My motivation ended up = 0
Desire for promotion=same
Desire to GTFO=100%

Burned my uniform the day I separated. Happy as a clam.

Yes, you’re right, the Air Force doesn’t like mavericks who rock the boat. And it’s a known fact that the AF eats it’s own when it comes to non-conformists. I could go on about all the asinine things I saw in my last year but what I remember the most was my First Sergeant who had a hard on to send me to the Gulf of Oman for six months and then bring me back with only one month to get my affairs in order to retire. Thankfully my squadron C.O. had a lot of pull and said hell no and signed my papers for retirement.

I know this only my perspective from the AF but I hear such stupidity has infected the ranks of the other military branches as well. And with such unbelievable stupidity there will always be other Major Hasan’s whose dangerous patterns of behavior will be swept under the rug of apathy until they lash out with deadly actions. Then the reply will be typical from the high muck-a-mucks: ‘Why didn’t somebody see this coming?’

By the way, thanks for your service to our nation. It sounds like you put up with a lot more B.S. than I had to.

I’m not saying that there aren’t “nuts-and-bolts” type of officers but if they want to make the next rank, they keep their mouths shut and toe the line of the current commander, keeping their personal thoughts to themselves. It’s quite interesting to watch, really.

Certain catch phrases and attitudes are most unbecoming as far I’m concerned but self-preservation in their careers is paramount over most anything. I watched it matriculate to the fullest in the 80′s and 90′s. Senior officers making complete fools of themselves and never standing up for what’s right when such a situation would arise. If they did, they were replaced in short order. We just called it “drinking the koolaide” as has become such a popular expression for many things.

Unfortunately, even the most well-balanced, strongest leader types would not ever express any dismay, annoyance or other fraternally unpalatable emotion. Always with the “can-do” and “you bets” when some ridiculous program was undertaken. I’m not saying that the military is a bad place. My exposure was USAF. In the areas where it counted, getting bombs on target, air-to-air, delivering more cargo, etc….they know what the real deal is and they get it done.

However, inside, during the inner-workings and career advancement, one can see some of the farce up close. For this reason, and pretty much this reason alone, I do not miss my military service. But then, I had jobs that most people really hated, including myself.

Now, with all that said, regardless of what Obama says, the stars that be will NOT stand up and tell him he’s wrong. Just not gonna happen. Not if they want to keep their jobs and someday retire at a nice paygrade. They know that this administration is not military friendly and they know that going in to “brief the president” is all eyewash. It’s pathetic but it’s true. Reagan, and both Bush’s and to some extent even Bill-Jeff let the leaders of the military do the leading and kept their fingers our of it.

This administration is the Johnson era revisited only now it’s on steroids and pissed. Any and all military leaders are pawns, and that makes the lower ranks below O-10 hogfeed. If I were to size it up, Barry wants a chief of staff that 1) makes him look good (above all esle), 2) that agrees with his “brilliance” and loves to talk about “RISK” (the game not the situation) and 3)who is at the same “intellectual level” as him…but only just…so he can talk down to him.

If anyone has ever worked for a ditherer, you know what I mean. While you’re doing your job and operating in the confines of the rules and regulations of the company, he shows up at your cubicle/workstation and starts making suggestions. Even ones that are completely unethical and/or make no sense whatsoever. All you can do is nod your head and say, “yes, sir” and then, when he leaves, and you start doing as he said, your IMMEDIATE supervisor comes over and chastises you for doing it.

It’s a tough place to be. But they actually believe themselves so utterly gifted, as does the boy, that there’s nothing they cannot understand given just a fraction of the information needed to comprehend fully. My admiration always went to the people who ran their own company, started at the very bottom, had the smarts and ability to work up and build something out of nothing. Wasn’t an area they didn’t know about. Such people are rare.

I was a prior-enlisted guy…and as an officer I got a lot of crap for it…and not in a nice way. USAF doesn’t like “mavericks” as they used to call them because “Obviously, I don’t know my place”. But for much the same reason, they did away with the warrant officer program as, well, warrants don’t take a lot of crap from anyone. They are a hugely pragmatic bunch and somewhat individualistic. But the military doesn’t like new ideas, independent thought or individuality, to a certain degree.

That is, if you are a subordinate, coming up with a new idea that makes your higher ups look stupid…you lose. If you allow the higher ups to THINK the new idea was theirs, they win, you lose again. It’s a funny world…a dysfunctional type of thing that actually functions. When everyone in the unit is of the same mind, that’s great. But I have seen a unit fall to crap the minute a new commander takes over and changes everything that works, in order to repave the highway and reinvent the wheel.

Sorry for the long-winded post (again) but this is a subject that reaches right into my very core and has affected me personally. If I thought I saw pettiness and childish behavior as guy with stripes on my sleeves, I saw twice that from my “peers” when I had bars on my shoulders.

To any and all who also served and have a much better memory, my hat’s off to you. I’m glad you had the good experience. Mine was….not-so-much.

RS

Hmmm .. what goes around comes around, ay Doc.

Course not if o-blah-blah gets his way.

I have long suspected that, once universal government-run health care is implemented, doctor-patient confidentiality would be one of the first things to go.

Then perhaps many if not all Americans can expect the same sort of Orwellian treatment from their government physician that our soldiers received from MAJ Hasan.

After all, nobody in the Army chain seems to have taken steps to stop Hasan’s repeated professional misconduct. Rather, they just “ignored or rebuffed” his complaints about his patients.

And in the meantime the Army’s patients were assigned to the tender mercies of Dr. Dracula for their care.

Curiously, Hasan seems to have received greater confidentiality from Bank of America regarding his safe deposit box than he gave to his own patients. Thus “Diane Wagner, Bank of America’s senior vice president of media relations, said that her company does not ‘comment or discuss customer relationships’ ….”

As Steve would say, isn’t irony ironic?

Sure, put’s mud on the propped colleague’s interviews saying Hasan was sweet and kind, and no problem was seen.

I wonder how many dollars we have spent per lunatic we have killed in Afghanistan? How many American lives per lunatic?

I’ve heard that he wasn’t even allowed to “treat” combat veterans, only people who had not yet been in combat.

There is a MASSIVE cover-up and mis-direction going on with this.

Breitbart needs to begin his own investigation because while the criminals control the apparatus of government, the truth will never be known.

Is the military psychiatry dept. completely inept? I looked up Captain Surman and found that she is a brand new psychiatrist. Like one year. And she’s the supervisor?

The shooter (piss be upon him) would have killed anyway. He was on his “personal” jihad. You see, that is what most uninformed Americans don’t understand. It would have made no difference. So now those on the left will make up new psychological disorder to explain away the fact that they have been telling us that the war on terror doesn’t really exist and that since ALL American Muslims are not going on mass killing sprees it proves that he was just one sick f&ck who went on a rampage. Remember, there are only “man-made disasters”, there are no terrorist attacks.

The experts on Islam all say that at least 10% of Muslims have been radicalized. Taking that there are 5 million Muslims in American, that number of radicalized is 500,000. Even if we reduce that number to .1% what does that come to? 5000.

We will be told that it is only the disenfranchised, the poor of ME nations, the downtrodden who are attracted to radical jihad. Yet, they will ignore the fact that the 19 hijackers were all education and many came from well-to-do families. Al Zawahiri, OBL’s second in command, it a physician.

The shooter was a Muslim first, a Palenstinian second, and an American last. In the pecking order of loyalties, the nation he was born in came in last.

Just wondering.

Obama, make a decision.