Military Chatter

I noticed this morning a note on Defense Secretary Mark Esper.  He came out and said "Today I'm creating a new, internal Defense Board on Diversity and Inclusion in the Military."

Basically he wants a 6-month research project to establish recommendations to increase racial diversity and equal opportunity across all levels (including the officers).

I sat and pondered upon this.

Basically, since the 1970s, it's been a volunteer force.  Their enticement (which I figured out in the six months before joining the Air Force in 1977)....was college education, tuition assistance, and job-training.  Nothing much has changed since that era. 

I met all kinds of folks over the decades, who came from mostly working-class, or poverty-class situations.....with their chief aim to be....a trail to a better life or education achievement.  At one point, I worked with a NCO who'd written down a 15-year goal....going from high-school level....to a PhD.  The Air Force basically paid 75-percent of all tuition costs.  In those days, there was no shortage of funding, and you could go and spend $6k of their money a year easily (in 1980s/1990s money).  At the 20th year, this NCO retired out and had a $100k job in a matter of two weeks. 

So I look at Esper's idea....he thinks they need more diversity.  The Pew folks in 2019 did a study, and it has interesting numbers.

On women in the military....16-percent of the force are women.

Blacks make up 16-percent of the force.

Latinos make up 16-percent of the force.

Asians make up 4-percent of the force. 

Trying to rig open a door for gays?  Well...the door already exist, including inclusion for gay marriage.

So it's hard to see what extra inclusion he might be talking about.

You see there is there are these two other components of the force which rarely get discussed.

Once you walk in the door, it's kinda explain a simple way.....your job in some way, is to dispatch enemies of the nation in some way.  Either they give up their 'evil' ways, or you dispatch them to heaven in some way. 

The second thing explained in lesser talk....the military really doesn't want to be a full-time baby-sitter, or continually dealing with mentally unbalanced people.  If you are a commander of a 200-man unit and spending a quarter of your yearly time dealing with mental nut-cases or people who won't comprehend orders....then you've become a baby-sitter.  In a stressful war environment.....you'd better off to leave the 'kids' home and just take the non-problem people into the war-zone.

If Esper is successful....basically in five years, you will have 10,000 characters in the military....often referred to as 'Esper's kids' and deemed as mental issue folks. 

Perhaps we should start another study....how to find future Secretaries of Defense, who meet remarkable levels of stupidity and have an IQ below 75.