Hey andrewR leave your rank at the door.
If you'll check the posts, you'll see who mentions rank specifically and who starts lobbing personal insults. If you'll also notice, I take a jab at Navy officers in my post, and you don't see many people running to their defense, do you?
The worst shift leaders we had were the ones who threw around their rank and hid behind the UCMJ.
Again, rank was not something that was mentioned by me. However, the worst officers in the armed forces are those that allow people to run roughshod over the very substance of what keeps good order and discipline flowing the military. To NOT remind someone of professional obligations, and we're not discussing a junior enlisted person here but a quite senior enlisted, is gross violation of my professional obligation as an officer. Further, if the criticism is blatant and public, the response must also be.
Hide behind the UCMJ? It's a fact of life, not a toy. I might also mention that my prior course for the military was to actually be a JAG, but I decided that I did not want to spend my military career kicking people out of the service. If anything, my attitude is FAR from being one to people to CM at the slightest whim. That does not mean, however, that no action is unworthy of critique -- which is what I did. Let me also state that my statements to Chief Sohmer do not in any way invalidate his position, his rank, or his experience (or my respect for them), or in any way imply that I feel he is an inadequate member of the US Navy. No one is perfect, however, and I will be the first to admit that I am among that group.
You should not threaten an enlisted man with courts martial in public either.
I did nothing of the sort. The UCMJ is not merely a tool for courts martial but a governing set of rules that define military conduct and discipline. Where do you see a threatened court martial?
An enlisted man defends your highly unprofessional attack on the Navy and you threaten to CM him?!?!?!?! I sincerely hope you are just in a weird mood.
See what I wrote above about the UCMJ.
You take stabs at the NAVY and expect us to not to call you out for falsehoods that you drivel on about. Throwing the UCMJ is just another attempt by AN Inadequate officer trying to push his importantance on us LOWLY ENLISTED. I can call you out because I NO LONGER HAVE A DUTY STATION!
I take stabs at the Navy, and you take stabs at the Air Force. That's usually how the system operates, and the vast majority of what I wrote is not intended to be taken literally any more than when someone exaggerates conditions to advocate a certain course of action. You also have little basis on which to judge my qualifications as an officer based on what was written in two or three sentences, especially since they have been taken way out of their intended meaning (which, in reality, is very little).
I hereby apologize to any and all current and former Navy personnel if they took personal offense to what I wrote.
As I have mentioned in the past, if it weren't for Clinton, I'd be wearing Navy whites right now so my attitude which has been inferred from above is not in reality how I perceive the Navy. I would just rather have someone go Air Force because I have a vested interest in seeing USAF ranks filled!
In any event, the "lowly enlisted" part must be something of an inferiority complex because I have no qualms about stating that the enlisted corps is the heart of each and every service. Heck, the enlisted folks have the best jobs around in most cases, especially in the Air Force if you aren't a pilot (they only this year opened up Pararescue positions for officers). That ISN'T to say that each and every enlisted member is correct in each and every way or that every officer is automatically suspect when taking corrective action.
And, I think I'm fully qualified on this one, Sir AndrewR, since I've worked enlistment issues and Army Reserve benefits for 15 plus years.
And I have three guys in my class that have a combined 28 years Army enlisted who could also expound on the reasons NOT to be Army enlisted. Of course, a good deal of that could be due to the fact that a significant portion of those years were spent listening to headphones...
Look, let's put away the guns and sheathe the swords. I never intended any service oriented advocacy to develop into some sort of "enlisted versus officer" mentality or "USAF officer's perceived hatred of the Navy" flamefest. Again, another irony is that I am a strong believer that the future of the military is a joint environment, and here are many people stating how much disdain I must have for a fellow service! Frankly, I think my own service has some of the most egregious problems with arrogantly defining its mission to the exclusion of others (ie., air power exists to assist the other services to a large extent, not to justify its own existence through air superiority only).
So, again, Anchors Aweigh to the Navy folks around here. I will probably be working with Navy personnel out in the Pacific theater come May and am looking forward to it.
1st Lt Andrew Rush
315 TRS, 17 TW
Goodfellow AFB, TX
