{"id":8323,"date":"2003-05-13T19:04:51","date_gmt":"2003-05-14T00:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2003\/05\/13\/the-american-military\/"},"modified":"2003-05-13T19:04:51","modified_gmt":"2003-05-14T00:04:51","slug":"the-american-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2003\/05\/the-american-military\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHILE IT is understandable that President George W. Bush and
\nhis secretary of defense are receiving plaudits for the relatively swift military
\nvictory in Iraq, the fact of the matter is that most of the credit for the
\nsuccessful military operation should go to the Clinton administration. <\/p>\n

As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted, the battle plan that led to
\nthe American success was that of General Tommy Franks, an Army officer appointed
\nto head the Central Command by the Clinton administration. More important,
\nthe military forces that executed that plan so boldly and bravely were for
\nthe most part recruited, trained, and equipped by the Clinton administration. <\/p>\n

The first Bush defense budget went into effect on Oct. 1, 2002, and none of
\nthe funds in that budget have yet had an impact on the quality of the men and
\nwomen in the armed services, their readiness for combat, or the weapons they
\nused to obliterate the Iraqi forces. <\/p>\n

Given the way that Bush and his surrogates disparaged Clinton’s approach to
\nthe military in his 2000 campaign, this is ironic. The president and his advisers
\nclaimed that Clinton had diminished the armed forces’ fighting edge by turning
\nthem into social workers and sending them too often on ”useless” nation-building
\nexercises. These same people also claimed that Clinton had so underfunded the
\nmilitary that it was in a condition similar to that which existed on the eve
\nof Pearl Harbor.
\n[Full
\nStory<\/a>]
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking as someone who served under Clinton for six years in
\nthe Navy until I retired, I would say that the military succeeded in spite
\nof the Clinton years. We had planes
\nthat were not mission capable because we didn’t have money for parts or pilots
\ncouldn’t get their flight hours in because of lack of funding for AVGAS while
\ntop ranking civilians in the Pentagon went out spending thousands of dollars
\non meals. Because the number of ships had been so drastically reduced we were
\ngoing on more deployments and spending less and less time with our families. <\/p>\n

During the declining years of Bush-41 years they were looking
\nfor the peace dividend as the result of the victory in the cold war, so the
\ntrend started
\nthere but it greatly increased during the Clinton years. I don’t remember
\none military program or weapons system that Clinton spearheaded to put through,
\nI don’t remember one speech encouraging the congress to fully support the military
\nin funding. Many of the people put in charge in the civilian side of the military
\nhad no direct military experience and their policies showed it.<\/p>\n

I also experienced
\nthe social engineering that went on and the silliness of paperwork that we
\nhad
\nto fill out. I actually had to sign a page 13 in my service record specifying
\nthat I would obey the two man rule when going out on liberty. I was on the
\nfirst carrier outfitted to go to sea with a mixed crew. We were not allowed
\nto mention problems. We were not to talk to reporters about this implementation.
\nThere were so many women being taken off the ship and flown back because they
\nwere pregnant that our ship became a joke in the Norfolk papers. I remember
\nseeing one editorial cartoon where there was a stork flying over the flight
\ndeck and the radioman says "Captain, the stork is asking permission to land."
\nThey even started to strip the urinals out of heads on carriers in the name
\nof gender equality. There were also two physical standards, one for men and
\none for women when in came to physical readiness testing, yet in a emergency
\nyou would
\nrequire every crewman to be able to lug out a P-250 dewatering pump or to carry
\na shipmate up a vertical ladder if they were injured. But politically these
\ntopics
\nwere
\nuntouchable and there was no one we could complain to, the party line was be
\nquiet and bear it.<\/p>\n

And why is it that the people who claim the military as Clinton’s
\ndon’t also claim the FBI and CIA that blew so many chances in possibly preventing
\n9-11, but I guess I just answered my own question. I also think that President
\nBush should have fired both of these directors, especially George Tenant. In
\nmany ways the caliber of the people in the military does not rely on what political
\nparty is currently in charge. I served under Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush
\nand Clinton and even with the vast differences in Presidents, it did not affect
\nthe positive can-do attitude
\nof the people in the military. But the people in those leadership positions
\ndoes greatly affect the support given them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHILE IT is understandable that President George W. Bush and his secretary of defense are receiving plaudits for the relatively swift military victory in Iraq, the fact of the matter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}