An Open Letter to the Army Chief of Staff

By SGT Awesome

An Open Letter To Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley,

Hi Mark, it’s me, Awesome.

I see you’ve decided to let a few people roll up their sleeves over the weekend to see how freedom feels upon their forearms. That’s pretty great Mark. Really. I mean, as the Army Chief of Staff I’m sure you’ve got nothing better to do than micromanage my sleeves; it’s not like we’ve got troops in multiple combat zones or anything.

I also appreciate how you’re doing a test run for 10 days to see how it goes before allowing everyone to do it. Who knows, maybe someone in the test run will get sunburned and you’ll have to continue to ban everyone else from doing it because if one stupid person can’t wreck it for everyone, why even have the UCMJ?

I suppose at least it hasn’t become a Congressional issue yet; though it seems they’re too busy arguing over our shoes anyway.

I know you and SMA Dailey have been real keen about appearing to “listen to the Soldiers” and are always going on about how we are “being heard” so please listen to this:

Fuck off with this bullshit.

We are a military. We are at war. Our job is to kill people. Do you think the ISIS leader when he’s not dodging drones is worried about what position some brand new recruit is fucking a goat in? No. He lets local commanders set goat fucking standards that fit within their mission specific sphere.

Micromanaging the inane details of every Soldier’s life does nothing but inform us of two things.

You do not trust your officers to make good decisions.

I mean sure, you’ll trust them to lead us in combat with our lives on the line, or to properly handle and adjudicate sexual assault cases, but making a decision such as what color of socks to wear while working out is way out of their wheel house and might somehow cause World War Three.

You actually prefer shitty officers.

You don’t want commanders thinking they know what is best for their Soldiers even though they are there, in the shit with them. You want officers who will snap off a crisp salute and give you a resounding YES SIR with half a stock every time you happen to mumble forth some quote you read from someone else that you think is motivational. These officers quickly rise through the ranks and when a competent officer comes along, he gets the short end of the stick.

We need to stop pretending like 95% of the job of the military is to march down the street as propaganda pieces, but as actual warriors whose training is more important than if he has tattoos on his arms.

The environment we are in now is that our leadership has no ability to think for themselves and no room to improvise without fear of losing their career.

The Army is not a religion and 670-1 is not its holy book. My hands fit inside my pockets for a reason. My head won’t explode if it is exposed to sunlight. Start giving leaders the ability to lead, and start pretending like you care that we’re still at fucking war.

Comments

comments

3 Comments

1. 

   John

   June 24, 2016 at 10:10 pm

   Nice! Great letter.