Welcome to Between the Lines, where, just like that jerk in the front row of a magic show who won't stop pointing out how they do the tricks, I take a look at the Army's propaganda and do my level best to figure out where they're hiding the rabbit.

First up, A look at the "Opinion" piece that the Army is choosing to run as "Opposing Side". Headlined as "Army Should Focus on more than what will we wear" This article by a soldier is surprisingly telling, providing you're willing to read past what the spin the corporate press is putting on it.

"Shut Up and Do your Job" seems to be the watchword of all high leadership in the military, as they swan about trying to secure their corporate credentials by showing how much "Synergy" and "Branding" they can create for the Army, rather than focus on winning wars. Of course, what this Sergeant leaves out is the differing priorities between high level leadership and low level. The average high officer wants to be able to point to their Powerpoint presentation and be able to point to all the numbers being up. The Average Captain and lower wants their soldiers to all come home, which means training, working on morale, and learning the freaking job, rather than catering to the political whims of the moment.

What this commentary points to is the VERY real morale problem within the service. Every complaint that this soldier makes is valid from a boots on the ground point of view. At a time when the Army's mission is expanding beyond all possible reasonable uses, a morale problem of this magnitude is one fragging away from disaster.

And the American Empire plans to expand into the middle east PERMANENTLY. Yes, I know the article is about grooming standards. The big tell is about halfway down when it's remarked that the Army Research Lab is testing our gas masks on people who subscribe to Islamic standards of hygiene and dress. Yes, we can expect to be recruiting from the locals in occupied territories. Combine this with the recent creation of SFAB units, and we have a situation where we are going to have colonies in everything but the name.

And officially, we're letting the Kurds twist. Yep, we're only going to be giving guns to Local Cops and "Security Forces". Which means, you know, we're not actually NOT giving weapons to the people in the area. Just NOT giving them to a group. And actually we're totally going to be taking back stuff... And wait, no we might still be giving them things.

Essentially, what we should take from this is we're going to be in Syria, for a long, long time. The official story tells you nothing, except that some weapons manufacturer will still be getting their money, so nobody in the MSM needs to particularly give a shit.

And just like the White Collar Criminals in the American Justice System, High Ranking Officers get just as small slaps on the wrist. You want to talk ACTUAL treason? This is about as close as you can reasonably get. Yep, totally sold out the Navy to a foreign power, effectively stealing almost 35 Million... and No Dishonorable or anything else specified. Apparently he got to plead guilty and get off scott free.

I still remember the E-7 in my unit who got caught with ONE crate of Ak47s that he had actually paid good money for, in a country where it was legal to own them. Of course, bringing them back to the states wasn't legal, but I do think the dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank to E-1, and 6 months in addition to the seizure of the goods was a tad excessive. The point is of course, that just like everywhere else in America, we have effectively a caste system in place as far as the justice system is concerned.

And that's about it. It's not the most insightful week, since the facts remain that the military is being pushed harder and harder, and yet those at the top refuse to tell the politicians to go fuck themselves and lay out why we can't have troops in every fucking country in the world simultaneously.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqZ4FZHEZAI]

Oh, and I'm aiming for the 16th or 17th for the PDX meetup for discussion. If that works for folks, the Lucky Lab is our usual spot. I have tentatively two or three folks who are interested, and hope that the date will work for everybody.