individual performance has historically been a cornerstone of the pipleline. That has been provably replaced with willful mediocrity. This climate has been empowered by a feckless, selfish, and recreant command ideology, set into motion by [name redacted], and actualized by MG Sonntag, [name redacted], and [name redacted].
In the last 24 months, Commanders and/or Sergeants Major at the Group and SWCS level have systematically removed numerous fundamental SF standards, lowered and undermined the grading metrics for others, all while simultaneously ensuring that a gagged cadre population was expressly prohibited from holding students accountable for their academic, physical, and character performance. Obviously, this concerns those of us whom are returning to Group. We have an understandably vested interest in developing the best new teammates we possibly can, for we will be serving alongside them.
The issue is that career-focused leaders, far removed from team life, have no 'skin in the game' and thus do not concern themselves with the problems inherent in employing subpar soldiers in a no-fail environment: where individual limitation creates team-wide catastrophe, often with international repercussions. Their responsibilities involve ensuring that yearly graduation quotas are met and that political agendas are enforced. They do not concern themselves with ensuring that students are capable of surviving the rigors of combat, and in all fairness they shouldn't. That is the cadre's mantle to bear. Ignorance of their interference in this endeavor might be forgivable, but they have been told by the operational force numerous times what issues these policies would create, and chose career progression instead. As you will read, this moral cowardice started in the preceding command, and is shared by every current Commander and Sergeant Major at the Group and SWCS level. When one of our cadre addressed these concerns (with examples) directly to the SWCS leadership in an open forum [name redacted] response was verbatim:
“We push some of these issues forward [to the Regiment] because we believe that the Groups can succeed in fixing those problem graduates when they arrive. That is an amount of risk we willingly accept, because after all it’s much easier to get a tab removed at Group if he doesn’t pan out, than to risk relieving what’s basically a fully qualified student who might have been able to fix himself and become a solid Green Beret.”
Specifically, he was defending the decision to graduate a student that had failed the final graduation SFPA (Special Forces Physical Assessment) five times on the 40-minute 5-mile run. He finally passed on the 6th attempt: coming in 12 seconds under time, and 4 attempts past the mandatory 1-year relief dictated by regulation. Over 100 of your current teammates heard this exchange during at SLC in 2016, and can bear witness.
A senior E-9, with approximately 20 years in SF, unashamedly acknowledged that reducing, and then ignoring course standards is a perfectly acceptable philosophy to embrace in pursuit of graduation numbers. His response embodied everything that is wrong with SF leadership today. Standards are being drastically reduced, and they are being done so to achieve a very acute goal, one that does not benefit or enhance the force.
So here we are, the trainers, hoping to illuminate to you, the operational force, the severity of this issue. Below, we’ve illustrated a variety of truths to fully encompass the selfish and careerist nature of the leadership that is injecting poison into the SF foundation. This does not capture everything, only the most recent events, and should sufficiently capture the essence of the systematically detrimental change and malfeasance occurring in the SFQC.
Deducing their impact on the unit is easy to the operational soldier. Unfortunately it is not to Senior leaders. So, help us to affect change. This plea is on behalf of a clear majority of your brothers who have no real power to affect change on their own. Cadre hands are increasingly tied, and yet they are regularly, randomly castrated as scapegoats for a command that often confuses blind, knee-jerk reactions with due process. SF legitimacy is fading at the hands of self-serving careerism. Commanders truly want to be recognized and rewarded for the milestones they are achieving. Please accommodate them. Spread this message, publish it, share it online, go to the press, and send it to congress. If these “leaders" so desire the recognition for what they are doing, then let us ensure they receive all of it.
I completely understand that some of those reading up to this point may be skeptical. It sounds overly dramatic, tinged with emotion, and can easily be brushed off as the ranting of some scorned, disgruntled has-been who had a bad run-in with a senior leader too many times. Here are the facts, so you can make that decision for yourself. Every single one of you out there in Group knows a brother-in-arms or 2 doing time in SWCS, if you don’t believe me, give any one of us a ring...
THE SPECIAL FORCES QUALIFICATION COURSE We work in 1st SWTG(A) at USAJFKSWCS. There are currently about 900 GB’s on the roster, and we account for and/or train every single one of the (roughly) 2200 students currently in the Q-course. As a refresher for those of you who have been away for a while, here is a breakdown of what were (key word) the major training requirements that students were were to pass to graduate each phase of the SFQC after getting selected.
Notes:
PAVING THE WAY FOR THE FIRST FEMALE GREEN BERET
I hesitate to begin on this axis, but it warrants the most illumination. To be clear, this is in no way a commentary on the debate concerning the efficacy of women serving in Special Forces. The Regiment’s attitude is clear, the debate is a heated one, and both sides of the aisle have documented numerous credible arguments. That is a separate discussion entirely. Regardless of one’s opinion on the topic, a universally accepted truth recognized by all parties is that if women yearn to join the force, they should meet the same standards achieved by those men they wish to serve with. This is where no reasonable person disagrees. No one has said “If they want to join, give them a lower standard so they can join.” Yet this is exactly where the current leadership has taken it upon themselves to inject an end state no one wants, to achieve personal endeavors that benefit no one.
They have stated through continuous action and policy implementation that they do not want women to meet the standard. What they want, is to markedly lower the standards enough to ensure that any woman attempting this path will have absolutely no issue achieving it. They have said time and again that they want to maintain the standards, but have continuously lowered, and now eliminated them. Consider the time-line of events:
This is the state of the entire SFQC as it stands today. Students do not need to be able to pass a 2-mile run at an 80% standard. They do not need to pass a 5-mile run in under 40 minutes. They do not need to be able to pass a 12-mile ruck march in under 3 hours. They are not required to find ANY points during their land nav training and assessment. They do not need to be able to perform 8 pull-ups. They do not need to be able to perform 57 push-ups, or 66 sit-ups. They no longer need to be able to climb a 15 foot rope with weight on. Students are no longer administered any form of physical or administrative punishment. After passing a 19-ish day selection process, there are no physical barriers to earning the coveted Green Beret. These all were standards for EVERY Green Beret in modern history prior to this month. To say that standards have not been eliminated would be laughable, were it not so tragic.
MG Sonntag and [name redacted] have been transparent in their motivations. The moment they took command, their primary motivation for making changes to the SFQC was to acquire ‘Multi-star Potential’ on their OERs, They pursued this by, first, ensuring that the Q-course graduation rate was raised so they could lay claim to making the Q course more efficient and, second, ensuring that the standards were lowered so as to make certain that the first women able to pass selection would have the best possible chance of making it through the grueling 14 month (at it's quickest) pipeline practically unimpeded. Being able to say they graduated the first female Green Beret is a milestone no officer (devoid of principles, that is) can possibly pass up. SFOC had the strictest requirements and the highest attrition rate, almost entirely physical in nature. They practically did away with it.
They placated cadre, and the force as a whole, with promises of enforcing those standards in language. They assured instructors and battalion leaders that the relief decisions at the board would be supported. But in 85% of all NTR's or 2 year relief appeals sent to them, they reversed the decision and put them back into training. They set the stage for mediocrity well before they made it official, pulling the rug out from under the force only once all the pieces set in motion 2 years ago were finally in place. There is not a single operator at the battalion level or below in all of SF that thinks this move is a forward one for the Regiment. But those concerns fall on deaf ears.
Although spineless, cowards are smart. They have learned from Ranger School's previous ordeal. They won’t have to defend (real or perceived, I have no first-hand knowledge of how the female ranger graduates were treated) accusations of “ad hoc” lowering of standards or preferential treatment for women who brave SF training. No, the standards will have been lowered well beforehand. All accusations of preferential treatment or double standards will fall by the wayside when these 'standards' set forth have already been deemed the “status quo” well before their arrival.
The cruelty of the situation is that any woman with the fortitude to attempt this training would most definitely have wanted the standards to remain the same. It is reasonable to assume they would have wanted to test their metal against the historical standards and ensured they were every bit as capable as the men they aspire to serve next to. It is a point of pride to know you are every bit as capable as the best of the best, IF you can do it. But they have been robbed of the ability to earn that achievement. Knowing there are officially no physical barriers to earning the Green Beret cheapens the experience for everyone involved, including the population it is misguidedly meant to assist.
The fact of the matter is that the Q-course today is markedly, measurably easier to skate through (I do not use that term lightly) than ever before. As long as one shows up for training, there is virtually no way to fail this training. MG Sonntag said it best: “Once they’ve been selected, there is no reason they should fail a single portion of the Q-course.”
He willfully disregards the vital failure rate the Q-course creates by identifying those that were never cut-out for Special Forces. A Green Beret is much more than just a person that can gut-out 19 days of suck. They are intelligent, responsible, mature, clever, work well with others, and capable of adapting to any situation. They embody the SOF attributes. And these attributes are nigh impossible to assess in a 19-day selection, but absolutely critical to discerning before going to a team.
IN PURSUIT OF NUMBERS
“you are not here to assess students, they were assessed in selection, they are with you to train”“If a student fails in the Q Course, it is because you are a failure as an instructor”
“There is no reason a student coming out of selection should fail any part of any phase of the SFQC”
CADRE AS SCAPE GOATS
As a result of this meeting. [name redacted] was relieved of his position as [redacted]. During the entire meeting, [name redacted] did not point out a single ‘actual’ wrong-doing on [name redacted]’s part, only that ‘several students had complained’. He also made it clear that, should this happen to other instructors, they would be fired as well. It can not be stressed enough, [name redacted] was exercising BASIC NCO professional development, well within Army regulation, and was fired for doing so.
Shortly after this, all remedial corrective training was banned in [redacted]. Cadre were instructed that they would be fired if caught punishing students through physical corrective training. Commanders used this incident to ensure that there would be a complete lack of student accountability through corrective training. There are entire classes that have graduated who went through the entire Q-course having never undergone a single physical event for failing to follow instructions, lying to instructors, or a myriad of other attributes failures.
COMMAND FAVORTISM
[Name redacted] was given an NTR. [name redacted] reversed his decision to NTR [name redacted], who would go on to fail SUT. [name redacted] is currently in training. Not related, [name redacted] has family connections in SF which [name redacted] is aware of.
Literally every accusation he levied was proven inaccurate or untrue. But as a student, he was given complete top cover and left unimpeded to continue creating havoc, and was not held accountable for the numerous integrity violations he committed. He graduated with his peers.
Students right now have witnessed the above transgressions. They are friends of or know every single person in each of the above cases. Students are being shown, time and time again, that the standards can be fudged. That failure is not a big deal. That if they fail they will get special treatment, or they can know the right person, or they can just try again; sometimes as often as 6 times before getting it right. We try to enforce that this is not so, that in Group you often only have one shot. But we can’t overcome the atmosphere of forgiveness and compliance that this place now breeds. The good students, through no fault of their own, don’t get taught the importance of first-time success. The bad students, visibly increasing in number, embrace it and are bringing it to Group. We are trying, but the commanders have the authority, and they are abusing it.
This is the next generation of Special Forces. In just a few years, most of our regiment will be a product of this foundation. We will become a brotherhood of parasites: devoid of any real character, feeding off of the achievements those before us earned, and consuming the heritage as a whole. We can cure it, but it needs to happen now. We need to take back ownership of our profession.
Help us fix this mess. The Regiment's legacy depends on it. A concerned Green Beret,
—DE OPPRESSO LIBER
These are officers who were advanced under Obama... read the full text of the anonymous letter and look at the timeline. The real warriors were replaced by Liberal paper pushing Social Justice "Warriors" over a period of eight years under Obama and now they are pushing their feminist agendas.
These are officers who were advanced under Obama..
Why is it so hard for a SecDef to keep an eye on SWCS? That’s one of the crown jewels of the military. I can only assume once again that rolling back the PC nonsense is not a priority of Mattis. This PC rot issue has come up way too many times in Mattis’s short tenure to blame it all on Obama generals.
Scary, scary stuff.
This nonsense will all go away when the first few mixed platoons are overrun and the women are publicly raped and cut to pieces by the enemy. Things will return to historical norms pretty quickly.
Looks like “Mad Dog Mattis” is a Pekingese. What an utter disappointment.
Damn shame! A concerned Retired Green Beret. De Oppresso Liber
Not sure I agree. It seems to me that the main part of the problem is the time it’s going to take to get rid of all the Obama retreads,who are the leftovers after he got rid of the real soldiers,or they resigned in disgust. It took time for this to happen,so it won’t correct itself overnight,but this problem had better be corrected & yesterday is not too soon. I don’t think a lot of people realize how close Obama(& others like him) came to totally ruining this country.
He just doesn’t seem to react to this crap, though. From the outside looking in, it almost looks as though things have gotten worse, in that the processes put in place by the last administration are still rolling along. Even if Mattis has a plan, he should squash bullshit of this magnitude and visibility as soon as it comes up, even if it were slated to be addressed further down the line.
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