An open letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committee Members on behalf service members and their families.
Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, you are vested with a sacred duty to execute oversight authority over the Department of Defense. By not employing your full authority to expedite the release of this study, you become complicit in the ongoing delay. Moreover, the responsibility for each service member's suicide, in the absence of action, partly rests on your shoulders.
A properly calibrated Give-a-S#!t Meter
While crude, I can appreciate the efficiency in Scooter’s 10-word response. He simultaneously captured his disdain for micro-management, and his lack of respect for superiors who were out of touch with the mission. All with country flare. Scooter's response to the ensuing lecture, a mixture of defiance and disinterest, was not merely an act of insubordination; it was a declaration of his unwavering commitment to what truly mattered—the mission, the aircraft, and the safety of our airmen.
Self-Care requires agency available only to the privileged
That she thinks it's a matter of discipline and is non-negotiable shows a leader divorced from the realities of service in the lower-tier trenches of the Air Force. Finally, it is the narrative of the privileged. Someone that has agency over her professional and personal time, of which a scant few can claim.
Military Maintenance Units Can't Afford One Day to Combat White Supremacy
So, the reality is these commanders and maintenance leaders are likely not closet White Supremacists working in the shadows against the SECDEF's directive. Rather, they are living paycheck-to-proverbial-paycheck trying to meet the demands of a country that is ignorant or indifferent to what goes on in the military and a Congress that ignored frank and pragmatic predictions in 2013 from senior military leaders that accurately predicted the hollow Armed Forces we now see in 2021.
