“Yet even with that being the norm, you can still find those who carry a special form of hatred toward those in uniform. In the majority of cases that I have seen, these individuals are sadly misinformed as to the very nature of the military.”
As a veteran, I have dealt with my fair share of anti-military zealots. I remember when I was a recruiting company commander in Indiana. We just happened to have Cindy Sheehan coming to Purdue University to speak out against President Bush and the Iraq War. For those who do not know or remember, she was the mother of US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Through her son’s incredible sacrifice, Ms. Sheehan now carries the most hallowed title of gold star mother. As a veteran and father, I can only imagine the pain involved in her loss. For her sacrifice as a mother and out of the honor I hold for her son, I will always give her a very wide berth in the opinions that she expresses. Her son paid the ultimate price, and she has earned through his blood the right to grieve in virtually any way that gives her tortured soul some respite.
Yet as a recruiting commander, it was important that I know what she was telling people in my company footprint, so I made my way to the college in hopes of hearing her lecture. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, there was not even standing room left in the hall, so I went outside and spoke to some of the people gathered to protest against her. In this case, they were almost entirely Vietnam-era veterans.
After the assembly broke, the attendees passed by us heading back to their cars. It was at this point that a man who I presume to have been a professor walked up to me and called me a baby killer. I wore this ridiculously idiotic statement as a badge of honor. I would happily take his vitriol. After all, I spent my career in a country where the populace overwhelmingly supported those of us in uniform, even if they didn’t support the policies behind these decisions.
Yet even with that being the norm, you can still find those who carry a special form of hatred toward those in uniform. In the majority of cases that I have seen, these individuals are sadly misinformed as to the very nature of the military. Most often, they like to throw out the call that service members are moronic automatons who can do nothing other than blindly follow orders.
I would invite him to go and visit a gold star family and explain to them how their loved one died because they weren’t loved enough. How their sacrifice was meaningless because they were too stupid to fully grasp the ramifications of their service.
I can quote to them the fact that article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) clearly states over and over the requirement to follow only lawful orders. Then there is paragraph 16c(1)(c), which states unequivocally, “Lawfulness. A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or lawful superior orders or for some other reason is beyond the authority of the official issuing it,” meaning that you are clearly responsible for following orders that violate the UCMJ, such as Art. 118 (murder), Art. 120 (rape), and Art 121. (larceny and unlawful appropriation), since these are the common attacks made against the military.
Finally, you have those who attack the military for the fact that we only recruit from the dregs of society. I especially have always enjoyed those who claim that we intentionally target minorities in economically depressed areas to send them to the front lines. Again, I could point out that in order for anyone to join the military they need to have a clean police record and then pass the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB).
In fact, only 25% of American youth can even pass the ASVAB, and 30% of our youth are morally, physically, and mentally qualified. More importantly, if you look at the demographics, one can see that our combat arms soldiers (infantry, armor, artillery, etc.) are 50% white, 39% black, 28% Hispanic, and 24% Asian. This is because whites tend to join the military for adventure, and most blacks and Hispanics join for job training.
I especially have always enjoyed those who claim that we intentionally target minorities in economically depressed areas to send them to the front lines.
Enter into this conversation Pico Rivera, California councilman and high school teacher Gregory Salcido. One of the students in his class wore a Marine Corps sweatshirt to which Salcido had a visceral reaction.
“Don’t you ever freak’n bring the military into this freak’n classroom…One, you’re not going to go to college, and the reason…is you’re not a student. If you’re truly a student you’re going to college…If you join the military, it’s because you have no other options because you didn’t take care of business academically, because your parents didn’t love you enough to push you and you didn’t love yourself enough to push yourself…So now you’re thinking what do I do now…and your parents even encourage [joining the military] sometimes because they want to get you off of their a** because they want to get your grandma and grandpa off of their a** because their parents are a piece of s***. Why would anyone ever sign up for that… Think about the people we have over there. Your stupid uncle Loui or whatever, they’re dumb s****. They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people; they’re the freaking lowest of our low…the data is in, we don’t have a good military. We haven’t been able to beat these guys wearing robes…for 15 years. We couldn’t beat the Vietnamese, they are a people this freak’n big throwing freak’n rice at us…we haven’t been able to beat any body since World War II…and we didn’t get to Italy first, the Russians [did]…it’s a lie that our military is freak’n b****’n.”
This rant, while clearly very anti-military, has all sorts of other issues with it as well. Attacking parents, grandparents, and even making crazy racial statements about the Vietnamese.
I could easily tear apart his argument line by line. For example, I completed over 60 credit hours of college in the first couple of years I served. I even attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, where I learned to speak and read Spanish fluently in six months. After that I got out of the military and the Army paid for me to finish my degree and come back in as an officer, at which point it paid for me to get my master’s degree. On a personal note, I came from a very middle-class family and could have easily gone to college, but I felt that there was a bigger calling for me. As can be seen from my resume, my choice had nothing to do with my intellectual capacity.
In fact, we are often so vigilant not to injure civilians that we put our own troops into more dangerous situations.
As far as us having the best military in the world, I find his comments very revealing into his own delusional state of mind. He complains about the slow going of the war in Afghanistan but in no way realizes that this is because President Obama (and I must assume that Salcido is a liberal and therefore pro-Obama policies) hamstrung the military in our execution and as a military we are hyper-cautious in our targeting so as not to kill or injure those who are not engaged in direct combat with us. In fact, we are often so vigilant not to injure civilians that we put our own troops into more dangerous situations.
Yet with all of that being said, I do not wish this shell of a man ill. Please do not misconstrue my statement—he clearly needs to be fired and socially shunned. He bullied a student in front of the entire class using his position of authority to belittle his family and core values. Teachers need to be facilitators of education, not tyrants who beat their values into the students. He must deal with the consequences of his actions.
However, what we should use this as is an opportunity to show him how misguided he is in his views. At the same time, I denounce calls of violence against him or his family. That truly is the sign of a weak intellect. The most junior of our servicemembers could enter into a discourse with this intellectually stunted and dimwitted ignoramus and completely destroy his entire premise; violence would solve nothing. Especially because most of those doing the threatening are cowards hiding behind the anonymity that the internet provides.
He bullied a student in front of the entire class using his position of authority to belittle his family and core values.
What I would love to do, however, is to engage him one intellectual to another (although he only has a bachelor’s degree, so by his own criteria he is clearly less intelligent than I am and therefore my opinions are worthier of consideration and exultation). I would explain to him that what has made our military the best throughout our history is the fact that our soldiers are free thinkers and intellectuals.
Unlike most in the business world, we don’t have the luxury of committees and meetings. When engaged in combat with the enemy, our soldiers must be able to make immediate decisions on their own that have life or death ramifications for them and their comrades. It is the result of the ability to make sound and intelligent decisions that leads to veterans being 45% more likely than civilians to be entrepreneurs—something that requires both intelligence and courage.
More than anything, I would love to give him the opportunity to engage with those rice-throwing or robe-wearing individuals and judge their skills at killing directly. After all, he is clearly more intelligent than our war fighters; he can surely out-think those moronic savages who never attended college. I have no doubt that he has the courage to do that; after all, he was able to intimidate a high school student.
Although maybe he is too good to get his hands dirty. In that case, I would invite him to go and visit a gold star family and explain to them how their loved one died because they weren’t loved enough. How their sacrifice was meaningless because they were too stupid to fully grasp the ramifications of their service.
I would love to see just how morally and intellectually superior he would find himself in either of those scenarios.
