Free Republic

Equal rights, equal fights!

I would argue that the historical comparison is false. I would argue that the Roman Empire is closer to Britain. Rapid expansion, wealth derived from territorial acquisitions and trade which necessitated further expansion, the cessation of said expansion due to manning shortages as people began enjoying the “comfy life”, and the inevitable collapse as the barbarians inside and outside of the empire overwhelmed the “Romans”.

I would argue that America is closer to Byzantium. We grew out of the British Empire (much like the Eastern Roman Empire grew from the “old” Romans), initially adopting a similar military/law/taxation system. After that, the Byzantines were able to almost reconquer all of the old “Roman” areas around the Med to include Rome through military or alliances (the way that America has control of a vast part of the old British Empire through either direct ownership or as the leader of the “Five Eyes” alliance). The Byzantine Empire was also initially built with an intertwined relationship with the Church.

The Byzantines used brilliant strategy early on to maintain their empire, but began using more and more mercenaries and partner forces nations as the thirst for war subsided and people no longer wanted to send their sons off to war. This, alone, wouldn’t end the empire. But that, combined with the backstabbing politics of the capital that always put personal ambition over the greater good did. As their allies watched the constant political backstabbing, and saw the largesse of wealth being squandered to keep the people happy, eventually everyone (allies and native people) stopped believing that the Empire was worth fighting for.

One day in 1453 the Byzantines found themselves surrounded by a combination of Barbarian Muslim Turks, Greeks who had allied with the Turks in rebellion of the high taxation, and a host of other enemies who felt the Empire was no longer worth keeping (or were enslaved like the Janissaries). Others were opportunists who cared more about making a buck than God or Country (the man who made the cannons that destroyed the Byzantine walls was a Hungarian). The leader of the Empire threw away his devotion to his church for political gain hoping to save his power, but this only disgusted the local people even more and causing even fewer to fight. The Empire’s secular European allies sent meager reinforcements at best (Venetians and Genoans), or none at all (Hungarians).

The result was that a once-mighty empire which once sent 400,000 man armies to fight enemies could barely muster 12,000 men for its final battle for its survival. It had given away its religion and gained nothing in return, and it had expended all of its treasury. With no money for mercenaries, no allies sending sizable relief, the moral authority of fighting for God discarded, and a local population sick of high taxation; the once mighty Byzantine Empire slipped into the history books never to return.

I don’t think that America is at 1453 yet, but we are headed that way in a generation or two if we don’t find a Justinian and a Belissarius to turn things around.

You served in a completely different era.

Up until a few years ago, it was normal to have an alcohol related incident. When I came in, almost every SNCO had at least one. Now, almost any alcohol related incident is a career killer. A DUI now is a general under honorable under best conditions. You also didn’t serve in an era where you practically have to get a consent form notarized before it’s considered rape. I mean, let’s be honest...current active duty live in a service where an E-8 was disciplined for having Chick Fil A at his promotion ceremony, because it offended his homosexual Major. Yes, you can get fired for liking Chick Fil A.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that it’s a scientific fact that TBIs change the neurological makeup of the brain, or anything like that.

People like you are the reason active duty military and recently separated military are blowing their brains out at an astonishingly high rate due to an unwillingness to get help or talk to people. So why don’t you shut your yap about something you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.

Simple, they are planning for two things:

1) That their actions will cause a reaction that they can catch on camera. This will allow them to continue to play victim, attract new recruits and money, and keep their name in the press.

2) The said reaction will not be so aggressive as to destroy them either as a group or as an individual.

So your options in response involve the following: ensuring they don’t get cameras or publicity, starving them of recruits and money, or utterly destroying them each time they do this so that they stop.

I won’t weigh in any further.

“At what point did the military misplace its collective balls”...

Probably the point when a two star general in the United States Air Force told a group that anyone who exercised their Constitutionally guaranteed right to contact Congress was committing “treason”.

In all honesty, it probably wasn’t that point. It was the point when senior leadership did nothing to him, until the public outrage reached a stewing point. Then, the Air Force “fired” him by moving him to the Pentagon where he actually has more sway in Air Force operations.

Feel free to read the outstanding JQPublic article, and make sure you click the hyperlinks to older stories to get the gist of the whole story. Don’t get me wrong, I know what you are getting at. Unfortunately; the NCO corps is too busy trying to protect our troops from budget cuts, re-education training, and social experiments while having absolutely no top cover anywhere in senior leadership.

http://www.jqpublicblog.com/promoted-treason-general-tours-a-10-base/

How is a couple rockets lobbed into BAF even a headline?

You should never buy a gun based solely on research. I knew a female that “researched” that an XD was her best bet. I convinced her to go to the range and rent one, and found out that her tiny hands caused limp-wristing, and every round jammed. I know a dude who “researched” that a S&W 686 is what he wanted. Too bad the hammer got stuck every time he drew due to how he wore his shirt.

So go to the range, and test several firearms out. See which one fits well in your hand, which one handles the recoil, which one draws best, etc.

Also, the firearm is only one part of the solution. You should spend as much time researching the ammo and holster as you do the firearm. A nice weapon in a crap holster is a crap weapon. A nice weapon firing crap ammo is a crap weapon.

I’ll absolutely send this to a Gunny tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll clear up some stuff so that you understand the process and maybe understand options.

Every enlisted member receives a housing (BAH) and food (BAS) allowance. Even kids straight out of basic training. If they are staying in barracks and eating at the chow hall, that pay is then automatically deducted back out of their check and they never see it outside of their LES statement. That process ends once they reach a certain rank, or get married.

What it sounds like here, is that your son in law still hasn’t gotten the marriage license submitted yet. If you can’t prove that you are married, they continue taking that money and you stay in barracks until you do. Once he will get his license turned in, he will get to keep the BAH and BAS and that is how they will pay for an apartment. It will probably get added to the next month’s pay, so there may be a couple week delay, but it will be there.

So, somehow, HE will get shelter. If they are still taking his money for barracks life, then he will stay in the barracks and get nothing extra. Obviously, he should do that and his wife should stay with you until the paperwork gets straight. Once they release that money in his paycheck instead of taking it back ($1869 for Camp Pendleton with dependants, according to The Google), he is responsible for using that money to find shelter. Apartment, hotel, trailer, whatever.

Now, if they are taking his money back AND not letting him stay in the barracks, then there is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by his chain of command. Immediately.

Last but not least, someone saying that “bringing it up with the Sergeant is not an option” actually made my head spin. As an NCO myself, this is quite possibly the most wrong statement I have heard in a very long time. This is pretty much the purpose of a Sergeant, and DEFINITELY the purpose of the First Sergeant. I’m not going to speculate as to what is going on here, but understand that health and welfare is the First Sergeant’s primary purpose in life. Taking care of their troops is the NCO’s primary purpose in life.

If you have any questions about this long novel I just wrote, feel free to ask. If you want to just message them to me instead, that works too.

I am active duty Air Force, but I work with Marines. Although I agree with a lot of the general information posted here (like “talk to the First Sergeant”), realize that each branch handles issues slightly different and that things change over time. Your best bet is to get advice from an AD Marine.

I work with a bunch of Marines. If you don’t mind, I can copy the general info you posted and take it to work tomorrow and see if they have any advice for this kid.

If I were to break into someplace, I would DEFINITELY go for the place where people are trained to be Airborne and/or Rangers.

What a bunch of morons.

Regardless of whether this is on the internet or not, doesn’t mean it should be. Anyeone who knows what this is, should probably be keeping it to themselves.

The chickenhawk comment wasn’t meant for you. Having said that, I haven’t been conventional Air Force in 6 years. So if the “combat platoons” and “sections, flights, etc” comments are a not-so-subtle attack on my credibility, then make it known directly.

This article didn’t call for sending older weapons. It’s calling for sending MLRS batteries and trainers. Some people on this thread have called for sending boots on the ground.

I know where a tremendous amount of money is spent. I really do. The problem is that as the federal government spends more and more, the belt keeps getting tightened on the average Joe. We have 22 vets and active duty soldiers committing suicide a day because they can’t get the help they need, to include several friends of mine. You’ll have to forgive my hatred towards certain chickenhawks on Free Republic who are calling for World War III, when there are cracks in the system so big you can drive a tank through.

We, as a country, aren’t taking care of our people. So why should we take care of Ukraine?

First of all, quoting FDR won’t convince me of anything. The man single handedly changed the American way of life by creating most of the social programs that still plague us to this day. He then pissed on the Constitution by trying to remove judges who disagreed with him. Then, he pushed for the UN. Finally, he sat down with Stalin and literally drew the lines on the map that condemned all of Eastern Europe to Communist rule (not to mention the suppression of the Orthodox Church).

Now with that said, enlighten me on who is going to pay for all of this aid that you constantly lobby for...day in and day out.

More importantly, enlighten me on why it isn’t MORE important to send that aid to the Kurds. Or to the Assyrian Christians? ISIS has global reach. Donestsk and Luhansk militias and Russia’s “little green men” do not. I can easily make the argument that not only do the Kurds DESERVE it more (they remain loyal to us even after multiple betrayals), not only does ISIS constitute a bigger threat, but the Kurds are oustanding warriors.

You know what? I would argue that the Ethiopians, Nigerians, Malians, and Kenyans deserve that aid more than Ukraine while we’re at it!

I guess the U.S. is now Oprah handing out gifts. You get aid! And you get aid! EVERYONE gets aid!

I’m assuming that the U.S. is going to pay for all of this “aid”, aren’t they?

Let me enlighten you on something. The Department of Defense has tried to take away Tuition Assistance to military members for the last 3 years in a row, because we don’t have enough money. They are threatening to cut the A-10 completely from service, because we don’t have enough money. They are screwing retired military member’s Tricare and the VA system is a disaster, because we don’t have enough money. They lowered my BAH this year, and the DOD is the only entity that received a pay raise LESS than inflation rate in the entire federal government...because we don’t have enough money.

And yet, you want to send millions/billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine? If you feel so passionate about “aiding” them, then set up a Paypal account and feel free to donate your own money. Or better yet, go fight yourself instead of sending Joe Snuffy of the 82nd Airborne who has already been away from home for 7 deployments. We can’t even finish off ISIS or Al Qaeda, who are way more of a threat than the Luhansk volunteer forces and their illiterate Russian green men.

In before you get called a “Putinista” as a reward for a thoughtful and levelheaded comment.

Funny. Someone did lob some rockets at the Brits. Combined between V1/V2 rockets and bombs, 40,000 civilians died in the Battle of Britain.

The Brits responded with nighttime firebombing. They killed more civilians in Hamburg than were killed in the entire Battle of Britain. Eventually, 250-400K German civilians were killed in strategic bombing.

Am I bashing the British for doing it? Nope. It’s war. But when the little weenies then complain about Israel being “disproportionate”, I get pissed. If Israel is committing “war crimes”, then I guess that Winston Churchill and Arthur Harris are war criminals too.

Your wireless provider will keep a record of your IMEI. When you go to the store, and buy a new phone under contract, they update their records with the new phone. If you instead buy a phone from a friend and add it to you contract, part of the registration process involves them updating this information as they add it to your account.

If you want your own, most phones have the IMEI recorded on the phone behind the battery. If you have AT&T or T Mobile, you can also type *#06# and the phone will display it for you.

A service provider can only know if a device is fraudulently accessing the network if they know it is stolen. Which is why it is vital to call them if you suspect it has been. Your phone authenticates with the network many, many times a day. One of the pieces of authentication is your IMEI. Basically, your phone says “I am XXX”. The network looks up the IMEI (amongst other things), runs that IMEI against a database to make sure it’s valid and not stolen, then allows you service if everything checks out.

By reporting the stolen phone to your provider, they will add your phone to the database tagging it as bad. So a thief takes your phone, you report it, they add it to the database. The next time the thief tries to turn the phone on, travels, or even a certain time passes; the phone will attempt to authenticate again. Since the phone is now tagged as “bad”, authentication will fail. Common sense translation: it stops working.

Although computers are a little different, the same concept applies. To keep things simple, networks maintain who “you” are the same way through equipment identifiers. So if someone steals it, simply report the device as stolen.

Your phone’s handset registers it’s “hardware” (usually referred to as an IMEI for most phones) every time it authenticates with a network (aka you turn it on, travel, etc). The phone company knows that IMEI belongs to you.

When someone steals your phone, you should immediately call your provider. They will basically “flag” that IMEI as stolen. Options at this point for the company range from sending its location data to the police, all the way to (most likely) simply not allowing that phone to register. In other words, turning it into a brick. Or, in your terminology, activating a kill-switch.

This it the case for all cellular phones from the fanciest smart phone, to the dumbest burner phone (which I proudly carry).

I literally sit down with new subordinates straight out of basic and walk them though how loans work, interest rates, investing, etc.

It’s an NCOs job to take care of his troops. That used to mean teaching him/her how to shoot, wear the uniform, etc. Now it involves teaching people how to put away money for the next time Congress cuts off our paycheck, how to not get scammed by the front gate vendors, even how to balance a budget.