“Well I’ve only been a part of the military from 17 to my late forties ... .I’m certain many of them are not familiar to you.”
MSF BU has missed the boat again. To carry the metaphor a touch farther, it doesn’t appear he knew there was a boat, a canal, or a schedule in the first place.
I’d love to ask the question: why does every member of the senior armed services feel free to offer USAF advice, on absolutely everything? I gather they know everything, merely because their institutional forbears arrived earlier. Age does not bring wisdom, not necessarily. As 17 to 40-plus ought to suggest.
I know all the names on MSF BU’s list. Mike Weinstein was one of my underclassmen. So there’s nothing he can tell me.
But after 29 years in uniform, dealing with a number of headaches and surreal consequences courtesy of the personnel experts (to varying degrees of success), I will refrain from offering MSF BU advice on what the US Army ought to do, or not do, concerning personnel.
MSF BU has made a cardinal error in equating morality with effectiveness. Many other posters have made the same mistake. The two proceed along different axes.
Interestingly enough, we have a common experience with the Weinstein family. In my case I knew his sister Halee before she was thrown out of the Army for homosexual conduct. At the time Schurmann, all services considered that conduct abnormal (though I’m sure you’d disagree) and not conducive to an effective fighting force. The policy was across the board in the military and worked quite well under Reagan’s ‘we ask, don’t join’ implementation. During those years we did a fairly good job at filling the ranks. Alas, even with much reduced standards, quotas and affirmative action we’re not making recruitment goals. I wonder why that is? Could it be that policies championed by the likes of Dalton, Danzig, Widnall & Ash Carter have made the services less attractive places to join, especially for the types of people typically attracted to combat billets?