In my last diary, a commenter decided to make a point of the fact that he, too, was military. In fact, he stated:
So, I've got deep experience in areas... (1+ / 0-)
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chumley
you aren't even cognizant of. Who cares.
It appears that you're prior or current Military based on your phrasing. But you do tend to puff yourself up quite a bit, which makes me somewhat suspicious.
For the 6 plus years that I spent deployed overseas, I got to read the Top Secret daily threat briefings for my theater of operation.
Does that make me special? Yes it does, and now nobody can question my expertise because of it.
/snark
Seriously, get that giant pole out of your ass, son.
Through the comment thread, it came out he was an officer. Everyone knows I was enlisted.
Do I have a problem with officers? I surely do.
Here's why...
When I turned 18, I went to college and joined ROTC. I got to see the mentality of what it took to become an officer -- you had to be political first and foremost. Getting a college degree was the easy part of it. You had to play the political game as an officer. The better you played that game, the higher you advanced in rank. I don't play political games, so, even though I scored high enough on the Air Force Officers Qualification Test to be eligible to become a pilot, I left college to enlist.
Next, came the dig at my job.
EOD? That's your deal? (0 / 0)
Christ!
I thought you might have been spec ops at least, by the way you were playing the Audie Murphy role.
snicker.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal, my military specialty, is an elite school. Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, and Marine RECON send their people to our school to learn the specialty of being bomb disposal experts. In fact, the Air Force is the only service that allows people to enter EOD school right out of basic training. When I graduated EOD school in 1986, it was ranked the 3rd hardest school in the Navy.
So, why don't I like officers? Especially officers that simply think they are better than the enlisted because they happen to have an "O" instead of "E"? Because most officers I worked under were idiots.
When I was in Iraq in 1991, it was an Army Major while I was detached to the 18th Brigade 325 C Company that sent me and my team chief into the same minefield three days in a row because he simply couldn't ask us to get what he wanted on ONE trip.
When I was stationed at Incirlik AB, Turkey, when our unit deployed into Iraq in 1991, it was our own Captain that kept trying to get us killed by making bonehead decisions, much less his own boneheaded actions, despite being told by a plethora of enlisted folks how dangerous his actions and decisions were.
It was a Lieutenant who came to Incirlik AB, Turkey, to take charge of the unit after the Captain took the early out that decided HE was going to help safe a plane that came in with an in-flight emergency, instead of letting his experienced techs handle it, that wound up turning the plane over to the end-of-runway crew unsafe because HE screwed up and didn't safe the "bird" and ordnance on the side HE took correctly.
That doesn't mean ALL officers are bad. I met a few that were actually good. A FEW. Most were egotistical asshat's that needed directions to correctly find their zipper without hurting themselves.
The reason for this is simple; most officers never get out of their offices to see what is REALLY happening on the ground, much less doing it like the enlisted they lead.
The Non-Commissioned Officer corp is called the "backbone" of the military for a reason. It is the NCO's that are the knowledgeable people, that our out there with the grunts, that give their blood and sweat right alongside their troops. Most of the officer corp never get out there like the NCO's do. The two officers I know of that have are Paul Reickhoff and Jon Soltz of IAVA. They actually saw combat.
The one good thing I can say about an officer, like any military person, is at least they served their country. That doesn't mean they did so competently, however.
It is the enlisted people who sit in the foxholes. It is the enlisted people that make the military work. And it is way too many officers who make the boneheaded decisions that get enlisted folks like myself hurt or killed in their ignorance.
Yes, I was enlisted. When I left the military and went law enforcement I rose to the rank of Road Sergeant in 5 years. Not only did I not ask my officers to do anything I wouldn't do, or did myself, but, during the times that I had to send someone into the woods at night to get a suspect, I went in myself.
That is something officers rarely learn... how to actually lead by example. Many simply sit in their offices and make decisions others have to live with.