They've got it backwards. The softer they make it the harder time they will have with recruitment. This is what the Army gets for paying attention to psychobabble.
Notice that the Marines don't have this problem.
The army has really “screwed the pooch” with this one. Who in their right mind would want to join the army if it meant going into combat with a bunch of politically correct panty-waists?
There was some abuse of recruits when my son went through BCT at Knox at the beginning of this year. Not in his company, thankfully.
..and so goes the attempted "pussification" of America.
"What do you think?" thank you all be strong good country!!!
When I was a private I would hear the old timers (Brown Shoes) talk about how the “new” Army was going straight to hell. When I made Sergeant I started saying it. A couple years after I retired I sat at my favorite watering hole and heard a young Staff Sergeant bitching about the “new” Army, and how it was going straight to hell.
The “new” Army might be heading straight to hell, and that has been said for many years. The Army is a constantly changing institution. It has always been “going straight to hell”, but it always answers the call and just keeps on stroking - and doing a very nasty job very well.
I was a BCT Company Commander at Knox as the draft was ending and the Volunteer Army was crankin' up.
Abuse has never been accecptable and training and discipline can be tough without it anyway. During that time a directive came down from I-don't-know-where (probably TRADOC) that the only way a trainee could be addressed was, Trainee, Recruit or Soldier.
As long as a 'cruit knows there is a Chain of Command backing up the training cadre in their job, the mission of building a soldier will be understood by all. Of course the 'cruit has to believe they have rights that go along with their responsibilites.
If it's done right, most of the pressure on the trainee comes from within and from peers. The cadre just has to set the tone and the standards.
Let me propose a real crazy idea.
"it's getting harder to find the sorts of instances of hazing and intimidation that have become legendary in military life" --- Was written in the article.
A soldier has a job very UNlike that of an IT specialist. Maybe, the hazing is a good thing?
Can it just possibly be that things are sometimes done a certain way for a reason? Or can EVERYTHING in life be explained away using some "conflict theory".
Hazing weeds out those who don't want to be there. It weeds out those who are weak and are better left on mommas tit. By not hazing you might get a physically fit guy who has a good ASVAB score, high school grades and looks great on paper, but is a 200 pound wimp.
What do you think Ranger school is all about? Weed them out. Separate the boys from the girls, and this frankly should be done in Basic as well. Hazing is part of the game. “How bad do you really want it”, “What are you made of” are two questions that are best answered by hazing, not an interview or a letter of recommendation, which means just about nothing in reality.
Red6
Now if only they could get the bad guys to stop abusing and mistreating our troops-- SInc eI was honorably discharged back in 1977 I have come to appreciate that
the USMC seems less adversly affected by the feminization of our Military than most. And I do like their rifle training.
-Given how markets operate, why shouldn't the Army be sensitive to concerns...-
I'd agree, except that civilian markets and military ones are so...different. It takes a special person to sign up, not a sop who's easily influenced by the latest pretty marketing or advertising campaign.
Though, some of those commercials they make are pretty dang cool! Oh, to be young and arch supportless!
I smell liberal anti-military presence in this. Like they want to humiliate the instructors.
So much for "more sweat in training, less blood in combat."
How many more Jessica Lynch's will have to happen before they realize playing pussy foot doesn't prepare one for combat?
Was boot camp tough back in hte 60s? Hell yes. But, Viet Nam was even tougher and being put in the mindset they put us in helped many of us to make it back home.
The way they are going, soon they will give them an oral exam, watch them play a video game and send them off to war, ill-prepared to survive.
The country and looney left better wake up. This isn't a video game, it's a real life struggle to stop world domination by radical Islamists.
He's taken a badly garbled "news" story from the New York Times (*), and garbled it still further. What's left is a bad mix of nonsense and lies.
If any reporters want to spend a week or two with a basic training company, it wouldn't be hard to set that up. (I'd gladly help.) But if they're content to be know-nothing hacks, then that's how they'll be seen.
* As Recruiting Suffers, Military Reins In Abuses at Boot Camp
Thus, the wussification of what used to be one of the best armies in the FREE world!!
It's a good thing we still have Marines!!