Anti-Intellectualism In The Army

[Schmedlap]

My observations are in line with FSO's - at least on my last tour in Iraq. First two tours were a circus of negligence that was overlooked or downplayed. But even up until ETS, my observation was that any amount of negligence would be forgiven stateside. In fact, I am about 90% sure that the command queue was massaged to ensure that the known duds got their command time while stateside and then switched out to someone believed to be better in time to deploy. I guess it's better than letting known duds command in combat, but there's still something wrong with this picture.

[reed11b]

Ditto here. The exception being that gross negligence was rotated out of promotional command tracks, but they certainly remained in the Guard. The ones that suffer for this "kid gloves" approach is the enlisted. When I was active, my battalion inherited the LtCol that had been in charge of Ranger School when the two soldiers drowned in the swamp phase. Thanks to his paranoia about his career, he chaptered out a huge number of paratroopers, all of them E-4 and below, many justified, but some were not. I guess I'm the type that feels that if a soldier volunteers for service and makes the effort to try and succeed, he deserves second and third chances. The exception is combat, but my experience with enlisted vetting is that reality is the opposite. Poor soldiers are given extra chances because we need bodies during war time. Anybody else have enlisted experience in both peacetime and war that's wants to add to this?
Reed