Letters to the Editor
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derbig mooser
Just got in from work and wanted to second something RMP said that I have been thinking about since I read your post this morning. In my experience there is an extraordinary commitment to professionalism in the military, to a degree it is hard to describe if you have not experienced it. We tend to be a type to try to do things 110%, as the saying goes, and that goes with the idea of professional standards and commitment. And as RMP says, that is why the political ones in the military are so disgusting to the mass of military personell, which you have no access to either unless you are in on it, because part of the professionalism is not to gossip outside the house but try to work at it from within in accord with standards. Indeed, these politicized ones are often the only ones the public gets to see, because they are always engineering ways to pop up in the news or their political masters use them in those ways. But the great majority find this disgusting.
And if Obama or Clinton get in, the one thing I hope they will do is axe all the mercenary stuff. God, if there was one thing we all griped about, it was having to deal with civilians when they were put into some previously military held position. It was like trying to deal with aliens. I can only imagine the nightmare folks are having trying to deal with civilians with guns with a license to kill, totally out of the chain of command. What a nightmare.
And I too second RMPs sadness that homosexuals have not been integrated into the military. That was one of my giant dissapointments with Bill Clinton, that he caved on that. That was one case where we did need civilian leadership and someone with guts to stand up for it (as when blacks were integrated into the military, and the role of women was broadened as well).