I wss RIF'ed (Reduction in Force) in 1992, when the Army went from from 850,000 to 550,000. In English, I was let go after the Gulf War, and I entered the reserves, where I served until 2010. But we endured the Clinton years, the time where the dingbat UN Ambassador, Ms. Madeline Halfbright, actually asked then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, "What the purpose of having this great army if we don't use it?" To answer you moron, it's so we never have to use it. If the enemy knows they will get their ass kicked, they don't screw with us.
I've often said, when needing to explain why we have our armed forces, GA Douglas MacArthur said it better than any man in his 1960 address to the United State Military Academy:
...And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars....
There was good and bad about the Bush years, but under no circumstances did I believe he hated the service or our mission. But fast forward to the Obama years and what happened there, I look at it and I want to cry. With every abomination (women on submarines, women in infantry and Ranger school, letting in open homosexuals and requiring military chaplains to perform same sex ceremonies, transsexuals, paying for sex-change surgery, etc), I would openly say "Thank God I'm out!" I've looked at disgust at the contempt the Obamaites held our service men in, the closing of the World War II Memorial for craven political points made me grateful I would not see this from inside. When I saw DoD ordering the Army and Marines to put women in infantry, I was hoping for some pushback from the Army. None that I saw, although the Marine Commandant did stand against it openly. And as I recall, was removed early.
Now in reading this article (and looking at this picture) I'm recalling walking out of a sexual harassment class that was hastily called, annoyed at being spoken to like this. One friend, a retired colonel, was also annoyed. He said, "Mike, I can reduce that wasted hour to two words. Be professional." But that hasn't been a major concern of the Department of Defense lately.
I'll make a few comments on this article at the end.
The Rise and Fall of the US Army
By Ray Starmann
Second Lieutenant Spenser Rapone is a sign of the times.
Spenser Rapone is a tenfold beacon in the night, a thousand blaring klaxons crying out and telling the nation and the world just how far our glorious army has fallen.
Spenser Rapone is a disgrace to the army, to the famous 10th Mountain Division where he is currently assigned and to the United States of America. His continued presence in the US military is a slap in the face to every grunt, tanker, zoomie, swabbie and gyrene that gave their lives for this country.
Rapone literally came out of the gulag last week, when pictures of him surfaced online, which portrayed him at West Point wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and holding his cap with a sign inside that read, ‘communism will win.’
The pictures were only the beginning. We learned Rapone is pro-Antifa, was mentored by an Islamist professor at West Point, supports Black Lives Matter, believes General Mattis is a vile, evil ‘f**K, advocates violence against the US government, was kicked out of the 75th Ranger Regiment as an enlisted man, and is currently serving as a platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division.
In today’s army, Rapone is a shoo-in for chief of staff.
Apparently, one dinosaur at West Point, representing what used to the ethical standards of the academy and the army as a whole, made a formal complaint about Rapone to the authorities at West Point in 2015.
In a signed statement, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Heffington wrote, “From his various online rantings and posts, it appears that DCT Rapone is an avowed Marxist, which is completely out of line with the values of this nation and its Army. Moreover, CDT Rapone’s posts indicate that he hates West Point, the U.S. Army, and indeed this country. One post dated 16 November 2015 states, ‘F*ck this country and its false freedom.’ He also … even implicitly justifies the actions of ISIS and blames the United States for terrorist attacks.”
Heffington continued, “Never in 18 years has any soldier spoken to me or treated me with such extreme disrespect as CDT Rapone did…His utter contempt for my rank and position as an Army officer was blatantly obvious…”
Both the army and West Point each put out statements last week, parroting the fact that Rapone doesn’t represent the values of the US Army in 2017, yada, yada, yada. Just what are the values of the US Army today and why was nothing done about Rapone at West Point or for that matter, at Fort Drum, his current duty station, where it was apparently common knowledge that Rapone is a militant anti-American communist who wishes to sabotage the US military?
The army says Rapone is under investigation.
Whatever…
Spenser Rapone’s investigation, brought to you by the same US Army that claims a 37 year old mommy made it through Ranger School.
Uh huh…
The mommies of Pointe du Hoc…
Perhaps Major General Scott Miller and his merry men from Fort Stockholm Syndrome, Georgia, are in charge of this cluster as well?
Rapone should immediately lose his security clearance and be given a dishonorable discharge at a minimum.
But, I’m betting my former captain’s railroad tracks that nothing, nada, nichts will be done to Rapone, for the main reason the army is saturated with leftists and new age groupies who think that there’s nothing wrong with this guy’s conduct or beliefs and with feather merchants who don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do what is right.
In the Pentagon, moral courage is absent without leave.
Does anyone in the army have the intestinal fortitude to do a Ron Luciano and give Rapone the Kiwi Express right out on the street where the communist SOB belongs?
The army of 2017 is not the army of Patton, MacArthur, Ridgway, Gavin, Collins, Beckwith, Cavazos, Hackworth, Schwarzkopf, Leide, McCaffrey and Waller.
What kind of army is it in 2017; an army that walks on eggshells, that marches to the beat of the PC drummer, that is so focused on fulfilling some social engineering agenda that it has jettisoned common sense and its mission like an empty fuel pod over the Solomon’s.
Spenser Rapone, Bowe Bergdahl, Chelsea Manning – multiple indicators that the merde has hit the ventilateur, that the army has a major problem and that the lean green machine is decaying by the hour.
The army is in a free fall and the situation is even more dire than those dark days in the early and mid- 1970’s, when the army was reeling from a myriad of problems: a hostile public who never understood the sacrifices made in Southeast Asia and the heroism of its soldiers there; from drug problems, criminals gangs and race riots in the barracks.
The army was broken after Vietnam, but most of its senior leaders were stronger than those today, and they upheld the values of the institution. With the help of young officers and NCO’s who had survived Vietnam, they vowed to rebuild the army and create an all-volunteer, highly-motivated, modern force which, if called upon to fight a war, would go all the way and never look back.
General Fred Franks, who commanded VII Corps in the Gulf War and who lost a leg in Cambodia in 1970, referred to an almost religious devotion among the army’s leadership to rebuild it. Franks called it ‘the hot blue flame that burned brightly.’
After Vietnam, the problems in the army were mainly at the bottom, unlike today, where the army and the military is a fish rotting from its head.
In the 1970’s, under leadership from people like Bill DePuy, Shy Meyer, Donn Starry, Glen Otis and Dick Cavazos the army developed a new doctrine for war known as air land battle, and received new equipment most commonly known as the Big Five: the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley, the Apache, the Blackhawk and the Patriot. The army now had equipment that outclassed most of what the Soviet Army and its Warsaw Pact allies possessed.
Most importantly, the army had a new breed of soldiers; they were volunteers who wanted to serve; they were tough, smart and better paid. Some wanted to make it a career, others wanted to earn enough money to go to college. Some were there for the mere adventure. Under the leadership of Vietnam vet NCO’s; men who knew what went wrong and more importantly, how to insure the mistakes never happened again, the army was reborn.
For 20 years the new US Army trained like a gladiator for its day of reckoning. That day came in 1991, when it destroyed Saddam’s legions in a defeat not seen since Agincourt.
Could the US Army of 2017 win a war like that in 100 Hours?
Not a chance in hell. The army doesn’t have the units, nor does it have the armor and mechanized skills and training anymore, nor does it have the leadership at the top.
General Dick Cavazos used to say the army is filled with killers, fillers and fodder.
It’s safe to say the army’s senior leaders today are mainly fodder.
After Desert Storm, the air was gradually sucked out of the army. By the mid 1990’s many of the men who had helped rebuild it were long gone. Political correctness became the name of the game and good people left the service, attracted to a reduction in force financial incentive and also disgusted by big social changes that were already underway.
A leadership vacuum was created, which left a gigantic gap for leftists, communists and radical feminists to push their agenda on an army that seemed to have lost its mojo.
By the time the Iraq War rolled around, feminists had already pushed women into the air cavalry, into support units that would expose them to danger, into coed basic training at places like Relaxin’ Jackson, while social engineers ensured that sensitivity training and diversity became more important than war fighting.
Any warriors or conservatives still remaining in the army departed sometime during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The army was exhausted from endless rotations to combat zones and led by generals who didn’t hold a candle to those from the past. Even its one general who looked like a bright, shining star, David Petraeus, was found to be lacking in ethics and common sense. Soon, the army would meet its worst enemy, Barack Hussein Obama.
The fall of the US Army went into warp speed during the two Obama administrations. More leftists flooded into the military, intent on destroying the army’s conservative values and replacing them with Hollywood style, Silicon Valley start-up ethics. Aided and abetted by General Martin Dempsey, Secretaries of the Army John McHugh and Eric Fanning, and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, transgenders were initially authorized to serve, women were allowed to serve in the combat arms and special operations, male ROTC cadets paraded around campuses in red high heels, male soldiers were forced to conduct physical training in pregnancy simulators, breastfeeding and lactation memos were sent out to worldwide commands, women were put through Ranger School under false pretenses, the Bible and Constitution were taught in DoD classes as sexist documents and white privilege training was conducted.
The leftist/feminist destruction of the army continues to this day.
As the army suffers from one leftist/feminist assault after another, as the Spenser Rapone’s freely advocate sabotaging the army and nothing is done about it, one begins to wonder what it was all for; what was the purpose of rebuilding the army, creating a spectacular force, only to allow it to be destroyed by people espousing agendas that are anathema to the army and the nation itself?
The Rise and Fall of the US Army is a tragedy beyond description.
The final act in the Rise and Fall of the US Army has yet to be played out. But, it will be on a distant battlefield.
It will be.
Over the Veterans Day weekend I will be with many fellow veterans at the annual Council of Colonels. Last year we were relieve Mrs. Bill Clinton would never be Commander-in-Chief, although many of us had our reservations with Donald Trump. But all of use have family and friends still wearing the uniform, deploying, and having to deal with the destruction of the last eight years. At least last time (Post-Vietnam) the senior staff was not stocked with holdovers from the group that inflicted the damage and are still working to sabotage our mission. Hopefully we can at least start in the right direction with the Trump-Mattis years.
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