Sergeant Bergdahl is a Traitor because 'he read too much and didn’t drink enough beer'

[Lee-Lee]

73. You don't have to lecture me about how force shaping is going

I am knee deep in it right now. Heck, my retirement papers are pending right now (by my choice, not due to force shaping) so I am well aware of exactly what is playing out.

I have made the hard decisions to have my commander start the separation papers on too many soldiers recently. Some needed to go, some could have been redeemed but under the current environment won't get a chance. Not in one case did personal or political differences come into play.

Unlike how you and your peers must have done it previously, based on your claims, we are doing it with fairness and integrity. Political and personal opinions are not coming in to play, only objective performance measures. Sure, if you can't pass your PT test or make weight, you are in trouble these days and won't get second chances above the minimum required by regulation. If you are an NCO who isn't trying to keep going to schools and get promoted but just featherbedding and coasting in your current job, you will likely get shown the door by the board- especially if you are over 20. But not because you said something unpopular to the current senior leadership or if you have a bumper sticker that expresses an opinion your supervisor doesn't like.

And you don't get a negative evaluation for expressing criticism- even of decisions made at high levels. If you did most of the Army would have been disciplined cussing about Shinseki and the black beret, or the new tatoo regs everyone is complaining about now. In fact if somebody ever tried that, it wouldn't go well. Evaluations have to be based on black and white, demonstrable, documents factors. To put a negative block in an evaluation you have to show that the Soldier received previous counseling on their activities and was told what the expectations were and didn't correct the behavior- and a counseling to not talk about something like this wouldn't fly if someone was foolish enough to attempt it. Unless they could articulate it was being done in a way that demonstrably harmed the force and that is a high, very high, bar for use when regulating speech. So boards reviewing files for force shaping won't have any idea of a Soldiers opinion on the matter.

All these force shaping decisions are made two places- for junior enlisted by the commander and his/her unit leadership at the company level. They won't care about the criticism, and in fact likely will feel the same way. For NCO's and officers by boards, who won't have a clue what the individuals personal opinion of this situation is- they only see evaluations written by the individuals leaders and their other service record, not their Facebook posts. So your assertion that criticism of this will actually affect anyones retention is laughable, along with statements like "They also better not be repeating war stories from people who exaggerate, too" smacks of a desperate attempt to scare those in uniform into shutting up.