All Episodes
Previous Next
June 11, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
58:43
Richard Leonard Show: Too Late To Save Our Military?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
With everything happening in our world today, especially in our country, it is my opinion that as Americans, we should be comfortable and confident with the strength of our military forces.
I believe that Americans are not as comfortable, not as confident, That the freedoms and the liberties that we were promised so many years ago are not being protected the way that they could be or should be.
Today we are going to have a discussion about military leadership and how it may be affecting the effectiveness of our military forces.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hey everybody and welcome here to the next episode of the Richard Leonard Show.
As usual, I want to thank you.
I want to thank you for joining us, for watching, for listening, and supporting our show.
Before we get started, as usual, I know that you won't mind me telling you about how the show is made possible, and that's Cortez Wealth Management.
Get yourself over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Let Carlos Cortez and his staff instruct you and lead you In creating, planning, and executing a tax-free retirement plan.
The webinars happen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings every week at 7 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
Grab the information.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, or even doubts for that matter, please, please, please get a hold of Carlos and or his staff and get all that ironed out and at least grab it.
If, for whatever reason, which I find hard to believe that this is not for you, No hard feelings, but at least check it out.
You deserve it and you owe it to yourself to do that.
So get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com, check it out.
Okay, so as I said in the intro, I believe that America's confidence in the United States military is diminishing.
And maybe rightfully so.
And I think that it starts with issues from the top down.
I don't know that Americans, if you follow along, are confident in our military leadership.
I think that it seems to have gotten extremely political and the goals of Our military don't seem to be the same as they were even 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago.
And it's a trickle-down effect, right?
As everyone knows, if you served, you've heard the phrase, crap rolls downhill.
And I believe that this big ball of crap that's rolling downhill in the way of diminished or diminishing Military leadership is the same thing.
And so I've been thinking about this for quite some time.
I found an article when I was doing research.
It was written way back in January of this year.
And I had it here on my computer screen as an icon.
I looked at it all the time.
And I've just been kind of marinating on it, and I thought that this would be a good time to maybe have this discussion.
I mean, after all, we're knocking on the door of another election season, and there's just so much upheaval and discontentment in our communities.
And so maybe this is a good time to have this conversation, just because there's There's no time like the present.
And then we had many weeks of caregiver information.
It was with Robin Stitt and I. We had Tori Seals talking about her husband's journey with military medical malpractice.
I mean, we just had a lot of stuff to talk about.
And so I think that we should just start down this road and see where it goes.
And so this article that I found, it was in the Marine Times way back in January.
It was written by a gentleman by the name of Stuart Scheller.
Stuart Scheller is now a best-selling author.
He's a former lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps.
He had resigned his commission.
As part of a plea deal, he was prosecuted under UCMJ for speaking out on social media and other platforms about military leadership as it related to the Abbey Gate attack, which happened in Kabul back in 2021.
And so, as part of his deal, he said, yep, I'm out, I'm done.
He walked away and started writing books and speaking out about military leadership.
And I think that this is something that maybe we can just read through together and dissect it, because I have some opinions.
And the one thing I want to throw in is that my reaction to this, although I've been marinating on it for some time, I didn't do a ton of research about current military leaders and what their downfalls are and what this and that and the other thing.
My reaction and my opinions about this article and everything it talks about is coming more from my experience in the military.
Leaders that I have had, both good and bad, in all the years that I served, So, I'm not going to throw out a bunch of facts about military leaders that we have now, that we've had in the past, and whether they were right, wrong, or indifferent.
That's a whole other discussion.
Anybody who had read this article or who will read this article who doesn't have any experience with the military, I think would have.
I mean, you react the way that you know with the information you're given and or the experience that you've had.
And so that's kind of how I want this to be.
So let's go through this together.
I'm going to throw it up on the screen.
I have it here on my screen.
Okay, so this article written January 30th of this year by Mr.
Stuart Scheller.
It starts out like this.
The criticality of organizational screening, training, and selection of senior leadership is of the utmost importance.
Sports teams ironically illustrate what military has forgotten.
The best players, or the best soldiers, should be selected from a diverse population after a performance-based selection process.
So let's talk about that very quick because what I want to throw in here is that the military is probably one of the most diverse institutions in our whole country.
For example, I was told at one point that the United States military observes like 80 something religions.
And so they don't limit soldiers to religion, race, color, or creed.
None of that.
There is regulations for every nationality in the world.
Should somebody from that group...
Be in one of our branches of service.
For example, maybe a guy or a gal from East India who is now an American citizen and wants to serve.
The military offers uniform patterned headdresses.
They wear turbans.
They can serve.
They can observe their culture.
And everything's fine.
Just one thing there.
A diverse population is certainly something that the United States military has.
Let's move on.
The NFL Combine is a great example of a performance-based selection process.
While it doesn't always predict the best performers, it's hard to imagine the NFL only picking players based on subjective recommendations from college coaches or external needs for inclusion.
Why are sports teams inherently better at designing a system for screening and selecting performance when outcomes for predictive failures do not result in the deaths of young talent entrusted by America's mothers and fathers?
Leadership determines organizational performance more than all other characteristics.
Thus, the criticality of organizational screening, training, and selection of senior leaderships is of the utmost importance.
So that's kind of what we were talking about before, right?
If the NFL, the NBA, the Major League Baseball, the PGA, all of these professional sports leagues and organizations, the only way you make it there is by passing the test, is by being at the top of the list of your peers.
And as we're going to learn a little bit more from the article, the military doesn't do that.
The military doesn't select its leadership based on a performance-based process.
You start at the bottom, you put in your time, you gain some experience, and you move up.
Now, in places like the Army, And I don't know exactly how the selection process goes for other branches.
But in places like the United States Army, your selection for promotion to the next rank is based on a couple things.
Your PT score, your physical training, your push-up, sit-ups, and two-mile run, and the Army has in the last couple years adopted a new PT test.
Apparently that's based on your MOS or your job, which is good.
I think that's a step forward.
So there's that.
Once you reach the NCO levels in the enlisted part, you have to go to a school, a two-week or three-week school to learn leadership qualities.
And once you graduate that school, you are now eligible for promotion.
You also have to get an evaluation by your leadership that also proves that you are qualified to go to the next level and to be a leader.
Now, here's the thing about that.
It is, in a certain sense, performance-based, but it's subjective.
Because the people that are grading you or evaluating you are people that you know, people that you serve with, people that you work with.
At least that's how it was in my experience.
But let's move on here, because we're running low on time in the first segment already.
In the current U.S. military systems, other than influence from the President, Congress, and political secretaries within the Department of Defense, the American people are relegated to military leaders internally produced within a nepotistic system.
So, as I said...
The people who are selected for the next level are evaluated by their immediate peers.
And that's just to put in the paperwork, right?
And then you make it to a list, and if you're selected based on your paperwork, then you get promoted.
That's the enlisted side.
The officers apparently are selected in a different way.
And I think that this is an important thing to remember just because it's not always performance based.
And so if our leaders aren't able to perform under pressure or perform in complex situations, What does that mean for the enlisted soldiers, the ground pounders, the ones who are on the ground fighting the battle, the boots on ground soldiers?
The decisions at the top need to be made correctly.
And so if we're not being promoted based on performance, how do we know that we are going to be effective?
Stick with us, we'll be back for the next segment.
Hey folks, and welcome here to the next segment of the show.
Let's just dive back in.
I want to continue down this path on this article written by the retired or resigned Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
Here we go.
So, the next section of the article is titled, The Marine Corps' Debate with Its Generals is Assuming but Dangerous.
So, Stuart Scheller has a different answer for the current fight over the direction of the Marine Corps.
Now, Stuart Scheller was a Marine Corps officer, so of course his focus is going to be on the Marine Corps, but I believe that everything he's talking about here can be applied to every branch of service.
I mean...
Leadership is leadership, right?
I mean, every branch has its own objectives and its own mission to accomplish what the big mission is, right?
So the military operates on the commander's intent.
And so the president is the commander-in-chief.
So whatever the president's intent is gets funneled down to all the branches, which gets funneled down to, you know, all the way down to the lower levels, the lowest levels possible.
And each commander has a way to achieve the commander above them to achieve their goal.
And so, essentially, the United States military, with all of its branches, is operating under the direction of the president as we know, but each piece of the puzzle has its own mission within the mission, if that makes sense.
So, why don't we continue down here.
U.S. military leaders have many good qualities, to be sure, but aggregate shortfalls in courage and performance were well documented since the creation of the post-World War II national security model.
Recent examples Like Benghazi, Libya, or Afghanistan aside, the military's inability to achieve political objectives in Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Kosovo, Libya, Iraq, or Syria should clearly indicate a team needing new leadership.
In any other business model, a consistent failure would result in new leadership, but this has not been the case for America's military.
Problems have festered for so long that simply changing out top-level leaders no longer fixes the military's foundational problems.
Good question here.
Is it even possible for the American military system to produce senior leaders capable of superior performance?
Now, let me go on record and say this.
In my almost 19 years of service in the United States Army, or the Minnesota Army National Guard, but overall the United States Army, I had some really good leaders.
Really good leaders.
I've had some not so great leaders.
And I'll even go to say that when, at times, when I was put in charge to be a leader, I had shortcomings also.
And so, what I think is that Leadership in general has a learning curve, right?
And I think that we see it in our lives all the time, not just in the military, not just at your job, not just at work, but everywhere in your day-to-day life as parents, as spouses, as friends, whatever the case may be.
Leadership can be a challenge in all areas of life.
But why this is so important, I think, is that there's a lot riding on the success of our nation's military.
And having strong, confident, and capable leaders is extremely important.
And as he outlines here, the failures in Benghazi, Libya, Afghanistan, Afghanistan was a complete debacle.
The pullout of Afghanistan, in my opinion, was one of those things that I think made a lot of veterans and current members of the military question why Why did I choose to put this uniform on?
Why did I choose to serve in the military when things like this disaster of a pullout is happening?
Benghazi.
Our military leaders and government leaders stood by.
This is my opinion, right?
I read the news articles, I read the book, I watched the movie, stood by and watched Americans get slaughtered.
Now, they put up one hell of a fight.
And that's the spirit of America I believe our leaders need to have.
That we cannot have any quit in us.
We will fight until the blood runs out of our body completely or the last breath leaves our lungs.
But as he says here, problems has festered for so long that simply changing at the top level Doesn't seem to be fixing any of the problems that our military is having.
And so ask yourself, is it possible?
Is it possible for the American military system to produce senior leaders capable of superior performance?
Because as we talked about, this shitball rolls downhill.
Poor leaders, in my opinion, breed failure.
Poor subordinates, but those subordinates become leaders, eventually, if they stay long enough.
And so, has our military leadership been lacking for so long that it is gonna be extremely hard, maybe even close to impossible, or very, very rare that we find ourselves with strong military leaders?
I like to think about General Patton in times like this.
The man was not going to be told to stand down.
And now there's this thing called military bearing, right?
But as a general with as many stars as he had on his helmet, maybe he could get away with having a little bit less of that.
But he wasn't going to be told.
He wasn't going to be told to stand down.
He wasn't going to be told to do anything but complete the mission at hand and win at all costs.
And part of being a strong leader at that level, I think, is accepting the responsibility for your decisions.
And it can't be easy.
It can't be easy to be the guy sitting in an office chair Trying to decide how to take over this city, how to move my soldiers in the most effective way possible and take the city, and then knowing that you're going to lose a percentage of your fighting force.
In my opinion, it would be extremely hard for me to make those decisions, send young men and women into a situation that they've been training for, Been training to fight.
Been training to take that city.
But also knowing that a percentage of them, and depending on the place, a large percentage.
I mean, if we talk about Somalia, Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down.
Can you imagine what the stress level is of the guy who had to send in the next Black Hawk?
Send the convoy back out.
Send more soldiers in.
Knowing that there's a very good chance that they're gonna be overrun, overwhelmed, and taken.
And they're gonna lose their lives.
That's gotta be a tough decision.
And so, like, I'm not here trying to diminish...
The stress or the power of what those men in these positions need to take into account.
Because it can't be easy.
Essentially, those people need to look at their fighting force and not see them as names, not see them as America's sons and daughters, but see them as Numbers on a spreadsheet.
That's tough.
That's really hard.
And then having to be the guy a few levels down...
That's looking at these soldiers and doing their pre-combat checks and inspections and looking them over, make sure they have ammo.
Do you have water?
You know, do you have all your body armor correct?
I mean, is everyone ready to go?
And just looking at these men and talking to them and giving them a brief and then watching them mount up on vehicles and roll out.
To go take a city knowing that you're not going to see all of them come back alive.
Probably.
Depending on the situation.
It's got to be a tough decision.
It's got to be a tough place to be.
And so I think that that's what this question is asking.
Is it even possible for the American military system to produce senior leaders capable of superior performance?
Because to be a superior performing leader, you have to be able to stomach making those decisions.
And I guess the way I see this is With all the wokeness, if you will, and all that other BS that's going on in our country, is there anybody coming up in the military that will still be able to make those hard decisions when they need to be made?
And it's important because our whole way of life depends on strong men and women to make those decisions.
Just like our whole way of life depends on strong sons and daughters to say, alright, that's the mission.
Let's load up.
Let's go do it.
Those are the types of people that we need and should want in those positions.
There's nothing glorious about war.
There's nothing glorious about putting yourself in that position.
It's all, in my opinion, it's 100% selfless.
And some would say, you know, these men and women, these sons and daughters, it's an all-volunteer army, right?
They sign up to fight these fights and to go into these places and to do this work.
And you're right.
Those people are a thousand percent right.
But that doesn't mean that the courage and the selflessness and the sacrifice Should not be observed.
But those are the people that we need to grow up in the ranks of our military forces to become strong leaders, to be the decision makers, and have to stomach the fact that, well, if I send 300 soldiers into this fight to take this objective, we may only get 220 back.
We may only get 150 back.
That's a hard pill to swallow.
But somebody's gotta do it.
Our way of life depends on it.
Stick with us, we'll be right back.
Hey guys, I want to take a quick second here to talk to you about our friends over at GoldCo.
Do yourself a favor, pick up your phone, after the show of course, and dial 855-920-3196 and call GoldCo today.
Let them talk to you about how to back your IRA with up to $10,000 of free silver.
Back your plan.
Your plan for retirement with precious metals such as gold and silver.
There's no secret that our system is an effing disaster.
So pick up the phone, call 855-920-3196, talk to Gold Co.
about backing your IRA with up to $10,000 of free silver, and tell them also that The Richard Leonard Show sent you.
The number one last time is 855-920-3196.
Hey folks, and welcome here to the next segment of the show.
Let's just keep diving in.
I think that Scheller is on to something here in this article about whether or not the ability of our United States military to put senior leaders in places for our nation to succeed Is lacking.
I think that that's clear.
But here is now he's going to start giving us an example of a fix, right?
I mean, so any problem that you present is tough to get behind.
If there's no recommendation for how to fix it, in my opinion.
I always told my soldiers or my subordinates at any of my civilian jobs, if you can find a problem that we need to fix, please, please, please have an idea for how to fix it.
We can have a conversation about it.
If it works, great.
If not, we'll have to figure something else out.
But I don't believe that it's helpful for anybody to present an issue, especially something like the leadership of our nation's military, without providing some way to maybe think about fixing it.
So let's continue here.
So moral courage in our current system.
Oh, it's not a good view here.
I'm sorry, it's kind of bleeding out of the next page.
The American military system is influenced by many historical literary works, but none more important than Persian General Karl von Klauschwitz.
He wrote a book called On War.
In a chapter about military genius, Klauswitz described military leaders' need for courage, and he says this, Courage is of two kinds.
Courage in the face of personal danger, meaning to defend yourself, to defend your life, or defend the well-being of others physically, whether it be with hands, fists, knives, swords, clubs, or guns.
And courage to accept responsibility either before the tribunal of some outside power or before the court of one's own conscience, which is basically your moral compass.
Klaus Schwitz specifically stated he would not explore the second quality, moral courage, in his book.
He didn't understand or didn't care to explore a military system's influence on leadership quality or, by extension, the military's overall performance.
He said there can be no military genius if the system doesn't allow it.
And so, like, this brings me back to General Patton.
The fact that he didn't...
I mean, of course he took his orders, right?
From whoever his boss was.
Took his orders from above.
But when he was out with his soldiers and being the leader, right?
The buck stops with him out in the field.
When those tanks were rolling and it was time for the men to fight, he was...
The Alpha, right?
He's going to tell you where to go, where to be, and all those things.
And I think why he was so revered is because he was extremely confident.
His moral compass was sound, and he was willing to take the responsibility.
He was willing to take the responsibility for the success of his unit, but also the failures.
And some of you may remember, if you've seen the movie or you read the book or you're into history and you've read whatever, the time where he slapped the guy in the face that was in the infirmary or the TMC for, you know, the guy was crying and didn't want to go back to his job and all this other stuff.
The actions that he took Although seemingly pretty drastic, in my opinion, are extremely effective in that setting.
Because every other soldier who was there to witness it could see that the guy that's in charge is just as dedicated to us succeeding as we are.
And even though he might be scared or nervous or apprehensive, there's no time for that.
See, the fact of the matter is that in times of extreme danger, such as combat, there really is no time.
There really is no time to stop and think.
There really is no time to be scared or be worried.
And that's why we talk about things like we did last week, right?
When we were talking about soldiers making sure that all their I's are dotted and T's are crossed before they go out daily to perform their job.
Because when you're out there, there's no time to think about whether or not you were paid properly, whether or not your wife and kids have electricity at home or whatever it is.
The only reasonable thing to think about when you're out fighting is fighting.
The mission.
Because when you stray from that, People die.
People get hurt.
And so to be the most effective soldier that you can be, you have to clear your mind.
And you can't be scared.
And of course, some of you may think, well, that's a whole lot easier said than done.
But trust me when I tell you that throughout training, when you're told, hey, When the shit hits the fan, don't think.
Let your training and your muscle memory take over.
And it's true.
I can't explain to you the times in which our team found ourselves while we were doing our convoy operations in Iraq through Baghdad and through all those up to TQ and Fallujah and on what they say was the most deadliest road in the world at the time.
And you get into firefights and there's explosions going on and, you know, there's people running everywhere.
There's just mass confusion.
But when it's all over, right, and we got to a safe spot and you're talking about it, after a while you don't even remember.
We don't even remember all the details that you did right after it happened.
And I think that that's because there's no time to think.
There's only time to do.
And so I think that's kind of what Scheller's getting here when he's talking about Klaus Schwitz and his moral courage, or the moral courage of the leader, right?
Let's continue.
The problem with the current military system is that it degrades moral courage over time.
It compels subordinates to please superiors for high subjective evaluation.
See, we talked about that a little earlier today.
Many times at the expense of performance and honesty.
This people-pleasing system is further weakened by a need for fairness, inclusion, and time card punching instead of performance.
It's worth noting that the term general officer literally denotes that an officer's background is irrelevant.
These officers, theoretically, are generalists possessing a warfighting ability superior to all others.
So here we go.
Scheller's talking about it.
The system that's currently in place Compels subordinates to please superiors for high subjective evaluations.
Your evaluations that put you higher on the list or the evaluations that decide where on the promotion list that you land are all subjective.
The people in charge are the ones that are ranking you, so to speak.
And so, you know, are all the bullet points on Neary Valley, are they true?
Are they quantifiable?
I think what he's getting at here is that there's a little bit of a good boy, a good old boy system that happens.
And maybe he's right.
And maybe it's hard to avoid.
Because we also know that When you are training and fighting and living and exercising with, you know, you do your workouts and groups, when you are spending majority of your time with a set group and usually a smaller group of people, you have no choice but to become close.
And of course, we all want our friends to succeed and we all want to see them do well.
And so do these evaluations become less than honest?
I don't know.
I can see it happening.
But of course, I was never an officer in the United States military.
So I'm not a thousand percent sure that this is right, wrong or indifferent.
And so I think that what we also need to recognize is that this type of system, if it has been going on for decades, as we discussed in the last segment, will further hinder the production of strong leaders.
I guess the question is, do we need to completely do away with the system as it relates now?
Or, does it just need to be redefined and reconstituted?
And also, who is going to make these decisions?
Scheller says in the article that the President of the United States needs to Address this before the next term, the next president comes in or boy, if the current one stays.
And I would offer that sometimes it doesn't seem like anybody in those positions like the president or his cabinet Or political leaders?
Are all that concerned about the strength of our military leadership?
In fact, are our military leaders doing the bidding of our political leaders?
I mean, when I was in Iraq in 05, 06, 07, The big conspiracy was that KBR got all these contracts and KBR was partly owned by Dick Cheney's wife.
So who's making it rich on this war?
It certainly wasn't the soldiers.
It certainly wasn't you, the American people.
But apparently somebody was getting rich.
And so, does our president or our political leaders really give a shit about reconstituting this system to be more effective, to produce leaders that are going to take a stand and achieve the mission for us, for the American people?
Are we really all that important to them?
Or are these folks more concerned about their money, power, and control?
I don't know, you be the judge, but we'll be right back.
Stick with us.
Hey folks, welcome back here.
Man, time is flying.
So let's just dive back in.
I want to get more to how Scheller is describing Klaus Schwitz's Take on moral courage and military leadership.
So let's continue here.
Let's see.
Okay, so a general officer is someone graduating from military apprenticeship by demonstrating mastery in all aspects of military warfare.
However, reality demonstrates that America's general officers are selected for an infinite number of reasons other than warfighting performance.
The need for inclusion and fairness affects all things.
The next U.S. president must dramatically reshuffle the entire process.
A needed shock to the dying system would be a performance-based war game for all general officers, which would determine continued military service and advancement.
So now here we're getting into talk of a performance-based evaluation system.
The first round of losers should be sent home to retirement.
The subsequent rounds should determine the most prestigious positions for America's general officers.
The details of the competition no doubt would be heavily debated.
No artificial competition would perfectly replicate the requirements of a general officer in war.
But ultimately, any warfighting competition illustrating performance is better than the current system.
Check this out.
The American people and junior service members cannot expect military leadership to embrace my proposed reforms.
Asking current military leaders to acknowledge the system's shortfalls would marginalize their own leadership while simultaneously threatening their personal power accumulation.
Only strong political leadership and direction will break the grasp.
So what he's saying here, it seems, is that reshuffling the system cannot be something that is either condoned or denied by the current military leadership.
They can't have any weight.
They can't have any dog in the fight.
Because if they admit that they have shortcomings, they're admitting their own shortcomings, right?
So it's going to take political leadership, such as the president, to have the courage to just make the call.
You know, and it can't, it also can't be, and I agree, it also can't be something that us, the American people, or any junior service member, so any lower enlisted service members, they can't have a dog in that fight.
Because it just, it won't be accepted.
Let's continue.
Man, we are just struggling with this thing.
When military leaders rise to positions of power on performance in crucial moments, they are more likely to rely on their instincts than antiquated rules or opinion.
These instincts, screened by performance, are expected by the American people.
If an opinion-based system degrades moral courage, a performance-based system strengthens it.
In the antiquated system, military leaders conditioned to patiently wait, please superiors, and respect fairness over talent for more likely...
Those people are more likely to fold under pressure than they are to fight.
While Klaus Schwitz may not have fully explored the need for a performance-based military system or what that meant in terms of moral courage, he clearly understood the crucial nature of moral courage in military leadership.
Can a military system...
Pulling from a large, diverse, and talented American population produced senior leaders of higher quality.
I agree with him.
The answer is yes.
But it will require the next president to demonstrate a courage and performance currently missing from America's senior military leadership.
So, is it possible?
I agree with Mr.
Scheller.
Yes, it is possible.
But it will take the courage of somebody at the top, above the ranks of our military leadership, to make the decision and to just do it.
Now, this performance-based system probably would have to take hours and hours, if not days and months and weeks of discussion about how to do it.
But it seems to me that it would be an extremely effective way to get the people who are not adequate for that position out.
And so he mentions sending them off to retirement.
Usually by the time you reach the ranks of a general officer, You're either close to at or beyond retirement age.
And so, yes, send them off to retirement.
The fact of the matter is that in this game, in the game of defending our country and keeping our country safe, feelings don't matter.
Your feelings don't matter.
My feelings don't matter.
Certainly the feelings of officers, general officers who may not make the grade, they don't matter either.
Our survival depends on it.
Our way of life, our freedoms, our liberties, all depends on putting people in those roles Who will make the decision?
Not even necessarily always the right decision, but make a decision.
And not worry about inclusion and fairness.
Do yourself and me a favor.
The next time that you come across, or if you know Anybody that has lost a loved one to war or combat or in military service, ask them if they feel like it's fair.
I'm willing to bet that the answer is gonna be, no, it's not fair.
And so our feelings about fairness and equality, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if the general officer or any leader in the military rank structure, it doesn't matter if they're black, white, Native American, Mexican, Latino, Persian, Tongan, Hawaii, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what your ethnic background is.
It doesn't matter to a certain extent what your belief structure is.
It doesn't matter what religion you practice.
If you are able to make the decision when it needs to be made, then you're qualified.
This idea that We need more black officers or we need more Latino officers and we need more people of color and people of different ethnic backgrounds and leadership roles in my opinion is asinine.
If we could rewind time and ask Soldiers who fought in past wars.
Vietnam, World War I, II. Even the Civil War.
Do you care?
Do you care about the color or the ethnic background of the guy fighting next to you?
As long as he's doing his job?
I don't.
In fact, when we had the discussion as a unit, when the United States government was going to allow women to serve in combat roles, we were asked.
We were asked by our leadership, how do you guys feel about it?
Is it something that you're comfortable with?
Are you uncomfortable with it?
I don't care.
Listen, man, I am 6'4", 300 and...
Well, now I'm like 360 pounds.
It's ridiculous.
But I was like 330 at the time or whatever.
Big, big person.
I don't care if the person next to me has a wiener, a vagina, or had a wiener and cut it off and built a vagina.
I don't care.
If I get shot...
Or if I get injured, can that person physically drag me to cover so that the medic can treat me?
And if possible, get back in the fight.
I don't care.
I don't care the color of your skin.
I don't care if you believe I'm the biggest asshole on the planet.
I don't care about any of that.
I care about whether or not you can do the job just like anybody else.
Can you meet the standard?
And so, women in combat?
Great.
Absolutely.
If any woman can meet the same standard as the men that's required to do the job, such as providing aid to your buddy when and if he gets wounded, Or get over a six foot wall or whatever the case may be.
There are certainly ladies out there that can do it.
I got no doubt about that.
Bring it on, let's go.
And so I think what Scheller's talking about here as far as a performance based evaluation system, and maybe not even for general officers, but for leaders in general, just across the board, If you are going to be in a position of leadership, can you do it?
Because on paper or on a computer screen, the results of your performance, the results don't know what skin color you are.
The results don't know what religion you practice.
It's irrelevant.
All it knows is whether or not you can do the job.
That's all I care about.
So I don't know that we need to have all these discussions about inclusion and people's feelings and all that crap.
The survival of our country and our people depend on having strong leaders in the places most important.
And in my opinion, those places, as it relates to the United States military, are any position that is defined as leadership.
All the way down to the lowest levels.
And I can tell you one thing, in the United States Army Infantry, your team leaders, your squad leaders, those guys who are in charge of those small teams, They're only put there if they can prove they can do the job.
Can you handle the responsibility?
So as a society of people, as a community of people, these are the things, in my opinion, that we should be thinking about as it pertains to our defense.
Do we have leaders who can do the job when they need to?
And all the other stuff, throw it out.
It doesn't matter, folks.
It doesn't matter at all.
The survival of our people, of our country, depends on strong leadership.
All the way at the top to the bottom.
I want to thank you for being with us today.
Again, please make sure you come on back and check out.
We have a lot more stuff planned to talk about.
▲
Export Selection