{"id":3561,"date":"2010-10-12T02:31:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T02:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2010-10-12T17:40:33","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T17:40:33","slug":"breaking-the-legions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3561","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Legions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fabius Maximus<\/strong> makes waves with a powerful and controversial post:<\/p>\n

The Army and Marines are breaking, but we don’t\u00a0care<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary:\u00a0 The US Army and Marines are breaking.\u00a0 It’s a slow inexorable process resulting from fighting 4GWs\u00a0around the world too long with too few men.\u00a0 Neocon war-mongers, national leaders, and the general public\u00a0remain blind to the evidence, so they can express surprise when the results eventually become too severe to ignore.\u00a0\u00a0It took a decade to repair the damage\u00a0after Vietnam, under\u00a0more favorable social and economic circumstance than likely in early 21st century America.\u00a0\u00a0Here we see another warning from a senior officer, and revisit data from\u00a0the lastest Army report about this slow-growth crisis,\u00a0another in a string of similar reports.\u00a0 See the links at the end to other articles on this topic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Update:<\/u>\u00a0 The “we” in the title refers (as always on this website) to the American people.\u00a0 As the shown in previous posts and the report described here, the military quickly recognized these problems and strongly responded with measures to mitigate the damage.\u00a0 Unfortunately, solutions lie beyond\u00a0the state of the medical and social sciences.\u00a0 Perhaps these ills result inexorably result from war.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before the data, here’s a brief on the situation, from “<\/strong>Dark Hour<\/strong><\/a>“, Katherine McIntire Peters,\u00a0Government Executive<\/em>, 1 October 2010 (red emphasis added):<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This report literally whistles past the graveyard,” says retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, who served as commandant of the Army War College in 2000 and authored a number of books on military strategy and leadership. Suggesting that officers and NCOs or garrison staffs are responsible for a rising suicide rate because of lax leadership, as Scales reads the Army’s report, is “irresponsible,” he says. “This report basically allows people off the hook for the inability to resource these two wars with the people necessary to do it. It’s got nothing to do with politics. It’s got to do with the lack of perception of what land warfare does to a ground force,” he says. “Rarely have I ever read anything that so badly misses the mark. It’s trying to find little nooks and crannies in the Army’s management of these two wars and it absolutely misses the point of what’s been going on.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scales says too few troops have been carrying too heavy a burden for too long. “I don’t care if you’ve got an army of Robert E. Lees, the anecdotal evidence clearly shows the ground forces are going through an unprecedented realm of emotional stress,” he says.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ADDENDUM<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

More at Wings Over Iraq<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Enough complaining, what do we actually do about suicides?<\/a><\/p>\n

2.)\u00a0Reduce the Separation Authority.\u00a0\u00a0I think it’s time to admit that we face\u00a0<\/strong>a mounting discipline problem<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0which will require years to fix. \u00a0The instances of misdemeanor activity among soldiers has nearly doubled over the past five years. \u00a0In almost a third of those cases, no disciplinary action was taken whatsoever.
\nCertainly, company commanders need to take action to either rehabilitate or get rid of problem troops.\u00a0 But this is easier said than done.\u00a0 For example, the Army has seen a precipitous decline in the number of soldiers chaptered out for obesity in recent years.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/a>
\nDon’t think for a moment it’s because we have fewer obese soldiers, either.<\/em>?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the problem, in my humble opinion, lies with the fact that\u00a0separation\u00a0authority\u00a0<\/strong>has been taken from battalion commanders and raised to the “special court-martial convening authority” (in many cases, a two-star general)<\/strong><\/a>–a full two levels of command. Why? \u00a0Because commanders were doing exactly what they should have been doing–kicking sub-par first-term soldiers out of the Army….<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Fabius Maximus makes waves with a powerful and controversial post: The Army and Marines are breaking, but we don’t\u00a0care Summary:\u00a0 The US Army and Marines are breaking.\u00a0 It’s a slow inexorable process resulting from fighting 4GWs\u00a0around the world too long with too few men.\u00a0 Neocon war-mongers, national leaders, and the general public\u00a0remain blind to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262,527,361,46,350,198,336,39,340,270,380,187,381,10,18,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4gw","category-afghanistan","category-america","category-analytic","category-army","category-fabius-maximus","category-intellectuals","category-military","category-military-reform","category-national-security","category-organizations","category-politics","category-society","category-state-failure","category-war","category-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}