Updates

Turns out it's been a minute since I posted last. Some highlights:
Ft Hood is a nightmare. The front gate should have "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." It's the place careers go to die.
Deployed again. That was about six months of reindeer games.
Got promoted to sergeant in September after months of my battalion and company doing everything in their power to prevent it - including inventing new requirements. They did that several times, actually. Branch finally came down and told them that yes, I was getting promoted on account of there was no legitimate reason not to.
The president said we'd be home by Christmas. Our commander posted it on Facebook, to which the Kuwaitis said "No the hell you ain't!" Six months in Kuwait later...
I got recommended for anger management because some soldiers in my platoon and an E-5 decided to concoct a story about me. The end result is that I have a bar on re-enlistments and the E-5 is now going to get my slot for the IO/SO schoolhouse. I don't particularly care about the bar, being that this battalion has thoroughly convinced me that I have no place in the new Army (I have this honor and integrity problem - I have them, you see, and that's not authorized), but getting that school slot stolen seriously chaps my ass. It's the difference between getting paid $60,000 a year and getting paid $250,000 a year. I wouldn't mind if he outperformed me, but all he did was spin lies after I blew him out of the water on the qualifications test. That whole debacle was... Well, I have nothing good to say about any of the involved.
Ironically, you see people driving worse than they claimed I did every day on Ft Hood. Go figure.

Moving

I'll be en route to Ft Hood pretty shortly. Apparently, my company thinks it's right for me to move out of my barracks room before I clear post... while still expecting me to show up to work. See, shit like this is why I'm so happy to be getting out of this unit/post. I mean, it's not like I don't pay my BAH for this barracks room or anything.
Oh, wait.

SSG Lee: "What's wrong with Texans, Schnepp?"
Me: "Texans, Sergeant."
Bwahahaha. Good thing I don't leave post much. I hear they do lynch mobs.

Godwin's Law

I ran across a right proper douchecanoe in the Youtube comments. I introduced it to certain facts, the way reality works. It said I *must* be an enlisted man, because no officer could be so stupid - in between spouting off such venom that I'm pretty sure it woulda ended in a fistfight if we were within arm's reach. Don'tcha just love the GIFT (that's Great Internet Fuckwad Theory for you non-nerds)? It means we get these keyboard commandos who dehumanize their opposition to a frightening extreme. Some of these Western leftists are worse in their venom than the jihadists.

Here's my take on it: "Oh, look, Nazi Germany 2.0." No shit really. Violent thugs who unthinkingly follow the commands of a collectivist leader, run in a cult of personality, demonizing all opposition, that's how Hitler got to power. Thankfully, we don't have any politicians who are as bad as Hitler... yet. If we did, though, you're kidding yourself if you don't think it could happen here. It won't be the political right, either. They value the individual too much, they usually have absolute morals, and they think of the Constitution as a fundamentally sound document that doesn't need rewritten. No, it will be the leftists, the collectivists (again), who've spent so much time and energy demonizing and dehumanizing their political opposition that an American-style Kristalnacht is just a good speech away. They do not believe in absolute right and wrong - they think that right and wrong are points of view, dependent on the situation. They do not value the individual, whatever they may claim, and instead view people only as demographics. They do not believe in the founding principles of the Constitution, those being the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, believing instead in the right to do what they please, so long as it offends none, the right to healthcare, the right to be taken care of, the right to surrender themselves and their protection to the State! Everything I see them doing is moving towards the end of destroying traditional American culture and creating a collectivist utopia in its stead. A nightmarish utopia, where minorities reign above the white males for crimes committed before my birth, where the citizen does not have the right to his own property, much less the right to defend himself, where the group matters more than the individuals, where the mob tears apart those who dissent in a vicious frenzy of political correctness.

If you find yourself getting violently pissed off about politics, either start taking some happy pills or suck-start a firearm. I mean that. We're all better off without you. You're a chock-block. You're an impediment to progress.

I really hate scrubbing toilets

Especially when someone in this barracks seems incapable of making it into the bowl, and I ain't just talking about #1. Naturally, yours truly is about the only person who can take time out of his busy, busy day to scrub the shit, urine, and other bodily substances out of the toilets and the water-free urinals. Never mind that we have weekly inspections, the dozens of soldiers in these barracks know someone else will clean up their messes.

Just something to remember when the retention NCO walks by.

Me, Shitbag?

It's funny how one incident can give a commander a completely wrong picture about someone. I was kinda-sorta-but-not-really related to the incident, but TRADOC being TRADOC I got dragged along for the ride. It basically meant that me - a specialist, an E-4, a junior enlisted soldier - had to sit there and try not to pay too much attention to the captain chewing out the sergeant. The captain thought it proper that the sergeant have a battle-buddy, and I don't outrank the captain.
But I thought it was pretty darn disrespectful to the sergeant, so I apologized to him for that as soon as we were clear.
Details aren't terribly important, it was one of those "What were you thinking?" type things. Because it wasn't me being the dimwit and instead someone I respect the hell out of, I won't relate 'em. The captain came away from this little meeting thinking of this sergeant as a lying self-centered bastard. That's the opposite of true. SGT Suhr's one of those sergeants who looks after his joes and tells us the God's honest truth. If he told me the sun was set to rise at 2359 tonight, I'd know it was 'cause he was damn sure the sun was set to rise at 2359 tonight. Apparently I'm disloyal, too, 'cause I didn't immediately leap to be present for my superior's dressing-down. Like I said, it's funny wrong an impression of someone you can get if you only know them from one interaction.

Also, you ever notice how you think of all the right things to say immediately after the door's closed, precisely the moment they stop being useful things to think of?

Shitbag Privates

Holy smokes, what is it about new privates that just makes my blood boil? The little bastards are rude, disrespectful, and cocky. Some of them are salvagable, but it seems that most of A-Co's initial entry... I hesitate to call them 'soldiers'... types are better off being thrown back into the civilian population. At least then they won't put me or my buddies in danger. Back in C-Btry, we looked at the arrival of new soldiers with a mix of glee and dread. Glee, because we'd get to pull all the old shenanigans on a new troop. Dread, because odds were he'd be a shitbag who'd wind up causing everyone in the battery a lot of headaches before he got caught with a DUI, popped hot on a piss test, or molested an underage girl (the only three offenses I've seen people get kicked out of the Army for). Just about every new soldier was an eighteen-to-twenty-year-old private who thought he was all that and a bag of chips because he graduated basic training. While some of that I can blame on their age, a lot of it simply goes back to TRADOC. They don't get taught that, while their dumb little buddies in IET land were just as low on the totem pole as they are, the soldiers in their unit ain't.

Take for example one of the little shits in my class. He's an E-2 barely out of BCT and not quite through IET. I'm an E-4 who's been some places and done some things. He acts as though following my directions were entirely at his option, and I have no recourse beyond going and grabbing an NCO! And because this is TRADOC, all the NCO can do is put him at parade rest and chew him out. He can't smoke him, can't write up paperwork on him. I've told him that I hope he winds up in the same unit as me. I fully intend to either break him as his drill sergeants should have done or make sure that when he screws up, the command does not look kindly upon him. I've had enough with shitstain privates. I don't mind the ones who're just dumb, but have a good attitude. I don't mind the ones who're cocky, but squared-away enough to back it up (that much). But when I'm chewing a private's ass because he decided that he would disregard my directions to continue working with the rest of the class rather than skip out to 'take out the trash' for twenty minutes, and he blatantly disrespects me? I tell him to go to parade rest and wipe that smirk off his face and he shoves his hands in his pockets? Fuck no. If the class leader (a SGT) hadn't intervened... heh, I probably woulda wound up losing my clearance and getting kicked out of the school. He thinks he's hot shit 'cause he can do 200 push-ups. Swell. That's completely unimpressive to anyone who's done PT with SSG Cobb (I bet everyone in old C-Btry remembers those "DIAMONDS!"). Doubly when you consider this private has lousy form and has to take breaks during this. Playing by the same rules, I can do over 500. You'll never hear me claiming that, though, 'cause I can really only do 50-60 a rep. Hell, you'll never hear me claiming that because I'm not some douchebag private who mistakes PT for soldiering. He asks "Why?" questions of an NCO. Anyone who's been in longer than three weeks understands that you do not do that. Period. Private does not ask "Why?", Private executes. If he's lucky, he'll figure out the "Why?" while he's doing it. The class leader had to tell him several times to get to parade rest. Not "At ease", not smirking, at parade-fucking-rest. What will his platoon sergeant do? Not a damn thing.

Before you think I was the one who started this, I wasn't. Except, perhaps, by being too soft and too nice to these kids. Believe me, I know how to be an asshole. I learned from the best. I chose not to, as it's not my job here. But when I start having to deal with a little bastard who disrespects everyone who doesn't have stripes on their chest... Well, I'm fully capable of putting away the Nice Guy hat and busting out with the Bastard McAssream hat.

This private is not the exception. He is the norm. This is why I have no intention of staying in the Army. TRADOC completely fails to instill any degree of respect into the new soldiers, and more and more the high command prevents units from correcting this oversight. They teach these kids that there's no such thing as rank inside the GCS. Bullshit there ain't. You can't pull rank to settle a disagreement over safety-of-flight issues, but there damn sure better be rank all the rest of the time. Privates need to follow the orders and directions of their superiors because... well, hell, they're the juniors for a reason. They don't know anything. If a private won't follow directions during a simple clean-up task, how can I expect him to follow directions during a firefight? How can I expect him to follow directions during a long, difficult mission? I can't. We are an Army at war. Even the noncombatant types like UAS operators need to understand that. I have a buddy who repairs optics. It's a job that sounds as poggie as... hell, the Navy these days. He's been in more firefights than he can count. What happens if I wind up in a knock-down drag-out firefight, and I have to rely on some shitbag private like the one described above? I'm trained and proficient in warfare. It comes naturally to me. I'll probably get killed trying to keep that jackass from getting himself killed, all because he won't listen to me when I'm trying to train him up... because he thinks that just because I'm not a sergeant, he doesn't have to listen to anything I say. Ignore the fact that I've spent more time in Iraq than he has in the Army. Ignore the fact that I've spent more time wearing a vest than he has wearing ACUs. Ignore that, he's an eighteen-year-old private and he knows everything.
Way to go, TRADOC. Glad some officer got that bullet on his OER. How many soldiers get killed because you won't let Drill Sergeant do his job the right way? How many shitbags have you released to the Army who we had to devote excessive time and energy into straightening out? How the hell do you think this is the right way to go?

Assange, Manning, and why some secrets need to be kept

I saw the quoted text in the comments on another blog. My response ran long, so I'm posting it here.

"BTW, I wonder how many patriots who are currently clamoring for Wikileak's demise, would act if their actions hurt a traditional US enemy?"

To be blunt? If Assange had taken action against the MME, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Russians, pretty much anyone we really don't get along with and will probably find ourselves in conflict against? I'd think he was a sleezeball, but at least he's our sleezeball. I find the 'crusading for truth' journalists obnoxious at best. Some things simply are best kept quiet until they can do little harm. Some things need to be out in the open. Characters like Assange rarely know the difference.
You can't draw a moral equivalency between our enemies and us (certain presidential administrations and... hell, pretty much everything in DC notwithstanding).

But then, I'm an active duty soldier. Journalists are pretty much my natural enemy, even moreso than the ones who shoot at me.

Assange, I don't harbor so much ill will against. Charge him with espionage and put him in prison. Let him write a book, make a ton of money off of it. If we can prove someone's been killed because of what he did, then by all means get him with manslaughter or second-degree murder. I don't expect him to be able to see the consequences of his actions, being that he's not military. I hold him in contempt, as he's a trussed-up little puke who thinks he's something special. I do *not* want him assassinated. We are *not* a nation of vigilantes, we are a nation of laws. He should face trial for his actions, not be declared a terrorist and gunned down. If we do that, we prove him right.

So yes, I disagree with those internet commandos lusting for Assange's blood. We were once a principled nation. Doing the right thing, the just thing, with this person will be a sign that there's something of that left.

Bradley Manning, on the other hand, is guilty of treason. The firing squad for that one. I fail to see how my coldblooded desire to see him executed for crimes not against the government, but against his fellow soldiers, separates me from 'true patriots'. The man decided that he would betray us after we entrusted him with access to a great many 'national secrets'. While they didn't show the "True face of the evil American Empire" like some have crowed (rather, they tend to affirm that we - the military, that is - are who we say we are), it's the principal of the thing. I, like Manning, am a young soldier in military intelligence with a Secret clearance. I'm a drone operator, and have seen things and will see things that the public need never know about. Like Manning, I disagree with a number of the government's policies and actions. I do not find myself overwhelmingly compelled to release a flood of classified Secret documents that do little to harm the Federal government and pose a potential risk to our allies both on the state and personal levels. Assange claims he is going through the documents to make sure that nobody's put at risk - I don't trust him, and with some of the docs I've seen rightfully so. He is not a friend of liberty, and he's no friend of justice. Neither of them. If I am able to refrain from producing such a flood of classified information, then so should Manning.

The only thing Manning accomplished with this leak was giving the government an excuse to generate more layers of secrecy and to hide things more. The government cannot be trusted with the ability to hide its actions from the people even more. It's simply human nature to abuse such power. Sometimes the government does things that need to see the light of day. People like Assange and Manning need to exercise discretion, to release those things to the public without airing out all the sundry little details of day-to-day life in the diplomatic corps, or giving out sensitive information about our TTPs and interactions with the locals. If they don't... well, the results speak for themselves, don't they?