This Leaves A Bad Taste In My Mouth

Following up Monday's brief post on how obama trusts Iran with nuclear weapons but not our military with firearms, here's a little more expanded commentary.

First, the good news.

The military has directed recruiting centers nationwide to step up security in the wake of the Chattanooga, Tenn., attacks...

Yay! It's about time the higher-ups got their heads out of their asses and allowed our military to exercise the same self-defense rights that we civilians enjoy.

Oh, wait...

The security boost doesn’t authorize recruiters to carry weapons in the centers...

What?!? That's absurd! How are the men and women in uniform supposed to protect themselves against terrorist attacks?

... Instead, officials said they are directing hundreds of recruiting and reserve centers and ROTC facilities to increase surveillance and take basic steps such as closing blinds at the offices. (emphasis added)

Seriously? The best the brass can do is to tell those members of the military who are exposed to close the friggin' blinds? What next - close your eyes and pretend no one is there?

I'll bet whatever high muckety-muck that came up with that is sitting in a corner office with the blinds wide open, while being protected by multiple layers of armed security personnel.

As if that's not bad enough, the highest ranking officer in the whole damn United States Army has come out and said he doesn't trust the men and women under his command with loaded weapons.

A day after a gunman shot and killed four Marines and wounded three other people in Chattanooga, Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters that arming troops in those offices could cause more problems than it might solve.

"I think we have to be careful about over-arming ourselves, and I'm not talking about where you end up attacking each other," Odierno said during a morning breakfast. Instead, he said, it's more about "accidental discharges and everything else that goes along with having weapons that are loaded that causes injuries."

C'mon, general. That's why we have basic training, advanced training, refresher training, training, training, and more training. If a whole bunch of cops, security guards, and civilians can run around with loaded weapons, why can't members of our highly trained Army. You know, the ones we give guns to and tell to go fight the bad guys.

Granted, there are negligent discharges with LEOs and civilians, but they're not as highly trained as professional warriors - right?

One of the reasons I left the Army was because of officers like Odierno. I had a few good officers - men I was proud to serve with - but it seemed like they were outnumbered by, and usually reported to, paper pushing political drones like the current Army chief of staff, who were more concerned with appearances than with the welfare and morale of their troops.

Adding insult to injury (literally), the Marines (of all people, the U-S-by-God-Marine-Corps) have told their recruiters not to wear their uniforms.

The military services have taken swift action to increase security after Thursday's shootings in Tennessee, even closing some facilities and telling Marine recruiters not to wear uniforms in public.

I was flabbergasted when I read that. If there is one branch of service that I thought would never back down, would proudly and defiantly march to the very gates of Hell in dress blues, it would be the USMC.

And now the higher-ups have allowed a never-to-be-sufficiently-damned bunch of pedophile-worshipping goat-loving hygienically-challenged sons of bitches (literally!) to humiliate the Corps by denying its members the privilege of wearing the uniform of a United States Marine. I never thought I would live to see such a thing.

This is how the terrorists win.

Has it really come to this? Civilians protecting Marines? I mean, good for them. They're standing up and doing the right thing. Too bad our so-called leaders won't do the same.

Notice the prosthetic leg on one of the civilian defenders.