Are military members just props for politicians?

While I was watching the State of the Union, I was thinking what I could post about today on the blog. I was all set to write about presidents and their desire/ability to bypass congress and change laws with signing statements and executive orders.  This has been the norm for the last five presidents however, the current president was the one who campaigned on breaking the chain of executive orders and signing statements.  But this topic will have to wait for another day.

Just another prop?

Just as I started to outline the blog post on executive orders I saw something that just upset and bewildered me. The use of Army Ranger Sergeant Cory Remsburg as a political prop is one of the most disgraceful parts of this SOTU address. All presidents have pointed to the hero in the balcony for the last 30 years, but I find it most terrible that this is done with not only a uniformed service member but also one that was terribly injured and maimed by fighting in a war.

The SOTU is not an annual report on the state of the Union as a whole. It has become a platform for the President to put forth his partisan plan for the year and then attack the opposition for not helping and for being a villain. The State of the Union has turned into a partisan campaign tool for the party that has control of the executive branch.  For those who do not know military members are not allowed to attend or participate in any partisan political rally and they are not allowed to go to any type of political rally in uniform. Yet the President has this member attend in his uniform and uses him as a political prop. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate the attention that this soldier is receiving and he deserves every single bit of it for the sacrifices that he has made on behalf of his country.  However, this does not change the fact that presidents have for many years have allowed members to break this rule when it is in the president’s best interest to do so. If in the next election cycle a military member attends a political rally in uniform or volunteers to work for a campaign and it gets back to his superiors I can guarantee that that member will be punished and possibly kicked out of the military.  Military members have their freedom of speech silenced in order to maintain good order and discipline within the military it is not right to then use service members to propel the presidents partisan message.

Service Member On Service Members Crimes Must Stop

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While browsing the yesterday’s Congressional Record today, I know what a dork right, I ran across the floor speech that Senator Hagan gave on the staggering amount of sexual abuse in the military.  Based on a survey of service members from all branches there is an estimate of 26,000 sexual assaults in the military. That is an overwhelming number of service members who have been victimized. As a veteran, I find this number to be very offensive and like Senator Hagen believe that we need to do more to protect our service members. 

I know that there are numerous required training sessions each year that deal with sexual abuse. To the credit of the military they are getting better than they were in the past. The training used to be very generic, done as a formality, and was usually death by power point. However, they now conduct small group discussions led by service members who have received specific training on prevention, identification, and the resources available to victims of sexual assault. My point is that there is a higher quality of training that is conducted now rather than the training that was done 10-15 years ago. 

According to the DoD report that Sen. Hagan quotes, we are seeing a drastic rise in sexual assaults despite the increase in both quantity and quality of the training that is given to service members.  Sen. Hagan gives a couple of harrowing stories of several victims reporting rape and assaults to their commands and not receiving any justice or at least fair shot at receiving justice.  Most of the claims are investigated by the leadership of the victim’s command, in my opinion this causes a giant conflict of interest, as the CO of the unit is responsible for both the successes and failure of his command. If a CO has the ability to find a case as “unsubstantiated” and to keep his own record clean would not some take that road? Even if the CO finds that the allegations are “substantiated” and he refers the case to court martial the CO is able to overturn any convictions. 

This is why I believe that an outside unit should investigate ALL sexual assault cases or even better lets use law enforcement officers that have proper education and training in investigating these types of allegations. Bring in the Criminal Investigations Division or civilian police to do the investigations. We CANNOT allow this type of increase to continue. These people put their lives on the line to defend us and deserve to be able to feel save in their barracks and workplaces.

I urge everyone who reads this to please contact there congressmen or and senators and demand that investigation process be changed to better serve our brave men and women in uniform.

                                    THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!!

For more information please see the following links:

http://www.sapr.mil/index.php/annual-reports

http://www.hagan.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2121

and to add insult to injury

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/jeffrey-krusinski-arrested_n_3225155.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/us/army-sexual-assault-investigation/index.html