Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 22:32:37 GMT

In article <7dtqvc$ce9@sjx-ixn6.ix.netcom.com>, Kratilin
<"Kratilin"@krrrat@port.com> wrote:
> Navy made two big psychological mistakes with me.  One was having one
> of my ET school instructors, an ETC, who was stuck on the Nimitz
> during that idiotic 15 or so month water-carving crap in the Indian
> Ocean.  A good chunk of one's life blown to hell because the big-tooth
> incompetent in the White House couldn't handle soem religious nuts in
> Iran.
>
> Second mistake was putting me in a duty station where I met and dated
> a woman whose older brother was a jarhead killed in the Beirut
> bombing.  A martyr to the idiotic foreign policy of a brain-dead geez
> president.

I can't and won't attempt to defend either practice.  Carter, like his
soulmate Clinton, was totally unconcerned with the welfare of the
military personnel for whom he had taken responsibility.  The bottom
line was that the man just didn't give a shit what hardships he
imposed on men and their families, as long as he could make a symbolic
(and ultimately deadly) show of force in a region his own brain-dead
diplomacy lost for the West.

Reagan -- or at least Weinberger -- should have been impeached for
sending US troops to Lebanon at all, bombing or no.  I will say, at
least, that the Reagan Administration did manage to *learn* something
from the incident (thus the highly sensible and now-ignored
"Weinberger Doctrine" was born).

> Nope, I didn't intend to be another corpse at the hands of stupid
> foreign policy.  especially NOT on some cigar-shaped piece of tin
> that sunk a few hundred feet underwater.  I gladly took my 60 some
> days in the cush brig [much better duty than on a sub or carrier,
> IMHO], in exchange for the four and three quarters years I would
> have served on that submarine.  Two months versus fifty-seven
> months.  Easy, easy math, even a lifer-dog could do.  Smartest
> decision I ever made, bar none.

Well, the *smartest* thing you could have done would have been to
avoid signing on the dotted line and raising your right hand to begin
with.  I will note that there were other, just as effective (but a
little more effort-intensive) options open to you.  I personally
watched a guy weasel out of his enlistment because he discovered
halfway through ET "A" school that we was a CO.  It wasn't much work
to convince the "salty" Command Master Chief that he was sincere, and
his paperwork was processed almost without comment.  He was on the
street within two months.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 22:38:09 GMT

In article <3702BF45.803EF151@ix.netcom.com>, Elaina Mullen
<elmuln@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> If that isn't good enough reason.....my fiance, now husband, was
> stationed in Norfolk in May, 1981 (date?) when there was a bad
> aircraft accident on board the Nimitz, or Eisenhower, or one of the
> "supercarriers."  The ship pulled in long enough to offload the
> wreckage and bodies.....and as it turned out, at least a few dozen
> AWOLs who were spooked enough to split.  It is a fact of ops, valid
> enough for discussion.

One of my (many) naval relatives was an officer aboard NIMITZ at the
time.  He once told me that there is always a certain percentage of
"dirtbags" who will go UA (the Navy version of "AWOL"); one just sort
of plans for and counts on this as a fact of life.

But when morale gets really, really bad, one sometimes sees the *good*
men going over the hill.  Guys you would never, in a million years,
have thought would pull a stunt like that suddenly get so freaked out
and fed up that they bolt.  These are the guys who aren't even
contrite about it when they return or are forcibly brought back to
duty.

It is the latter event that began to happen with disturbing frequency
in deployed units in the early 1980's, before St. Reagan (yeah, I know
I trashed him in another post, but he deserves credit for this one)
brought the US military back from near-death at the hands of Carter &
Co.

Of course personnel matters like this have an important place in naval
"science" -- they've always been an important consideration, since at
least the time of Sir Francis Drake and probably long, long before.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: enlistment contracts for age 17??
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 22:53:39 GMT

In article <3703B61F.58117266@emmet.com>, Jen Evans <23yoi@emmet.com>
wrote:
> So the question:  If a seventeen year old enters on active duty,
> graduates boot camp, then prior to eighteenth birthday "wants out"---can
> he just "void" his enlistment contract, like any real contract in the
> civilian world?

Obviously, he can't -- I think you knew that -- but the question of
"why not?" is an interesting one.

The answer is that, despite the existence of a document called,
colloquially, an "enlistment contract," it's not a matter of contract
law at all, but a criminal matter under a federal statute called the
"Uniform Code of Military Justice," which does not make exceptions for
lawfully enlisted minors.

For that matter, it doesn't make exceptions even for *un*-lawfully
enlisted minors!  A 16-year-old who swears he's 18 in order to enlist
may still be court-martialed for fraudulent enlistment.  The UCMJ
makes it quite clear that the act of enlisting by anyone with the
mental capacity to understand the consequences thereof is enough to
render one subject to military law.  Such a person would, of course,
ultimately be separated from active service, but the enlistment itself
wouldn't be null and void just because of the fraudulent enlistment.

> From a "public policy standpoint," I can see how the gov't would not
> allow that.....but from a legal standpoint, it seems incongruous
> that one can be considered a "minor," thus lacking real capacity to
> contract in every instance EXCEPT the instance that could get one's
> head shot off!  <B-)

It is incongruous.  That doesn't mean it's not still law.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine 
	manning)
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 15:30:53 GMT

In article <37041b7c.10674500@news.kingston.net>, Peter Skelton
<pgs@kingston.net> wrote:
> >I can't and won't attempt to defend either practice.  Carter, like his
> >soulmate Clinton, was totally unconcerned with the welfare of the
> >military personnel for whom he had taken responsibility.  The bottom
> >line was that the man just didn't give a shit what hardships he
> >imposed on men and their families, as long as he could make a symbolic
> >(and ultimately deadly) show of force in a region his own brain-dead
> >diplomacy lost for the West.
>
> This is the Jimmy Carter who fixed the pay rates and training issues?

No, it's the Jimmy Carter who allowed pay rates and materiel readiness
to slip to the point where even his own CNO had to testify before
Congress that our forces were "hollow."  Mid-grade petty officers with
families were routinely on food stamps.  I know -- I worked with some
of these guys during this era.

It was Reagan, who made military pay and the readiness of our forces a
major campaign issue in 1980, who brought the U.S. military back from
the dead.  It's one of the few positive things about his Administration
for which I'm willing to give him personal credit.

> Calling Carter a soul-mate of Clinton is utterly
> reprehensible. Carter made mistakes but he is, by all accounts, an
> honourable man. It can be argued that he was the best military
> president, from a personel point of view, after Viet Nam.

Good thing I wasn't sipping coffee when I read that.  Morale reached a
post-Vietnam nadir in 1979 and 1980.  Again:  I was *there*.  It was
unbelievable.  Sailors going UA at unheard-of rates.  Cross-decking
between ships just to get them underway because manning levels were so
low.  Insanely long deployments because units had been demobilized
irresponsibly.  It was completely crazy.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine 
	manning)
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 20:32:03 GMT

In article <37050404.7426893@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, Steve Bartman
<sbartman@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >> This is the Jimmy Carter who fixed the pay rates and training issues?
> >
> >No, it's the Jimmy Carter who allowed pay rates and materiel readiness
> >to slip to the point where even his own CNO had to testify before
> >Congress that our forces were "hollow."
>
> See below. This is hardly a cut-and-dried issue.

I don't think that there are many more cut-and-dried true statements
than, "Jimmy Carter failed in his responsibility as Commander-in-
Chief of the Armed Forces."

> The realities of the 1970s US military are complex, arising out of
> underfunding during Vietnam, too lengthy a hold on old WWII hardware,
> the end of the draft and early chaos of the AVF, and runaway
> inflation, among other things.

The underfunding during Vietnam shouldn't have been felt as late as
1979.  The hardware situation was indeed shockingly bad, but whose
fault was that?  The AVF had settled out fairly nicely by 1978 as I
recall, except that manning levels were just too low.  The part that
was Carter's "fault" was the incredibly bad retention figures on the
part of senior NCO's.  As for inflation:  again, whose fault was that?

>  For the USN the problems were heightened by the addition of a whole
> new ocean and ground theater to cover.

Even the amateurs had been saying for a decade that the Middle East
was going to be a major hot spot in years to come.  We're supposed to
give Carter's national security establishment a pass for being
blindsided in their military planning by this geopolitical fact of
life?  Sorry, I'm not *that* charitable by nature!

> But on the pay side Jimmy constantly gets a bad rap. From
> http://www.dfas.mil/money/milpay/priorpay.htm with the arithmetic mine
> (please check--my HP batteries are low.)
>
> All data for an E-5, over-4, base pay. No allowances or special pays.
>
> FY      Rate    % Change PY
> ______________________
> 77      $558.30       ----
> 78      $592.80        6.2%
> 79      $625.50        5.5%
> 80      $669.30        7.0%
> 81      $747.60      11.7%
> 82      $870.90      16.5%
> 83      $905.70        4.0%
> 84      $942.00        4.0%
>
> FY77 started on 1 Oct 76 and was Ford's last budget. FY81's was
> Carter's last, and the big raise in FY82 was Reagan's first.

But Carter went along with the pay raise (still dramatically less than
what was needed to bring pay into line with inflation, BTW) ONLY
because of political pressure stemming from the 1980 campaign of one
Ronald Wilson Reagan.  He was desperate to do something to show that
he wasn't an anti-military wimp, and the pay raise was one of those
tactics.  (It didn't work.)

I strive to avoid cliches in my writing, but I can't do better than "A
day late and a dollar short" to describe this one.

> I think what you see here is a gradual realization by Congress that
> inflation was out of control, not going to go away, and the glacial
> movement by politicians to recognize that military pay shortfalls do
> eventually hurt readiness. But that FY81 number is pretty hefty
> considering Carter's lack of political standing that year due to
> Iran.

My beef with Carter isn't that he didn't succeed in saving the
military from its fate in the late 1970's:  my beef with him is that he
didn't even *try*.  And it's not like he didn't have access to
intelligent advice; he just chose to ignore it.  Zbigniew Brsezinski
(sp?) must have been the most frustrated man on the planet.

> In Reagan's first (popular) year he could have asked for 25% and
> gotten it, probably.

Not really.  I think the House (still controlled by the Democrats and
Tip O'Neill) was pretty much at its limit on that one.  There was, for
example, a proposal (extremely sensible, IMO) floated in 1981 to
exempt military personnel from some portion of federal income tax in
addition to the pay raise.  This would have had the effect of about a
25-30% pay raise (depending on paygrade), and a few senior congressmen
made it very clear that there was no way in hell that was going to
happen.  The proposal was dropped.

> >It was Reagan, who made military pay and the readiness of our forces a
> >major campaign issue in 1980, who brought the U.S. military back from
> >the dead.  It's one of the few positive things about his Administration
> >for which I'm willing to give him personal credit.
>
> As above, I think pay is a mixed bag. I do think (with no hard numbers
> at hand) that O&M, N accounts soared under Reagan, which had a great
> effect on ops. I know, as a SO, that spare parts backorders fell by a
> lot between 1981 and 1984 on my boat.

A Marine instructor I had in 1983 had just come from an artillery
unit, and he used the phrase, "Christmas in the Marine Corps" to
describe the early Reagan years.  He was a senior captain by then and
had never seen a properly equipped or trained unit in his career until
the OPTAR started flowing under Reagan.

> >Good thing I wasn't sipping coffee when I read that.  Morale reached a
> >post-Vietnam nadir in 1979 and 1980.  Again:  I was *there*.  It was
> >unbelievable.  Sailors going UA at unheard-of rates.  Cross-decking
> >between ships just to get them underway because manning levels were so
> >low.  Insanely long deployments because units had been demobilized
> >irresponsibly.  It was completely crazy.
>
> This is true, but not all Carter's fault either.

I'll concede that it wasn't 100% his "fault," but a great deal of it
most certainly was attributable to his personal and direct failure as
Commander in Chief.  And even more falls within his overall
responsibility as CinC.  (And, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the
absolutely astonishing drug problems of the era -- another good metric
of overall morale.)

> The world didn't cooperate, and the Congress, reflecting America's
> war weariness, wasn't in the mood to fund the military properly.

That was hardly America's mood, as evidenced by RR's incredible
landslide victory in a *three-way* race.  The American people were
most certainly sick to death of seeing the military treated like the
country's bastard step-children.  RR sensed this, used it to excellent
effect during the campaign, and then -- wonder of wonders -- actually
followed through on it after he was elected!

> Afghanistan got everyone's attention again, and Carter began a number
> of things his last year that Reagan continued. Also, R&D begun under
> Ford and Carter paid off in the 1980s with a number of excellent
> systems, from the Apache to the M-1. And don't forget Carter killed
> the B-1, only to have it resurrected by RR. <g>

Grrrr.  You *would* have to mention the only intelligent military
decision Carter made that RR managed to screw up for stupid political
purposes, wouldn't you?  I do so hate it when complex reality
interferes with nice black-and-white interpretations thereof.

Of course, there's yet another complicating dimension even to *that*
one.  It's entirely possible that, if Carter had just left the thing
alone, the B-1 wouldn't have turned out to be such a useless piece of
shit, since the overhead and complications of killing and resurrecting
the project unquestionably affected its schedule and quality.  Or so
I have heard it argued by people who know far more about such things
than I ever will.

Nevertheless, I think there *are* a few pretty obvious black-and-white
truths.  Such as:  when it comes to stewardship as CinC, Carter was an
incredibly crappy President; Reagan was at least minimally competent
(and maybe better than "minimally"); Clinton is . . . well, you can
probably guess my opinion of *him*.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine 
	manning)
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 21:07:43 GMT

In article <2eaN2.223$gx4.50528416@news.randori.com>, gws
<gws@sct.state.ok.us> wrote:
> > Nevertheless, I think there *are* a few pretty obvious
> > black-and-white truths.  Such as: when it comes to stewardship as
> > CinC, Carter was an incredibly crappy President; Reagan was at least
> > minimally competent (and maybe better than "minimally"); Clinton is
> > . . . well, you can probably guess my opinion of *him*.
>
> This worries me but I have to admit that I agree with J.D.
> That's twice in one day.  Do I lose my special request chit?  (>:

You're not the only one who's worried!

> My only caveat is that, while Carter was, indeed, "an incredibally
> crappy president," he was and is an honorable man, a commodity in
> short supply in the White House these days.

Perhaps it will make you feel better than I disagree somewhat here
with your assessment of Carter.  I think his "honorable" reputation
comes about mostly because he was a bumbling dope, and we want so
badly to believe that a) bumbling dopes are all honorable guys, like
Forrest Gump, and b) we-the-people never could have been THAT stupid,
so we try to talk ourselves into believing that we elected this
incompetent because we were so taken with his honesty and integrity
. . . yeah, that's the ticket, honesty and integrity!

I'd like to know just where this reputation comes from -- why people
believe that Carter is any more honorable than, say, Jerry Ford or
Ronald Reagan.  It can't possibly be because of the aid and comfort he
provided to the North Koreans a few years back, right?  Maybe it's
because he was "honest" enough with himself to figure out that
construction work is where his true calling should have been all
along?
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Gluttons for punishment??? (WAS Re: Insane practice in submarine
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 22:03:52 GMT

In article <19990402014002.10294.00001760@ng-ch1.aol.com>, Jenydevine
<jenydevine@aol.com> wrote:
> >Well, the *smartest* thing you could have done would have been to
> >avoid signing on the dotted line and raising your right hand to begin
> >with.
>
> Wow, want to start a thread on "lying recruiters" and the like?

Dear God, no.  Uncle!  UNCLE, already!

Maybe life would be better for recruits, military members AND the
overall professionalism of the forces if we implemented a scheme by
which initial enlistments were, by law, exactly one year.  Even though
a great many people don't even finish their training in a single year,
they're exposed to enough fleet-experienced instructors to get at
least some idea of what's in store.  After that year, they can choose
to enlist for four years, or not.

After that, anyone who says he didn't know what it was going to be
like is either lying or just plain dense.

As a bonus, the forces get to weed out the non-hackers early on at a
low cost.  (The expense could be cut by deferring advanced training
until after this first enlistment.)  And the pressure would be on to
implement some REAL quality of life improvements for our junior
enlisted, instead of the constant barrage of lip service to same we've
seen for, oh, the last ten years.  Everybody wins.

The notion, therefore, has zero chance of receiving any kind of
serious consideration.  Please forget I brought it up.

> Plus, I recall some CO applications being totally stonewalled by
> commands....especially at-sea vessels, where the captain wanted to
> screw with the applicant, and didn't want to lose a warm body for a
> med cruise or something.  90% of the time, the person went AWOL in
> response.

Again, the CO route is more effort-intensive than the AWOL route.
Even in the face of stonewalling, there is effective recourse for even
the newest E-1, if he has but a slight clue.  The UCMJ provides fairly
clearly and explicitly for complaints about such matters that may be
taken over the CO's head with a minimum of fuss and paperwork.  I have
personally witnessed situations where the threat of doing so got a
sailor redress of his grievance, tout suite.  (It wasn't a CO
situation, though.)

And then of course there's always the nuclear weapon of the enlisted
man: the letter to one's congressman.  VERY effective as a means of
ensuring written laws and regulations get complied with by officers of
every grade.
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------