What is it with the US Air Force?

For anyone who has never read my posts, I am as pro-military as can be found on DU. Not in the sense that I support military action, but rather, I support the notion that a strong military at the ready, but held in abeyance is as strong a deterrent to action against us as possible. Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick". For me .... it should be a REALLY big stick.

With that aside, I ask: "What is it with the US Air Force?"

We had that asshat, the religiously insane Gen. Boykin, make those horrible religious comparison references to Muslims.

At Annapolis and West Point, we get cheating and male middy fondling female middy scandals. At Colorado Springs we see the religiously insane running the place.

I served in the Navy. I know a lot of sailors - past and present. I also know a lot of Marines - past and present. Same with the Army.

I really don't know many Air Force guys. In fact, of all my close friends who are veterans, only one served in the Air Force, and that was back in the 60s.

Of all the people I know who wear or wore the uniform, I see people who are pretty like the rest of the country - liberal, conservative, republican and democrat.

Anyway .... now we get Hayden.

Am I wrong in my perception that the Air Force is the most RW (and maybe also religiously insane) of the services?

Way back in 72 when I was being courted by the Navy Recruiter, he hadn't yet set the hook and I told him I was going to stop by the Air Force Recruiter's Office to see what they had to offer (I wasn't serious, just being an 18 year old smart ass.) The Navy recruiter said OK, but I wouldn't want to get in a fight or try to pick up young Ladies in that Air Force Uniform.

I talked to the VA guy in my Dad's hometown a couple of years ago. He (the VA Guy) was retired Air Force. I asked if he served in the military. He said, yes I served in the Air Force; and I said, yes, but did you serve in the Military?

Hard to figure the sky blue boys out. However, the canoe club has had a couple of hiccups lately. That dumbass LT Chaplain and all his evangelizing and the QB at Annapolis is being courtmartialed on Rape charges.

But my history has been, the best way to fuck up a gaggle at a bar is to have a couple of Air Force pukes join in the conversation.

a little work for them and those I have met were terrific people. I suspect it is like any other org.--nutcases are everywhere, and in this * era, the RW nutcases are given center stage so they are taking full advantage.

One correction, Boykin is Army not Air Force!

And this affliction seems to be in the officer ranks, not the enlisted ranks. I can attest to this because my wife is a retired Master Sergeant who served in the USAF.

One other example of a true "Wingnut" would be General Curtis LeMay, known affectionately as "Bombs Away LeMay".

He was not a success as Chief of Staff; he clashed repeatedly with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Maxwell Taylor. LeMay was a belligerent and totally committed anti-Communist. His first war plan, drawn up in 1949, proposed delivering "the entire stockpile of atomic bombs in a single massive attack" - dropping 133 atomic bombs on 70 cities within 30 days.

And let's not forget Ollie North and his loyalty to Reagan, but with little regard for the Constitution that he swore allegiance to. And now General Peter Pace, another Marine whose loyalty
to his Fuhrer is more important then his sworn allegiance to the Constitution.

Boykin is not AF but Army, a fully vetted and tabbed member of US Army Special Forces.

Beginning with the Mighty 8th--which suffered an extremely high casualty rate in WWII. Two uncles continued with Air Force careers & have since died--of natural causes. My father left the service but was called back to active duty in 1948 & died in the crash of a SAC bomber. Another uncle served during the Korean war (as a mechanic) & continued fixing military aircraft after he left the service. He was an Air Force reservist until he survived a crash in Alaska that killed most of the crew.

I know that NONE of my Air Force relations were religious fanatics. Some were fairly good Catholics & others were ardent non-churchgoers.

I don't know abou today's Air Force. Perhaps some of them have become "above it all" & think that everything can be done by remote control. Although things seem to be changing:

NOT-SO-BASIC TRAINING
With airmen dying in combat, trainees embrace a 'warrior ethos' to improve survival chances
A NEW DRILL FOR AIR FORCE

By JOHN W. GONZALEZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle San Antonio Bureau

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE - When a group of U.S. Air Force commanders visited Iraq two years ago, they made some disturbing observations as they watched enlisted airmen working in the war zone.

Many lacked basic combat skills and instincts. Some didn't know how to handle and load their weapons. A few even had their guns taken away as a safety precaution.

Within months, the high command mandated an overhaul of Air Force basic military training, which has been conducted here since 1942. Officials now say they've imposed the most dramatic changes in 60 years in the training's tone and curriculum.

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3814134.html

...and I've never gotten the impression that they're nutty or more RW or anything.

I do know that the USAF kind of carries a reputation among the other services as sort of the "country club" of the services (for what reasons I'm not sure, but I don't think they have to march or anything). But other than that......:shrug:

The nature of their mission is such that only those who fly assault missions get into enemy space. The rest are back line support types. As a result, they tend to get more of the basic human services ... like hot meals, showers, clean sheets and towels, and dry beds. Contrast that to an Army or Marine grunt.

I joined the Navy for kinda the same reason. No matter where we went, our bed and our dining room were always with us ..... mostly.

the next time you need air support, call for the other Air Force. This from a former AF POW.

You talking about the Navy and Marine fliers who could be counted on to provide close air support, when the AF would not get into the mix? That other air force?

For fifty years, the AF's mission has been strategic. They're the ones who, if it came to it, needed to be counted on to drop the big one. That takes an entirely different mind set from the AF that would support ground troops - to know that you, or those you support, could at any time be responsible for the deaths of millions takes a psychological certainty that is worthy of an evangelist -- which may be why they are so susceptible to evangelistic rants. There are very few grunts I've ever known who I think would be capable of pushing that red button. It doesn't take courage; just conviction.

As for courage, please. It takes 'courage' to destroy a village and the women, children and old people in it? One other thought: Check out all the khaki, army green and navy blue at Central Command, ADC, SAC Hq and the Pentagon. If the last order comes down from the civilian in the WH and Col Smith, USMC is the duty officer, of course s/he will push the red button. And so will all those nuke boat commanders. War is a crime and murder is murder; if it's one victim or a million. We all have blood on our hands.

Each branch seems to have to go through it. God knowth the Navy did with Tailhook and the USS Iowa disaster.

The politicization of the military is a fairly recent phenomenon--right-wingers are now to be found in every branch of the service, just as left-wingers are. Generalizations are hard to make. One might assume, for example, that combat infantry folks are the most hawkish and militaristic, but many are quite thoughtful, and we have seen a number of good books come out lately by guys in the Army and Marines coming back from Iraq.

I do think that the average military person is a little to the right of the average civilian. Still, the services have disproportionate number of minorities in the service, most of whom are Democrats. From my own experience, I'd say that the USAF is whiter than the other branches, and, given that right-wing nutjobism is largely a white male phenomenon, this may account for some of the apparent differences.

It's also worth noting that Hayden has spent much of his career in Washington as a military egghead. I don't know any of those, and don't really know what they are like, but it's safe to say that they are a breed apart from other officers, let alone the enlisted ranks. He also does have some real spying credentials, having been an "air attache" in the 1980's in Bulgaria at our embassy in Sophia. By definition, all those military attache jobs during the Cold war in the Eastern bloc were spy jobs, though the folks I have know who had such jobs were fairly close-mouthed as to what they actually did. Probably nothing but read reports.

My own attitudes are similar to yours. I was a service brat, and had a couple of relatives who were also lifers in the military. Somehow I ended up as a left-wing "peace hawk". Big sticks, good materiel, servicepeople as ambassadors, and high pay for the grunts in any service -- and of course, politicians committed to diplomacy, peace, and international partnership. We have bigger things to do than to wage war.

The USAF was actually targeted for evangelism by a number of hard-ass RW religious organizations; this goes back as far as the early 1970s.

My uncle was a Lt. Col. in the Air Force. He was by no means a flaming liberal, but he was quite disturbed by the robotic, cultish attitudes of the religious freaks. He thought it was a fad, but it never really went away, and he himself died in the early 1980s, right when it was really revving up.

Of course, now that a few cadets, airmen, and officers have come forward, the activity might be cut back. Too many talented Air Force personnel have felt compelled to drop out, or worse (in the eyes of the territorial recruiters), transfer to Naval Air.

The military has been a ripe, juicy plum for the wingnuts. That's got to change.

--p!

with this fascist administration-particularly with Rumsfeld.

Here's an example (from October 1996) of what has been percolating throughout the politicized Pentagon leadership-an award winning fictional account of a military coup in the US.

"Melancholy Reunion: A Report From The Future On The Collapse Of Civil-Military Relations In The United States"
USAF/INSS Occasional Paper 11 October 1996
by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.
http://www.usafa.af.mil/df/inss/OCP/ocp11.pdf

Then there's the AF Vision 2020 stuff and all kinds of other things-including Commando Solo II foreign (and highly likely domestic) missions--check it out for yourself, they are currently and historically highly over reliant upon tech and exotic weapons (particularly illegal space-based ones).

I don't know if that counts. He volunteered for the Air Force because he wanted to stay out of the infantry, after what happened to the boys on the ground in WWI.

Never a rw bone in or hair on his body.

Of course, it then turned out that a bomber was a more dangerous place to be than the infantry, at least in that war.

He told me one funny story. The Leader of his Group had two planes that he flew in, and dad was in one of those. They had radar instead of a gunner in the -- what would you call that spot? -- Anyway, they were based in Italy, and from time to time this Group Leader would hop in, and they'd fly to Cuba, toss everything possible out of the plane, fill it up with good Cuban liquor, and fly back to Italy.

I guess he had a cool superior officer. Whatever a Group Leader is.

bombers in WWII.