Sunday, September 20, 2015

The Army is about to be led by someone that is not necessarily the best of the best.

The Russians, Chinese, N. Koreans and even ISIS are humored by the criteria we use to select our military leaders. 
If the Senate approves, the U. S. military will soon have its first openly homosexual Secretary of the Army.
Eric FanningGreg Jaffe reports for The Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2015, that in a historic first for the Pentagon, Obama has chosen to nominate Eric Fanning, 47, to lead the Army. “Eric brings many years of proven experience and exceptional leadership to this new role,” Obama said in a statement.
Fanning has been a trusted ally of Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter who tapped Fanning last year to oversee his transition team as he moved into the Pentagon’s top job. He also served briefly as acting Air Force secretary, a deputy undersecretary of the Navy and has been acting undersecretary of the Army since June 2015. Defense officials said that he might be the only person in the Pentagon’s history to serve at senior levels in all three of the services. “He understands how the Pentagon works and how to get things done in the Pentagon,” said Rudy de Leon, who was deputy defense secretary in the Clinton administration. “He knows what works and what doesn’t work.”
Fanning has been a specialist on national security issues for more than two decades and has played a key role overseeing some of the Pentagon’s biggest shipbuilding and fighter jet weapons programs. Now he will oversee an Army that has been battered by the longest stretch of continuous combat in American history and is facing potentially severe budget cuts.
As Army secretary, Fanning will be teamed with Gen. Mark Milley, who took over as the Army’s top general in August. Together the two men will assume responsibility for the Pentagon’s largest and most troubled service.
The Army, which swelled to about 570,000 active duty troops during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has shed about 80,000 soldiers from its ranks in recent years and plans to cut 40,000 more over the next few years. Those planned cuts would shrink the service to its smallest size of the post-World War II era.
Battered by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has had to deal with a spike in suicides as the wars drew to an end and. Recently, the Army’s outgoing top officer, Gen. Ray Odierno, said that tight budgets and the ongoing strain of 14 years of war had badly degraded the Army’s readiness to fight and that only one-third of its brigades were prepared to deploy to a war zone, the lowest readiness rate in decades.
Fanning’s sexual orientation seemed a non-issue among Republicans and Democrats in Congress who were far more worried about the state of the Army. Joe Kasper, the chief of staff to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), said, “There is a real crisis in morale and retention that has developed for the Army over the last several years. The Army needs a leader who will stand up for soldiers, who recognizes war can get ugly and who won’t shy away from the tough issues. If Fanning is that type of person he’ll be embraced.”
Fanning’s historic appointment didn’t seem to cause a stir in the Army, either.
Phil Carter, an Iraq veteran and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said, “My sense is that the Army is over this and has been over it for some time. The Army Cares whether you can shoot straight, not whether you are straight. The biggest problem the Army faces is finding its mission, relevance and purpose after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. All of the services face it but the Army faces it most acutely.”
Fanning’s role as Army secretary would give him influence over the selection over the next generation of generals who will rebuild the service after the wars.
One big question for the Army is whether, in an era of tight budgets, it will return primarily to preparing for heavy combat missions against a big conventional military, like the Russians, or experiment with new formations that are better suited to training and working alongside indigenous partners. Since 2000, the Army has been forced to cancel virtually all of its major new weapons programs because they ran over budget or didn’t perform as expected. New battlefield equipment for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, like special armored vehicles designed to resist blasts from roadside bombs, had to be developed outside of the Army’s traditional procurement channels. The net result is that many of the Army’s most sophisticated helicopters, tanks and artillery cannons were developed more than 30 years ago.
“The Army is still living off equipment from the Reagan years” deLeon said. With budgets tight, Fanning’s challenge will be to upgrade and modernize the aging fleet using modern information technology.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9/20/2015

    The U.S. Military strength is about 1.8 million of that # less than 400,000. are actual combat troops. In the last 18 months the U.S. Army has decommissioned 11 combat brigades, that's 66,000 men of which probably 63,000 were combat troops. Do you remember about a year ago Democrats were desperately trying to enlist aliens for service. This year it's homosexuals, transgenders, and women. The real question is why aren't men joining combat arms? Let's face it men who join don't do it for the money, they do it for love of country, maybe they feel it's no longer worth fighting for, maybe they feel it's not their country anymore. Let the protected classes fight for it.

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    1. Anonymous9/20/2015

      If I had a bunch of homosexuals and transgenders fighting me, I'd run the other way, those queers are vicious.

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  2. Anonymous9/20/2015

    The Democrats, led by the most radical left wing President in our history, and abetted, defended and propped up by the most fraudulent "media" in our history, is running the tables! If you are an Irish Catholic from our neighborhood, and you go to church when you can, and try to live a life you think is representative of these beliefs, how can you possibly look in the mirror at what your Grand Dad's Democratic Party has become. They are NOT that party. They do NOT share those basic fundamental concerns and values. In short - they HATE YOU! With this pandering to their special interests, defending Planned Parenthood devils who slice, cut, crush and sell innocent unborn baby body parts, they are spitting in your face - and you are smiling. They invite the Pope to Washington and invite enemies of our Church to attend....pro abortion nuns!!!! Leaders of LGBTQ groups who are hostile to the Church and it's teaching....emotionally confused "transgender" activists. Seriously what will it take. I really half believe that they could perform Satanic sacrifices on the White House Lawn aborting fetuses and drinking their blood, and our local, state and National Democrats would still get their backing. I could see them saying "well uhh....you know our country uh...supports freedom of religion...and who am I to condemn their beliefs, I mean and I heard that the babies were already aborted when they performed their ritual....uh....and uh they say nowadays you know Satanists don't really uh worhip the Devil you know so.....and you know they support Unions". If you are sick like me you should attend The Freedom Summit Chicago - in Itasca on November Saturday the 14. Organize fight back, challenge these zombies who follow this hateful cult - because remember - that at heart - they truly HATE you

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  3. Anonymous9/20/2015

    If only the average voter would remember these atrocities when campaign time comes along, when pandering becomes full time and these lying sacks of shit try to be everything to everybody. Durbin, Clinton, Sanders, Pelosi, Reed and please save a special place for Secretary of State John Kerry. Remember, he and John Edwards, the vice president who knocked up his publicist while his wife was dying of cancer were the ones responsible for bringing Obama to the dance. And with his payback gift from the POS POTUS, this goof is responsible for this 100 Billion dollar give away to Iran. And again I ask, what is it exactly the United States gets out of this agreement?

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