Quote:
Originally Posted by TrapperFrank
If my memory serves me correctly, height and weight were not so much of an issue during the 2002-2010 time frame. Just sayin'.....
|
"Post war" stuff has no place right now. The same thing happened after Desert Storm. The problem with this mentality is that WE ARE NOT DONE. Why in the world they have this laser focus on drawing down when we still have troops in combat and will for the foreseeable future is beyond me. We already have a major case of war fatigue among the warriors. After 10 years of repetitive cycles of refit, train up, deploy, our troops are breaking down both physically and mentally. Not all of them and less in SOF than conventional, but still, we have natural attrition happening already. Drawing down even further just weakens the force.
I know it's all about money and reducing the DOD budget, but there are other places we could make cuts in the national budget. First, if it has to be the DOD budget, just lower the recruiting rate and raise the criteria for promotion back to the older standards. The force will shrink over time as people get out for various reasons. We'll end up with a MUCH more competent force. I would contend that the rising DOD budget (the armed forces side of it) is due to two factors. 1) the reduction in standards for promotion among both enlisted and officer ranks. and 2) the overuse of contractors primarily on the support side of the house.
<rant>
It's a political hot potato, but I would think that reducing benefits to the non-productive members of society would be much more effective in getting the most out of our money. Welfare...what the hell was Obama thinking when he removed,via his pen and phone, the reforms Clinton put in? I know he was buying votes, but seriously, this is one of our biggest entitlement expenses. What about unemployment? Why is it still necessary to subsidize additional months of unemployment if the recovery is going as well as the administration says it is? It's just an incentive for people to stay unemployed.
If the choice is between working hard for $10 an hour and taking home $20k a year (less taxes) or doing nothing and collecting $40k in entitlements, which do you think people are going to do? They say that the labor problem is that Americans won't do the lower paying jobs and we need immigrant labor to fill the gap. Maybe, just maybe, that is related to the fact that the lower paying jobs result in less pay than what the government/taxpayers give them for doing nothing. I believe in safety nets, but the nets have to be finite in duration and have to set people up for their own individual success. Give them a 5 year lifetime benefit and 6 month short term benefit. Force them to use the first X number of months for education based on their current level of education and kick them out onto the street to fend for themselves. I bet that they will be willing to work those lower paying jobs...
</rant>
This is going to go the same way that QMP went in the 80's. Half the people kicked out will be good soldiers when looked at using the "whole man" concept. Good soldiers will not reenlist because they are concerned that they could get caught up in it and have their career wiped out by someone that's never met them. The best officers and senior enlisted will voluntarily drop to get the stability and higher pay that the civilian sector offers. What's left will be 10% the hard core patriots and warriors and 90% the shitbags that know they can't get a job anywhere else. It's a recipe for catastrophic failure.
Linear Mode
