Oregon Muse over at Ace of Spades has a good post on some special types of inflation, including military decorations and educational degrees, with amusing side-by-side photos of General Eisenhower and General Milley. If you didn't know who they were and just looked at the military decorations, you might think Milley was the one who had actually won a war.
Personally, I think Milley needs to add some taxi cab medallions to his uniform, so he can be as impressive as this guy (Jean-Bédel Bokassa, late emperor of the now-defunct Central African Empire).
I first noticed it with Stormin' Norman! wearing camo and boots to press conferences as if he'd just come off the battlefield.
ReplyDeleteI later heard he'd coined his own nickname.
To think, we used to have the baddest ace military ever. Now the officers hate Americans and are worried about their pronouns.
Now the officers hate Americans and are worried about their pronouns.
ReplyDeleteGive it some time, and the NCOs will as well. The enlisted will take a while longer.
Oh, and a comment on those ribbon racks ... ...
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the military has been cranking out ribbons and awards faster than they've produced ammunition. Fact. My own rack has 11 ribbons (I pulled it out of storage), some of which are (literally) for perfect attendance. Or for completing basic training. One ribbon says I served during the Cold War (!!!!!).
And then the standards for awarding them dropped. My Army Commendation medal was awarded for a silly reason ... ... but I needed it for promotion purposes. My commander at the time explained this to me. I could only shake my head.
A lot of Milley's badges says he attended a whole bunch of schools. EVERYONE above full colonel has those. Milley is apparently a jump master, a job that is all about jumping safely out of airplanes. All he need do is attend the school, and he can wear the badge. There is no requirement for him to serve as a jumpmaster ... ... which is generally assigned to NCOs, not officers. Hmmmm!
The CIB ... ... maybe that's valid, but I don't know. The ground pounders fought like hell to keep it from being awarded to chair warmers, a lot of whom whined a lot about how "unfair" it was for the legs to have a special combat award. Hence the "Combat Action Badge" was born. I s**t you not. For comparison, the former soldier Vindman (most recently seen with Arnold "Screw your freedoms!" Schwartzenegger) has a CIB as well.
And so on. Milley looks like any other flag officer these days.
Ike had so few ribbons because he served in a peace time military dominated by old dinosaurs pining for the days of trench warfare, plus the military was was the red headed stepchild in America. He was a major for 16 years.
But Ike knew how to win a war. More importantly, he WANTED to win a war.
/rant
Really good info, Jeff. Quite informative.
ReplyDeleteMr. H got a whole bunch of ribbons and badges during his ten years in the Army. A couple were for arms training, and the rest were for the various schools he attended (psyops, language schools, etc). He even got one for serving during the Vietnam years, although he never went to Vietnam and never was in combat (went to West Germany to interrogate defectors from behind the Iron Curtain). His attitude was always, if it's not a Silver Star or a Purple Heart, it doesn't mean anything.
ReplyDelete