After 14 years of beating around the bush, I’m finally really working on my trauma and I’ve come to a lot of realizations but one I’ve been stuck on lately is how Army culture seems designed to amplify the negative effects of trauma in a job that will certainly expose you to it. If you have been in the Army long enough, you’re almost guaranteed to experience some kind of trauma. Combat deaths. Training deaths. Suicides. Sexual assault. Overdoses. A leader you look up to, a peer, a subordinate, a friend. It’s almost bound to happen.

Seen some talk about NTC OPFOR compared to actual Russian forces. People are taking shots at NTC and 11th ACR for reasons I can’t quite ascertain but that seem to miss the point of NTC and its OPFOR.

It isn’t designed to be “The Russians.” It’s designed to be impossible to beat. They have short and nearly flawless logistics lines providing them with food, fuel, and ammunition. They have home field advantage. They have excellent intel to pass to motivated soldiers. The Russians, somewhat unexpectedly, have none of that in Ukraine.

That’s the whole point.

Y’all want another unpopular 9/11 take? That whole “national unity” thing we experienced directly after 9/11 was neither as unifying nor as beneficent as people like to remember. It was bullyish and bigoted and short-sighted and lacked any sort of introspection or any analysis of what happened. It was embarrassing.

I’ve got lots of opinions about 9/11 and suicide awareness month that would probably be unpopular but maybe the least popular of the bunch is that the “fitness challenges” and “memorial workouts” are *largely* masturbatory opportunities for people to make it all about themselves. You know what’s never pulled me out of a depressive episode? Someone running 22 miles that week and posting it in a unit spreadsheet. You know what’s never stopped anyone from committing suicide? Someone doing 22 pushups. What does the “memorial WOD” actually accomplish?

I’m a vet with PTSD and a wicked startle response.

Opinion: light your fireworks. The 4th of July (and NYE for that matter) is not a surprise. It’s on the calendar and everything. Don’t let someone use their service to guilt you into not enjoying yourself. They can get ear pro. That said, yeah, if you’re shooting off fireworks at 8pm on a random day without letting your neighbors know, you’re an asshole and deserve to be hated.

So the bombing in Syria.

I don’t love the overall situation. I don’t like that we’re so mired in the Middle East. I think the Assad regime deserves to be buried in the garbage heap of history. Some of the people fighting them are awful, too. It’s complex. As for the bombing, itself? Assuming what the DoD is saying is true — that the sites bombed were those of militias which had been attacking US forces — that’s probably a fair strike, with lots of precedent. Doesn’t matter if Biden approved it or Trump.

I feel like one of the biggest problems with everyone’s understanding of coronavirus is that YOU CAN BE ASYMPTOMATIC AND STILL SPREAD THE VIRUS. All this “we’ll require temperature checks at schools and events” misses the point that A CARRIER MAY NOT HAVE A FEVER. “Oh, you developed a cough and fever last night? Can’t come in to work/school today!”

What about the last ten days they were there and spreading the virus? By the time you realize they have it, it’s too fucking late to prevent the spread.

Lots of folks questioning if we should celebrate today or celebrate the founding fathers. This is the way I see it:

American independence and the men and women who fought for it were often seriously flawed. It wasn’t freedom for everyone. But it was a step *toward* freedom. That’s the key distinction for me whenever someone asks. People aren’t screaming for statues of George Washington to come down because he didn’t explicitly fight to keep people from freedom. The Confederacy did. America was a small, faltering step in the right direction.

If you’re a member of the National Guard or active forces who have been called up to deal with civil unrest, I want you to understand that you are not dealing with an enemy. You’re dealing with your fellow American citizens and you will shape their opinion of the entire military. You do not owe loyalty to anything but the Constitution of the United States. You are a professional with the imperative to do the right thing. If you see something bad about to happen, it is YOUR responsibility to stop it. Your moral courage is as important as physical courage.

Just had our first virtual weekly close-out meeting. They got 3 guys in an office huddled around a webcam, and the CDR looks at one and says “Aren’t you supposed to be in quarantine since coming back from school?” He goes “Uh, I never got that guidance.” Never mentioned again. Apparently, the BDE CSM wants us all to shave every day even though we aren’t coming in because we need to “keep up that muscle memory so nobody comes in with a ZZ Top beard” as if someone is actually going to forget how to shave and come to work looking awesome.

We are so fucked. So massively fucked. It’s like watching a tsunami coming at you in slow motion. It’s like a bad dream where something terrible is happening and you’re powerless to stop it. And it breaks my heart. A friend hit me up recently to check in on how I was doing. I said “As long as I’m looking inward, I’m fine. As long as I can focus on my family and taking care of them, spending time with them, being a husband and a dad, I’m good. But when I look outward at the world? It’s bad.”

Hey, okay, so I talk on here about mental health in the military sometimes, yeah? And about how it’s important to take care of yourself and your people. I talk a lot about how the help is there for you and you just need to go get it.

Well, sometimes it’s not that simple. We PCS’d about six months ago and I’ve come to find that the installation we’re at now doesn’t offer mental health care in the same way as my last installation. (This is not a solicitation for advice.) At the old place, it was easy. Here, it’s a giant pain in the ass.

I’m sorry, I know many are going to disagree, but I can’t get very upset that negotiations w/Taliban were going to take place around the anniversary of 9/11. The way this was handled was fucking stupid, but that’s the detail everyone seems hung up on and it’s... what? Like, we keep hearing that we’re making progress in the negotiations. Are we just supposed to put them on hold for a week a year? How many days before and after 11 September are we supposed to stop diplomacy? What’s the magic number?

It was tragic. It was unnecessary. But it was definitely not the largest loss of American life in combat since “Black Hawk Down.”

https://twitter.com/hewholoveswords/status/1136636214960959488

It seems like a nitpick, I guess, but it’s not. Not to me on a personal level, obviously. But also, it’s important to get these things right. First of all, don’t erase the guys who died in Kamdesh or Wanat. Getting it right shows you actually care and aren’t using as as props.

This guy is going to block me immediately but I want to highlight the ridiculousness of his arguments.

1) I was an infantry platoon leader in the most lethal part of Afghanistan and I was 5’5” 130lbs. I was decorated for valor.

2) There are plenty of fat/broken infantrymen.

https://twitter.com/hrmrobertbruce/status/1084907913968340993

He also argues that “men will be distracted and sex will happen so keep the women away and too bad they’re denied an opportunity.”

I think what he SHOULD say is “We should expect a higher level of discipline in Soldiers who execute deadly US foreign policy.”

The 8yo is playing my new copy of “Shadow of War” and one of the Orc captains is named “Flogg the Wyrm” and lolololololol Middle-Earth masturbation euphemisms:

Flogg the Wyrm
Boppin’ Bilbo
Polishing the ol’ palantir
Strangling Saurumon
Forging the ol’ One Ring
Spinning Shelob’s web
Mining the ol’ Misty Mountain
Slapping Samwise

I shouldn’t have to constantly worry about my elementary-school-aged kids being shot. My 8/6yo should not have to practice active shooter drills and worry about being gunned down at school.

This is not normal.

Your fetishization of guns does not outweigh my children’s safety. You don’t need a semiautomatic rifle. You don’t. Not just AR-15s, AKs or the “scary looking assault rifles.” You don’t need a rifle that is essentially the same as the one I killed with in Afghanistan. You’re not going to fight off the government with it. It’s not worth our kids.