I never read your clearly stated position of the troopers not being in their current jobs until after I posted post 10.  Secondly I have gone back and reread the entire banter and do not see where you indicated this position prior to my post 10.  So I can only conclude that you continually seek ways to squelch debate not encourage it.

But I will concede your point that it appears I am being dishonest.  Unfortunately such is not the case but I guess that is how you are going to compartmentalize me at this forum.

So in the end you must be advocating for the entire retooling of the military structure to one that is accommodating to the 1/10th of 1 percent of those men and women who have problems thereby further undermining the very thing that makes the military a completely different corporation than can be found anywhere in America.

Discipline. 

No wonder you ended the conversation.  I know must go away from this conversation not understanding what you want to accomplish and you leave the conversation diminishing your chance to have perhaps 100,000’s of people who might read this blog understand your position and why it is superior to the old stodgy position of entrenched military leaders.

Your loss.  Mine too.

Perhaps the disagreement comes in that you want mental cases to keep their jobs.

At the point that I specifically said the opposite not once but twice, I conclude that you’re being intentionally dishonest and I decline to discuss anything further with you.

Took me awhile to dig this out of my computer of which I must have 100 books worth of notes.

As it turns out, the military and the Department of Defense (DoD) have an entire system of education and training institutions and organizations of their own, including the many schools of the National Defense University system (NDU): the National War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the School for National Security Executive Education, the Joint Forces Staff College, and the Information Resources Management College as well as the Defense Acquisition University, the Joint Military Intelligence College — open only to "U.S. citizens in the armed forces and in federal civilian service who hold top secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearances" — the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Naval War College, Air University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the Marine Corps University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, among others. In fact, scholar Chalmers Johnson has noted in his new book on American militarism, The Sorrows of Empire, that there are approximately 150 military-educational institutions in the U.S.

This assault from the military academia is continual and incessant.  They are constantly striving to make the military better but in so doing one of the things continually being redefined is  are we a military or are we a social services program.  The policy coming from the DoD seems to want to change every 6 months.   This is what I was referring to.

Im assuming your talking about my opinion that Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party didnt do enough to prevent the war?

I wonder what they will say about the democratic party in the year 2165.  Maybe someone will be saying they didn’t do enough to prevent the war and it will be considered dangerous for the society to adopt such a view.

I still think you think I favored no war over the succession.  I think Abraham Lincoln was correct in going to war over the succession.  My point always was that enough was not done to solve the crisis prior to the succession.  I have never nor would I ever favor succession to war.

I am sorry.  But they could not perform their duties and somehow I just didnt think it appropriate that their buddies should carry their rifle because they were missing an arm but still wanted to stay.

The problem with mental illness is that we can look at you and see that you are missing an arm or a leg and say "Okay".  But when we look at you and see nothing wrong except an occassional bizarre or inappropriate behavior then there is no light switch that comes on and says "Okay"

People like you Jason want the light to pop on and so would I.  But there is no magical light switch to shine is rays  upon the mental cases in the military.  Therefore it becomes a shell game.  That is why it becomes degrading and appears punitive.  Any time someone is forced from their outfit that does not want to leave it is perceived as punitive. 

The rehab takes places at the VA not while your under fire or dodging road side bombs.  Same goes with the soldier missing an arm.  It might be punitive but as long as he is assigned a slot in your outfit then there is no one to take his place.  Once he is a casulty then you want him gone so he can be replaced.  That is even more important in a combat zone then in peacetime at Offut AFB.

Perhaps the disagreement comes in that you want mental cases to keep their jobs.  You want that insane Captain flying his apache with hellfire missiles to keep his job while they try to work out his issues between missions.  As for me.  Coldly.  I want him at the VA getting help.   I dont want him anywhere near my men.

Now if your talking about the VA in the above post then my heartfelt compassion arises from the ashes.  In active duty and especially in a war time environment then I am one cold SOB.
 
 

My criticism is focused on a single narrow area — the way that the military treats mental health problems that are, in many cases, created or exacerbated as a result of military service. Military culture deters people from even seeking help in the first place and, once they do, they are treated as outcasts and/or infants.

No one is suggesting that they should be left in place in command of a bunker or a machine gun. That’s just a flatly wrong interpretation of what I am saying. In fact, part of my criticism of the current approach is that it winds up causing them to stay in place rather than seeking help. Those who might want help will hide their problems (and their supervisors will help them) for fear of the social and career consequences of seeking even minor mental health treatment.

The military needs to change its approach in this area as part of our national duty to the volunteers who have sacrificed their physical AND mental health in service of this country. Mine is NOT an anti-military nor an anti-soldier argument. I think a better and less ideologically antiquated approach to mental health would actually increase military effectiveness by making it so that people who can be treated can receive that at an early stage when it might make them able to eventually return to service AND by removing people who would otherwise stay in their units trying desperately to conceal their problems until they commit suicide and take out half their squad along with them. Even if their suicide is all alone, that is hundreds of thousands in wasted training costs and a serious impact on unit morale.

Bottom line: Military mental health care should take a rehabilitative instead of punitive approach whenever possible. And the nature of that rehabilitation should be empowering, not infantilizing.

What I question is academia’s continual assault on the military in such a cavalier manner. Thus I had to shake my head and find the way in which you express yourself troublesome.

What I question is would you want mentally challenged officers in the bunkers with fingers on the trigger? Would you want mentally unbalanced pilots flying combat missions over your head?

If you were the manager of your local Walmart or Target would you want employees who were angry, hurtful, threatened the health and welfare of your customers or fellow employees? Of course not.

But somehow in the great scholarly world of Academia it is okay to rip the military for not having compassion on those same soldiers that would be fired by Walmart and Target in a heartbeat.

The difference of course is that we as the military and the government probably caused their problems and therefor as a commander it is my job to weed them out and hand them over to the Military arm that deals with that.

Usually they are then sent on to the VA where it is out of my hands. I do not have the luxury to worry about what happens to them because I am being asked to fight a battle, win a war and I can only do that when I have the very best soldiers at my command.

Jason you are making a typical mistake. You are accusing the front line War time combat officer of being cold and calculating when in fact that is EXACTLY how we have to be in order to get the job done and accomplish the mission. We do not have the luxury of second guesses. Of changing our mind and make a different decision. When you order the first battalion to move up instead of the second or the third and when the iraqis drop a couple m1 tanks or an apache accidently mistakes it for an iraqi tank and kills 4 of your men with a hellfire missile you cannot take it back.

You want good, healthy, mentally stable men in that tank, leading that battalion and flying those apaches. I shake my head because you do not make this distinction. Combat soldiers seem to in your world deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I AGREE. Just not in my outfit. They deserve the benefit of the doubt with another part of the military tasked with their care. NOT MINE.

If that is your contention I wholeheartedly agree. But if that was your contention then you certainly did not make that clear at all.