mvscal wrote:Terry in Crapchester wrote:So I asked you a follow-up question: exactly how did Clinton force you out of the military?
I wouldn't go quite that far, but morale was in the shitter during his terms.
Based on my personal experience, I would say that morale is on your particular command moreso than it is on the commander-in-chief.
I served during the Reagan Administration. I've heard people say, particularly on this board, that morale was sky-high during the Reagan years. I also heard people at my particular command say that morale was high at that particular command. My own experiences, however, would bear out a different conclusion: I frequently heard sailors barely out of boot camp already counting down their days. Mind you, they were in four digits, but they were counting them down nonetheless.
I suppose it's possible that the others know something I don't, and that morale really was sky-high during the Reagan years and particularly high at my command. If that's the case, all I can say is that it's a good thing that I didn't serve at a time when morale was low and at a command where morale was particularly low. Who knows, I might have offed myself under those circumstances.
The cockup in Mogadishu was not received well in the Army. That wasn't entirely on him, but that didn't really influence perception.
What really pissed people off was his sucking up to faggots and expanding the role of women into the HQ elements of combat units. That and the endless and pointless series of "peacekeeping" ops made it seem more like you were a test subject in some kind of social experiment than a soldier.
A lot of solid NCOs and officers left the service in disgust during that timeframe.
That may be true, but it doesn't answer the question I posed to AP. Nor can it; he really has to answer it himself.