Tag Archives: SecDef

Current Events

The Corps Part V

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LOL. This one is funny even if it is a tragedy. I can see it coming. Cpl  Finicnick reports to his company commander that his Lt is an asshole and uses drugs. It matters not that Cpl Finicknick was a Sgt six months ago. OMG This reminds me of the HQMC imposed HumRel classes in 1970  that required us to sit in groups of officers and enlisted and everyone was allowed to say whatever they wanted. LOL, That did not happen in our battalion thanks to Major John I. Hopkins (MajGen, USMC (Ret) Deceased). God Bless him.  But I heard absolute horror stories from my peers from other units.

The Marine Corps wants junior Marines to have a say in who their leaders are

“Beginning in 2022, we will institute 360-degree feedback for leaders, on a pilot basis” says Commandant Berger.

BY  | PUBLISHED NOV 24, 2021 8:51 AM

Junior Marines could help determine whether officers and senior enlisted leaders are selected for promotion as part of the Marine Corps’ efforts to revamp its evaluation process.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger is calling for promotion boards to incorporate “360-degree feedback” into their decisions about which leaders will be selected to advance to the next rank.

Berger’s direction on using 360-degree feedback is part of his Talent Management plan, which was released on Nov. 3. The plan also requires the Marine Corps to retain more first-term Marines and creates the possibility that civilians with critical skills could bypass boot camp to join the service.   This will be Part VI, so stay tuned.

Currently, promotion boards largely base those decisions on Marines’ fitness reports, which only include notes on their performance from two of their supervisors, Berger wrote. In some cases, those supervisors do not serve in the same location as the Marines they are evaluating or don’t interact with them often.

“[Three hundred and sixty]-degree feedback, by contrast, includes the perspectives of a larger number of seniors, peers, and juniors and can include unflattering feedback that is prohibited from inclusion in a Marine’s FITREP,” Berger wrote.

This type of evaluation is already in use elsewhere in the Defense Department and it has shown to be effective in “identifying traits of toxic leadership” and helping to reduce the chances that toxic leaders will be promoted, according to Berger’s plan.

“Beginning in 2022, we will institute 360-degree feedback for leaders, on a pilot basis,” Berger wrote. “This feedback will be made available to the Marine and their reporting senior, with the aim of encouraging leadership growth. No later than 2024, we will incorporate 360-degree feedback into the selection board and assignments processes to ensure that this important input is properly considered by those selecting and assigning our future leaders.”

The Marine Corps has looked for lessons from business leaders as well as other military branches as it developed the pilot program for the 360-degree reviews, said Yvonne Reed-Carlock, a spokeswoman for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.

“The purpose of implementing 360-degree leadership reviews is to equip Marine leaders with real, honest feedback to identify their hidden strengths and unidentified weaknesses and to provide them with professional coaching to further develop and advance the capabilities of our force,” Reed-Carlock said. “To accomplish this, the pilot will solicit input from a Marine’s seniors, peers and subordinates to fully inform the picture provided to the Marine.”

The pilot program early next year is expected to include about 200 people to fine-tune the questions leaders are asked and to make sure that the right type of feedback is collected, said Lt. Col. Jim Armstrong, who works for the Marine Corps’ Manpower Management Division.

The Marines taking part in the pilot program will be field grade officers – majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels – as well as senior enlisted leaders such as master sergeants and sergeants major, said Armstrong, who serves as the operations officer for the officer assignments branch.

Based on the pilot program’s results, Marines at other ranks and leadership positions could also receive 360-degree feedback, Armstrong said.

A 360-degree evaluation system is meant to prevent the promotion of senior leaders who may later be deemed unfit to command, such as one colonel who asked a former captain if she had been drinking before she was raped rather than referring her to trained staff for help. More robust performance evaluations may have also identified a brigadier general as a toxic leader before his subordinates reported him to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, which determined that he had “disparaged, bullied, humiliated them, and devalued women.” 

For years, proponents have been calling for the Marine Corps to adopt a 360-degree evaluation system, but other military branches such as the Navy and the Air Force have used this type of feedback sparingly and for certain leaders and civilian executives.

After the Fiscal 2014 National Defense Authorization Act required the defense secretary to look into using this sort of feedback in evaluations, a study from the RAND Corporation recommended against doing so. Wow, sanity from the RAND Corporation for a change.
A sergeant instructor, evaluates officer candidates during close order drill at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, June 21, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Phuchung Nguyen)

Many of the people whom RAND interviewed for the study, including experts within the Department of Defense, said they did not feel that 360-degree feedback was the best tool to combat toxic leadership, especially in cases where toxic leaders had no desire to change their ways.

“Participants again pointed to other ways of finding these people that would be much more cost-effective (such as through anonymous reporting channels, climate surveys, informal discussion, or inspector general complaints),” the study says.

While federal agencies have used 360-degree feedback as part of coaching and mentoring, the government as a whole – including the Defense Department – has been reluctant to include this type of feedback for promotions, said Katie Kuzminski, a senior fellow and director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.

“There was a fear that if the [360-degree feedback] were used for promotions or true evaluations as opposed to personal development that there could be some challenges with that – particularly if your peers in your unit are also your competition: There would be a way to skew the outcomes to make yourself look good by making someone else look bad,” Kuzminski said.

Berger is going much further than the rest of the military by looking at how the Marine Corps can use this type of feedback for promotions, she said.

“I do think that if any service can take the lead on this front, I think it would be the Marine Corps,” Kuzminski said. “Just from a cultural perspective, I think the real value that they place on taking care of fleet really matters – and certainly for more senior positions, there’s this saying that you hear from senior folks: If you had a helicopter full of 10 general officers in the Marine Corps crash today, you would have equally high competitive talent remaining to replace them.” Really? In today’s Corps? Hell that may even help save us. Let’s make it a C-130 with 50 on board. LOL Just kidding, of course.
I trust everyone caught the name of this new plan; the “Talent Management Plan..” That says it all; when was the last time you heard anything coming out in the Corps dealing with “management.” In my day that word was toxic to Marines. Oh well, just another day in the “New” Corps. When will it end? Surely this action will help recruiting; just knowing they can have an effect on their mean Gunny should help. 
Current Events, Recent Posts

China VS U.S.

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Received the following from a highly resected Brother Marine referred to as “Mustang,” which many of you know what that moniker means. Anyway, I don’t watch TV except Netflix and Amazon Prime. Would enjoyed watching this episode however. Enjoy and thank you Mustang, it is definitely blog worthy! Really there isn’t much to enjoy as it is all so true and scary as hell.

 

“Real-Time” host Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by sounding the alarm on China’s growing dominance over the United States. Why are Americans sleeping?

 

We aren’t sleeping, we are spending our time teaching and assisting little boys how to become little girls! And, if we aren’t busy doing that we have the Sec of Defense, responding to an order from the ‘commander’ in chief, designing stylish new uniforms for pregnant ‘soldiers’.

 

“You’re not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are such silly people. And Americans are all silly people,” Maher began the monologue, alluding to a “Lawrence of Arabia” quote.

 

Do you know who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China,” he said. “All 1.4 billion of them couldn’t give a crouching tiger flying f— because they’re not silly people. If anything, they are as serious as a prison fight.”

 

Maher acknowledged that China does “bad stuff” from the concentration camps of Uyghur Muslims to its treatment of Hong Kong. But he stressed, “There’s got to be something between an authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do and a representative government that can’t do anything at all.”

 

“In two generations, China has built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals. Oh, and they bought Africa,” Maher said, pointing to China’s global Silk Road infrastructure initiative.

 

He continued: “In China alone, they have 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. America has none. We’ve been having Infrastructure Week every week since 2009 but we never do anything. Half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a dick and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies. We are such silly people.

 

“Nothing ever moves in this impacted colon of a country. We see a problem and we ignore it, lie about it, fight about it with each other, endlessly litigate it, sunset clause it, kick it down the road, and then write a bill where a half-assed solution doesn’t kick in for 10 years,” Maher explained. Then the half-assed bill is forgotten.

 

“China sees a problem and they fix it. They build a dam. We debate what to rename it.”

 

The HBO star cited how it took “ten years” for a bus line in San Francisco to pass its environmental review and how it took “16 years” to build the Big Dig tunnel in Boston, comparing that to a 57-story skyscraper that China constructed in only “19 days” and Beijing’s Sanyuan Bridge, which was demolished and rebuilt in “43 hours.”

 

“We binge-watch, they binge-build. When COVID hit Wuhan, the city built a quarantine center with 4,000 rooms in 10 days and they barely had to use it because they quickly arrested the rest of the disease,” Maher said. “They were back to throwing raves in swimming pools while we were stuck at home surfing the dark web for black market Charmin. We’re not losing to China, we LOST. The returns just haven’t all come in yet. They’ve made robots that check a kid’s temperature and got their asses back in school. Most of our kids are still pretending to take Zoom classes while they watch TikTok and their brain cells fully commit ritual suicide.” Our teachers unions are finding every single way to keep themselves on the payroll, but keep students out of the classrooms. WAKE UP AMERICA! That means ALL of YOU.

 

Maher then blasted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, accusing him of degrading school standards by eliminating merit and substituting a lottery system for admittance to schools for advanced learners. Our country is going down the toilet.

 

“Do you think China’s doing that, letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest?” Maher continued. “Do you think Chinese colleges and universities are offering courses in ‘The Philosophy of Star Trek, ‘The Sociology of Seinfeld,’ and ‘Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse’? Can this be real? Well, let me tell you, China is real. And they are eating our lunch. And believe me, in an hour, they’ll be hungry again.”

 

A somber message, isn’t it? But, where is Maher wrong? I guess the good news is that unlike the Chinese our young people have free text messaging and iPhone games.

Recent Posts

Our Military?

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I have given up posting stuff about the head swamp creature. Mainly because nothing he does surprises me any more and I firmly believe  that while the slime coming from his mouth may be his voice, it’s not his words. He’s simply following the orders of the other swamp creatures. So, As one of my favorite commenters stated he simply can’t rant anymore  on what “HE” says or does.  I agree. Biden is not  my president or anyone’s president for that matter. It’s President Joe “Sanders et al.” So, I shall disregard what those fools do and post on other issues such as this one. That is, of course, until he does something really earth shattering other than just stupid, which is an everyday occurrence. 

Anyway, here is a article from the Tennessee Star on an organization we all are very familiar with — our military.

Commentary: The U.S. Military Is Just Another Woke Institution

 Admin
by Paul Bradford

Tucker Carlson spurred a much-needed reexamination of the military in March. His monologue criticizing the military’s political correctness drew a more furious response from top brass than any foreign threat is likely to do. The generals’ response only affirmed Tucker’s points about the degraded state of our armed forces. Why do generals—both current and retired—feel the need to condemn civilians who question the wisdom of putting women in combat?

The answer is that the military, along with the entire national security establishment, is at one with the Democrat-Media complex. The image we have of generals and senior officers as defenders of tradition is wildly out of step with reality.

This fact is underscored by its contrast with a letter issued in France last week. The letter—signed by 20 retired generals, 80 officers, and 1,000 lower-ranking soldiers—was stridently right-wing. “The hour is late, France is in peril, threatened by several mortal dangers,” the letter states. Though retired, we remain soldiers of France, and cannot, under the present circumstances, remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country.”

The dangers, according to the letter, are Islamism, multiculturalism, liberal state tyranny, and anti-white and anti-French cultural currents. “Today, some speak of racialism, of indigenism, and of anti-colonial theories, but with these words, those hateful and fanatical partisans seek to foment a racial war,” the letter declares. “They despise our country, her traditions, her culture, and want to watch her dissolve by tearing her away from her past and her history. Thus, by attacking statues and analyzing words from several centuries ago, their true goal is to undermine our ancient civil and military glories.”

The letter argues that if the politicians do nothing, the military “will be forced to step in and undertake the perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and the lives of our fellow citizens.” The letter also clearly defines France as a particular nation, a homeland with its own unique traditions and heritage. It’s not merely an idea.

The contrast between the sentiments in this letter and those of our own military leadership is like night and day. Our generals support all the things the retired French commanders denounce. Our military happily resumed critical race theory training as soon as Donald Trump left office. Senior commanders essentially endorsed Black Lives Matter and its “mostly peaceful” demonstrations last year. They view too many white Americans in the service as the problem and embrace multiculturalism. The military endorses the abolition of American heritage if it offends modern sensibilities. The Defense Department vows to root out all “right-wing extremists” from its ranks. The same Pentagon that sent soldiers to D.C. to guard against imaginary threats to Joe Biden’s inauguration refused to use soldiers to curb BLM riots in 2020. Our military refuses to step in and protect any civilizational values.

Our retired generals also like to issue letters about political issues—but they sound more like Barack Obama than staunch conservatives. Retired Marine General James Mattis, one of the most recognizable faces of the American military, published a letter last summer endorsing Black Lives Matter and condemning Trump, the president who made him Secretary of Defense. He said the military should not be used to stop riots, which he claimed were nearly all peaceful. He also said that Black Lives Matter and Antifa merely call on Americans to “live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.”

After the election, Mattis wrote an op-ed urging Biden to eliminate “America First” policies. The retired general said America should instead return to globalist policies. Evidently, Mattis is not someone who considers America his homeland with its own unique traditions and character. It’s merely an “idea,” best upheld by far-Left agitators and the generals who agree with them.

Mattis wasn’t alone in publicly expressing such sentiments. Eighty-nine former defense officials signed a joint condemnation of Trump’s attempted crackdown of rioters last summer. The letter accepted BLM’s assertion that our justice system oppresses blacks.

Fifty-six retired senior officers attacked Trump for barring transgender personnel from serving in the military. “Patriotic transgender Americans who are serving—and who want to serve—must not be dismissed, deprived of medically necessary health care, or forced to compromise their integrity or hide their identity,” the 2017 letter stated.

Granted, not all current or former generals are like this. There are those like retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and others who stand with middle America against the swamp. But the military, as an institution, is reflected in these letters. You will never see 20 retired generals issue a strong statement denouncing mass immigration, critical race theory, or the state persecution of Trump supporters. Neither are you likely to see a call from those quarters for the military to protect America from domestic threats—unless those threats happen to be white and conservative.

We can see further evidence of our military’s decline in two viral media posts from last week.

The U.S. Navy apparently made history last week when the first all-gay flight crew flew its first mission. The crew wore rainbow bandanas and proudly displayed the gay pride flag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pictures presented a bizarre image of the military to the world.

Additionally, the CIA recently released an odd ad that may portend to future military recruitment. The ad, titled “Humans of CIA” in a nod to the popular Humans of New York blog, shows a very different CIA from its popular image.

The agent in the ad declares:

“I am a woman of color.”

“I am a cisgender millennial.”

“I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.”

“I am intersectional.”

The agent also sports a t-shirt with a raised fist. As a member of one of the most powerful institutions in the world, it’s unclear what she is raising her fist against. She is the power, not the resistance.

This is the CIA, of course. But you could see the Pentagon producing very similar ads.

Many conservatives still think of the military as an institution dramatically different from and immune to the harmful trends infecting the rest of the government. To them, the military evokes “honor” and “country,” and you can trust the troops to resist liberal tyranny. Reality paints a very different picture. While many of the troops, including senior officers, are great Americans who serve our country with honor, the institution itself no longer serves the American people as conservatives imagine. It serves the American empire controlled by liberal elites.

We can’t hope for the troops to ride in to save the day like the French military. The American military is just another corrupt institution that requires serious reform.

Paul Bradford is a Capitol Hill refugee now earning an honest living.

Check out the link below for a letter signed by  120 retired generals and admirals warning the admiration’s policies are a serious threat to national security. As a Marine, I am glad to see some names  who I know, worked for, and respected.  But sadly there are some I had much respect for who are missing. Shame on them; they know who they are! And then there are those I had  little respect for and they are on the list e.g., Krulak, Mattis, Kelly, Allen, Hagee, Jones, and more. The letter is a good read and look and see if your heroes or villain’s are on the list.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/over_120_generals_and_admirals_warn_that_administration_policies_are_national_security_threat.html