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thnx for all the infor-sry again for you and TIA’s loss prayers r on their way. was watching DATELINE- about a fathers mision-a story of infintry in todays army-very moving. hope you can catch it. don’t know if this was same story were previously talking about.
lt–my and jan`s condolences to tai and her family. sure a bummer.
Dan,
Tai’s brother was 45 years old. Tri had a wife and 3 kids ages 10, 15, and 17. Tai’s Mom is still alive and they had been living with her. Tai has one sister< Thiet, left over there and has a few half brothers and sisters. Tai and her brother, Be, who lives in Union City, CA will probably go home in October as there is something they celebrate 100 days after the persons death. I don't know if the State Department will allow the family to immigrate here or not as they are on the original petition. We were so close to getting that all done as we had already filed an Affidavit of Support for them and were waiting on a form from her brother to finalize the Visa process. Life can really hand you some sour apples sometime. Thank all of you for your expressions of sympathy!
LT,
So sorry to hear the sad news that Tai’s brother has passed away. How old was Tri? What will happen now? Is there any family there to help out?
so sry lt
Brothers,
There is a great cloak of sadness in our house! Tai’s brother in Vietnam, TRI, accidentally fell from a roof several days ago and passed away. We were so close in the immigration process to getting him and his family here and now we just don’t know where we are. Things I guess happen for a reason but in this case it hard to understand why.
LT
Clay:
You’re right about all that. What we really need in this war is another Gen. George Marshal who scouted out fighters in the officer corps and leaped them over the “next in line” guys, such as he did with Eisenhower, AND a President willing to take his advice as FDR did.
We don’t seem to have such a general or SecDef. Whether or not we have such a President remains to be seen, though he has shown promise by first selecting McChrystal on the advice of the military chain of command and then having the balls to fire the very man he chose. I think that took more humility than most politician’s could muster.
It may be that McChrystal was promoted to his former position because he soldiered well and in spite of a big mouth. It is probably rare for an actual combat leader to make it very far in the corporate headquarters type environment that prevails in the Pentagon, other government bureaucracies and old, established, hidebound corporations. My observations and experience says that “going along to get along,” riding the right coattails and “covering your ass” is the key to much advancement and tenure. It also gets the same results we saw in Viet Nam, General Motors and many, many other failures.
Jim:
It can be that bad generals make for bad wars. In fact, I think that more likely.
To anyone who has followed McChrystal’s career at all, his and his staff’s indiscretions should be no surprise.
The surprise should be that this life-long egotist and big mouthed loose cannon ever got near a fourth star.
I wonder how his boosters, Petraeus and Gates, have skated so free here.
We are getting a little off topic here and I apologize for my part.
Maybe bad wars make for bad generals.
General McChrystal’s Next Job
by Seth Fiegerman
Thursday, June 24, 2010
It’s official: Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been pushed out as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The move follows a controversial interview he gave to Rolling Stone in which he chides several higher-ups in the administration including the president, vice president and members of the national security team, not to mention foreign dignitaries.
In announcing the decision, President Obama praised McChrystal’s service to the country until this point, but said that ultimately, “the conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general.”
This may not be the way McChrystal saw his career heading, but don’t feel too sorry for him. Ultimately, he may still have positive prospects down the road. “I think he’ll do pretty well for himself,” said Michael Noonan, the managing director of the program on national security studies at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. “He’s definitely not kryptonite at this point.”
According to Noonan, McChrystal essentially has two options. “One is to buy a ranch or farm someplace and just kick back, but from his temperament I don’t see that as really being an option,” he said. Instead, it’s likely that McChrystal will seek a prestigious but lower profile position in the private sector. Here are a few possibilities:
Senior Mentor
The military sometimes brings back retired officers to serve as advisers to current members of the armed forces. According to Noonan, their job is to consult on war games, current operations and general strategy. This position may be a particularly good fit for McChrystal who, despite his recent blunders, is known for being a savvy strategist. And if he needs an added incentive, this job pays extraordinarily well. USA Today notes that mentors typically earn between $200-$350 an hour, plus excellent benefits. This pay is commensurate with experience, which McChrystal has in spades.
Corporate Board
Military generals and politicians often end up serving on a corporate board where they receive what Noonan calls a “fairly good remuneration.” That’s probably an understatement. Corporate board members often make six-figure salaries. In particular, McChrystal might end up serving on the board of a defense contractor given his previous experience.
Academia and Philanthropy
As with corporate boards, former generals are considered a valuable resource in academia and philanthropy because of their proven leadership credentials. Noonan speculates that McChrystal could find work down the road as the president of a university or foundation. He notes that the McCormick Tribune Foundation in Chicago might be one possibility since they have a history of hiring retired generals.
Write a Book
As with any public figure, McChrystal does have the option to write a book about his experiences, which would probably earn him a pretty penny. But this does come with a caveat. According to Noonan, McChrystal worked in a “highly classified role,” which means he would be heavily restricted in what information he could divulge (although, to be fair, that didn’t stop him from speaking his mind to Rolling Stone). The other restriction that Noonan notes is that the military typically fosters a culture where people are “shunned” for speaking out too much.
Blackwater
Earlier this month, Blackwater, an infamous private contracting company hired by the military, went on sale. No word yet on the asking price, but it will certainly be in the tens of millions. Maybe the general should buy it. If he doesn’t have the money now, he can work one of the other jobs on the list until he does.
Guys, Guys, Guys,
You make me feel bad. My expense account is equal to what the General will make in retirement. For those who have seen me, I have not missed many meals. If the General gets hard up we have a food pantry in town & soup kitchen.
When generals retire, at the 4 star level, they can earn as much as $3,000 per DAY as consultants during large scale exercises. I don’t think he will be standing in the soup line.
LT:
Some churches and preachers do much better than that. I won’t call names, but I will quote Jesus in regards to that subject:
Mat 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
And, it was reiterated in Mark and Luke.
He actually has a base pay of somewhere in the $16K to $17K range and probably was getting combat or hazardous duty pay also. I bet Bill makes more like what he was joking about the General making! Churches are not great payers to my knowledge.
gary
$10 t0 $15,000 a month….. That is aproaching Bill Beckum pay…. the Church business is where it is at these days…
LOL Yeah, the General will get AT LEAST $400 a month retirement!
Hell, his base pay on active duty is somewhere between $10-15,000 per month, depending upon several factors.
The General will not go hungrey on his retirement pay alone. Bet he will get at least $400 a month for that. With a book deal, paid speaking engagements, few board of director jobs, paid commentator, and his retirement pay he could rake in a $ 1000 a month. May have to iron his own uniform.
Rick:
The troops have never liked the restrictions placed on them during an exercise in nation building and never will. However, if the goal is to build a stable and friendly government, they are absolutely necessary as you don’t make friends by going around killing folks willy nilly. As we discovered in Vietnam (or should have known from the outset), destroying their homes and killing their relatives doesn’t make them love you.
In Afghanistan and in Iraq, we created the mess we’re in by overthrowing the existing government. Of course that had to be done, but where we screwed up was in the follow-on efforts to implant democracy instead of purchasing a local strong man, leaving him in charge while we went after more bad guys and letting HIM work toward democratizing those places. We have always labored under the illusion that everyone wants to be just like us and have made our lives more difficult in the process. It’s based upon American hubris and cultural ignorance concerning everyone else in the world and, until we get over ourselves, we’ll keep on making messes we can’t clean up.
In Afghanistan, our arrogance has once again led us into a situation where there literally is NO military solution, yet the political solution we’re trying to impose isn’t workable either. In the end, just like in Vietnam, we’ll find some excuse to claim victory and leave. After that, some new strong man will arise and things will go back to the way they were. We’re already there in Iraq.
Sadly, I think we’ve forgotten how to fight and win wars. People usually point to Japan and Germany as evidence that it can be done, but they conveniently forget that we first hammered the bastards into submission and THEN helped them down the road to democracy. We did not try to do it while the fighting was still going on.
I hate to say it because I’m no fan of either Bill Clinton or Tony Blair, but the most recent example of doing it the right way was in the Balkans during the 1990’s. Once they decided to crush Serbia, and marshalled the forces to do it, they followed through and pounded the Serbs until they quit and withdrew. Ever since then, the Balkans have been quite, requiring only a few thousand troops to monitor the peace and to re-inforce the lesson given.
Gary;
Well said.
I really believe that we will succeed in Afghanistan when the gloves come off. There is so much more to the McChrystal issue than we will ever know. I do know what I hear from the troops that are engaged in trying to fight this thing. They are not happy. I’ve seen several parallels that have been drawn to the Vietnam war, and I have tried to resist them, but every day, we see more and more politics being inserted into the equation.
Again, Gary, thanks for your insight.
Afghanistan is only our longest war if you consider the Marine’s landing at Danang as the beginning of the Vietnam War. That’s where most people mark the beginning, in spite of the fact that advisors and air crews had been dying there for many years. The first name on The Wall is from 1959.
Yes, there were general’s relieved in Vietnam, including our own Americal Division commander in the aftermath of LZ Mary Ann being over run in 1971. Plus, Westmoreland wasn’t technically relieved, but he was “reassigned” to Chief of Staff of the Army after his failure to foresee the Tet Offensive in 1968. By the time he left, it was obvious that his big battle/ big unit strategy wasn’t going to work, so his deputy, Creighton Abrams was given the job.
As for McCrystal? He should have been fired the first time he ran off at the mouth in Rolling Stone magazine, back when he was trying to pressure the President into approving his request for 100,000 additional troops. Taking his case to the public before the Commander in Chief had even made a decision was McArthuresque and he should have been treated the same way then.
This time, though, I think there’s more going on than we’re being let into and I think it begins and ends with David Petraeus, the Republican’s darling boy who is being touted as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012. McCrystal is a protege’ of his and I suspect this whole thing was contrived to put the blame for our upcoming failure in Afghanistan on Obama’s shoulders. McCrystal is a graduate of both the Command and General Staff School (or whatever it’s called now) and the Army War College and both institutions have media manipulation in the curriculum. He knew better and did not accidently mispeak.
But, Obama pulled off a very deft political manuever when he dumped it right back onto Petraeus, cutting off any cheap talk of his losing the war in Afghanistan by not listening to his generals. It was a coup de main which I did not think he was astute enough to do!
If it really was an act to shift the blame onto the President in the future, then you can look for McCrystal to receive his pay-off for falling on his sword. My bet is that Fox will hire him as an on-air consultant and military commentator, in addition to him being named onto several corporate boards of directors, which pay a tidy sum for not much work.
I just heard a report that this month, Afghanistan will surpass Vietnam as the longest American war. There are many parallelisms, but I don’t remember a top general ever getting fired in Vietnam. Don’t know yet if that’s good or bad for the guys in Afghanistan, but surely might have done some good for us in RVN……
Larry,
Send some of the cool mountain ait to South Florida. Hot and humid.
I have been on the web site featuring Duck several times. He was my squad leader and I was probably 10 foot behind him when he got killed. Great guy.
Well, Fast Eddie Davis and I got the jack rabbit and prarie dog levels down to an acceptable level. Now we are in Creede, CO at about 8,900 feet in the cool mountains. We expect to see the rainbow and brown trout to be listed on the the endagered list. We are having a great time!
Short Round, you are so full of crap that you eyes are brown.
Gary,
I am glad you did. I think of him often, especially on 8/22. That is also the date my Dad died 8/22/91. Happy Father Day to all.
Bill:
I didn’t pick him. In fact, I didn’t even know him. I just happened across that website commemorating him and thought I’d share with those of you who did know him.
Gary,
Why did you pick “Duck”? I remember 8/22/69 well. One of the few guys I knew outside of my platoon. Spoke to his mom in the early 1990’s.
I was searching for something else on the net and found this:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://dsf.chesco.org/heroes/detwiler/detwiler_ft_polk.jpg&imgrefurl=http://dsf.chesco.org/heroes/detwiler/detwiler.html&usg=__s6C9tAd498IFXtuNbCaizRkR60c=&h=218&w=200&sz=18&hl=en&start=56&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=gHr0BKv3j99RVM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=98&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dft.%2Bpolk,%2Bla%2B1969%26start%3D40%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1
Larry
Be gentle with my old Hooch Mate Fast Eddie
larry–i hope you, fast eddie and rex don`t corrupt walt or any other 1st platoon guys that get to wabasha early. 1st platoon was noted for its couth. we always washed our rotted fatigues upstream from 2nd and 3rd platoon.