Supporting Our Troops by Treating them as Children and Drunkards
Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus
This is one of the more inane, disrespectful and lavishly wasteful ideas to come out of the Federal government in some time.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who should have more sense, has proposed in his “21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative” the idea of normalizing a breathalyzer test (!) for Sailors and Marines reporting for duty. Yes, that’s correct. Showing up for duty is going to be regarded as probable cause for drug testing, as if our AVF were composed primarily of skid row derelicts.
Nice move Mr. Secretary. Stay classy.
That this is yet another example of the demeaning, exploitative, contempt towards normal Americans by our Creepy-state bipartisan elite goes without saying, but the reaction of those so insulted is worth noting:
Best Defense (guest post):
….This is among the most paternalistic, professionally insulting concepts I’ve seen in all my years of service, and I’m not sure I will submit. Yes, I know my options, and I just may exercise them and go right over the side the first time the duty blowmeister shoves a plastic tube in my face and treats me like a drunk driver for daring to report for duty. To the CNO, CMC, CMC of the Navy, and SgtMaj of the Marine Corps, here’s my question: At what point will one of you four exercise your duty to tell the Secretary of the Navy, “Hey, Boss, WTF, over?” and that he really ought to fire whichever clown came up with this idea to screen everyone to identify serial alcohol abusers who are readily identifiable through other means. One or more of you needs to find the moral courage to recommend relegating this part of the initiative to the dustbin of really bad naval ideas.
USNI Blog (BJ Armstrong):
….Recently a string of new policies and programs have washed over the decks of our Navy. We’re told they are designed to address everything from the surge in CO firings, to alcohol abuse, to the identified need to increase “diversity.” Training, trackers, new layers of bureaucratic offices, and new ways of testing/identifying the “bad apples” are all in the works. Some of the initiatives appear more connected to reality than others. The issues, like sexual assault and substance abuse, are serious and are challenges that our Navy should be addressing. In many cases, however, we are attempting to install programmatic and bureaucratic solutions to what are essentially humanistic problems. These are problems of leadership, character, and integrity and must be addressed with wisdom as much as programs and bureaucracy.
I suspect, if we were to scrape away the insincerely saccharine and frankly deceptive rhetoric offered by Mabus for this kind of a camel’s nose in the tent program, we will see old fashioned venality at work. Off the shelf commercial breathalyzers are not exactly cheap and testing 500,000 active duty personnel who make up the Navy and Marine Corps daily,(!) the DoD civilian contractor support for counseling and “training” program development, supplemental extensions for testing the reserves and so on, will represent lucrative paydays in the billions for somebody.
Will those “somebodies” be friends of the current administration? Let’s place our bets now.
[ Sidebar: Let’s also guess how long before this initiative is extended elsewhere, in the civilian world, with results, recorded, tracked and shared without your consent by your employer. Can’t happen here? Oh, Really? I bet you once never expected to have government employees demand to take nude pictures of you at the airport either]
The diversion of resources this proposed insanity represents from warfighting, acquisition, real military training or PME, medical care for our wounded or a thousand other authentic needs of the Navy or Marine Corps would be a scandal in an earlier era. But we do not live in an earlier era, and the defense budget is just another pile of seed corn to eat as far as the beltway boomer oligarchy are concerned.
Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, Great Britain’s greatest military hero, when asked about his soldiers, described them as “The scum of the Earth, enlisted for drink”. Winston Churchill, over a century later, said the culture of the Royal Navy was based upon “Rum, sodomy and the lash”. This encapsulates an aristocratic worldview of rulers toward their servants and comprises a long military tradition in whose footsteps Navy Secretary Mabus is following.
It just isn’t an American military tradition.
March 16th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
If the Navy is like the private sector, it has always been full of “drunkards” and “children”, but they would probably be called officers in the navy.
March 16th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
This is one of the dumbest and most asinine things a navy secretary has ever done. I call it the Nannie Navy gone wild.
March 16th, 2012 at 10:18 pm
And if one wonders why people are reluctant to serve their country, you can thank inane policies like this one. There’s more to follow as the Services withdraw back into their “peacetime” focus…thank God I have less than seven years left, because I am sick and tired of being treated like a child despite multiple deployments, multiple Master’s degrees and years worth of leading troops.
March 16th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
10 years fighting this Nation’s wars. 10 years following orders. 10 years running to the sounds of gunfire. 10 years of multiple deployments.
10 years is not long enough to earn the trust of our senior leadership. Our deeds are not worthy of seeing us as any different than vagrants. I want none of it, and may damn well vote with my feet. EAOS isn’t far away.
March 17th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
The recent massacre in Afghanistan was apparently sparked by alcohol consumption. If an organization is going to hire a workforce so low-quality that a night’s drinking can turn into a strategic disaster, breathalyzers may be appropriate.
March 17th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
tdaxp-perhaps rather than blame a single soldier, perhaps we instead should blame the coterie of politicians, wonks, and generals who built a pursued a strategy so fragile that it could be derailed by the most banal of events–a man drinking.
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Zen-a post I can raise a glass to!
March 18th, 2012 at 2:59 am
Nathan, I don’t think we disagree — the organization may be too fragile HR wise for the job assigned to it. Whoever is morally to blame, the quality of the workforce may not match the quality of the problem.
March 18th, 2012 at 4:20 am
Well, I think we need to be cautious about attributing Sgt. Bales’ massacre to alcohol, brain injury, marital issues or the other tales that have been floated to reporters to see what narrative “sticks” in the MSM. Lots of soldiers have three tours these days and get drunk. Very few deliberately kill children. They saw worse combat (though not for as long) and had access to far more alcohol in their off-hours (with official indulgence) in WWII and Korea and troops did not go on killing sprees.
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A court found Sgt. Bales had “anger management” issues back here at home. He spent a long time in grade without promotion despite being (reportedly) a brave, reliable combat infantryman. That indicates to me his “fitreps” had mixed reviews, possibly related to interpersonal skills that caused promotion to be denied. He may have simply, been very, very angry about deaths of US personnel at Afghan hands or any number of personal grievances that cause middle-aged white guys to “go postal” and then when postal on Afghans near at hand. Or Bales may be insane. no one knows at this point.
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Interestingly enough, Bales killings have not sparked the same popular response as the burning Korans did and his actions may have been interpreted understood by Afghans as “revenge” for their fragging of Americans and something that may possibly recur even though this may not have been the motive at all.. Fear may explain the unusually subdued reaction. hard to say from here.
March 18th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
If private employers can insist on urine tests, and if organizations like the CIA and national laboratories rely on urine and lie detector tests, hey, why not the military?
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The point is that nobody trusts anyone any more. The excuse is that those unreliable slaveys do drugs and get drunk and lie, but when you expect that kind of behavior, you’re more likely to find it.
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There’s a fine line involved in trusting people, and employers have given up finding it.
March 20th, 2012 at 4:48 am
Hi Cheryl,
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Many private employers drug test in case of a serious accident (i.e. there’s cause to check to see if someone was impaired) or as an initial or semi-annual condition of employment where it makes sense to do so. I know of no example where all employees are drug tested daily by private employers – they would balk at the costs if for no other reason because testing most employees all the time is pure waste – which is what the Navy and USMC would be doing.