Quote Originally Posted by jkm_101_fso View Post
The Marine is proud that can't be associated with FOBs or being a FOBBIT...the worst possible name that you could be called in Combat. The current culture in the Army and Marines is such, "if I'm not on a FOB (with KBR) then I am not a FOBBIT. That's why the Army is converting to sexy names like "Patrol Base Smith" or "Combat Outpost Jones". No one, particularly in the combat arms realm wants to be labeled FOBBIT; although it has nothing to do with you mission or performance, rather than being "spoiled" with KBR chow, movie theaters, basketball gyms and "salsa night" at the MWR facility.
Definitely the anti-Fobbit sentiment is part of it. However, given my diss subject this notion that there can be too much is very interesting to me. It's not what one would expect on a superficial level. It's certainly not what the "Support The Troops" mindset would expect.

Furthermore, I think the reaction against the FOBs reflects something of an innate or subconscious recognition that the conspicuous consumption is not serving our war effort. When the Iraqi civilians are pissed that they cannot get reliable electricity, it doesn't help anything that the American forces are eating ice cream. Hell, a military analyst I met told me he thought the food service at Camp Fallujah was over the top.

This all ties into an idea that has emerged in my mind that there must be parity in suffering between troops and civilians in a war zone. American troops mutinied in the Rev War because they were starving in a land of plenty. In WWII, the sharing that went on between the Allied troops and the liberated civilian populations probably went a long way to assisting the war effort. In Iraq, I doubt our effort is helped by the fact that the vast majority of American troops are living high off the hog while the Iraqis can't even get the basics.

However, I do think that there may also be some valid concerns that such indulgences conflict with operational readiness.

There are always a number of factors at work with any given opinion.

Regards,
Jill