A funny story about a bully gangster rapper named 40 Glocc from the streets of LA

[VictorCharlie]

P4P, you clearly don't understand the military if you think that our leadership positions are based on a threat of physical violence or force. Why do you think a CEO has more legitamate authority than say a commanding officer? I'm not a LEO so I can't speak for them but leading Soldiers in combat takes a tremendous set of skills and attributes, particularly in our current assymetric conflicts. Feel free to carry on your prejudices but you don't know what you are talking about. Nothing like a good dose of Saddo bigotry to push through a 24 hour shift.

[p4pking]

I didn't say anything about leadership positions though, except to make the difference between force and influence or authority clearer. Now that is moving the goal posts.Obviously at the highest echelon military leaders will have great intellect and years of very specific education and training, but that's hardly required to enlist for basic training now is it. Is being a common soldier not a position based on the threat of force

[VictorCharlie]

Your original post was in response to me. I hold a leadership position in the military. You've made blanket statements about the military of which comprises lots of leadership positions. Are you now altering your statements to only be relevant for basic trainees and brand new Privates? All officers and most NCOs in the Army are college educated and all have specific training in their field. You should probably stop talking about the military. You really don't seem know the first thing about it.

Is being a common soldier not a position based on the threat of force

A Soldier's duty is to obey the orders of the President and officers appointed above him/her and to defend the Constitution. I guess if you are just going to make up a term then it can mean whatever you want. Soldiers also are regularly part of humanitarian missions both in the US and abroad. I've personally had more deployments now in support of humanitarian missions than combat operations. You seem to really want to pigeon hole service members as morons whose only purpose is to kill.

[p4pking]

I didn't say their only purpose is to kill. My initial response was just to your story about privates pushing that guy down the stairs. You offered that charming little tale and alluded to the military to begin with, I assumed that incident didn't directly involve anyone in a leadership position, but if so that hardly weakens my argument. My point was there are parallels as to why people join and the type of people you find in either discipline, nothing more. I don't know anything about being a gangster either, I find it about as interesting as the military.

[VictorCharlie]

Boy you can tap dance with the best of them. You didn't get what I was saying in my origianl post b/c no one was actually getting pushed down stairs. You don't have an argument. You have some false preconcieved notions about people that join the military and use that to make baseless insulting generalizations about a whole group of people. If you aren't interested in the military that is fine but if your are going to post about what kind of people join and what kind of job it is then you should be better informed. You come across as a real bigot in this thread.

[ninjaspy3]

Boy you can tap dance with the best of them. You didn't get what I was saying in my origianl post b/c no one was actually getting pushed down stairs. You don't have an argument. You have some false preconcieved notions about people that join the military and use that to make baseless insulting generalizations about a whole group of people. If you aren't interested in the military that is fine but if your are going to post about what kind of people join and what kind of job it is then you should be better informed. You come across as a real bigot in this thread.

I've had several young Soldiers that were "gangsters" before joining the Army. They always seemed so surprised when their bravado didn't impress their fellow Soldiers. I will never forget the young man from inner city Chicago that wasn't going to follow orders from some dumb honkey. Strangely enough after slipping in the shower and then later falling down a flight of stairs he became a stellar performer. Those damn Privates are so clumsy sometimes.

I was just content to follow the back and forth until I got to the last statement where you, VictorCharlie, claimed that no one had actually been pushed down the stairs after insinuating that the falling down the stairs was not an accident but rather a form of hazing. I think it's pretty disingenuous to try to play it both ways by insinuating hazing as a method of correcting the former gangster's behavior, and then later claiming that someone misunderstood what you were trying to say.

[VictorCharlie]

It seems neither of you two understood that post. Nor was I being disingenuous or talking about hazing. When you don't understand something and clearly P4P has no understanding about service members or the military it is probably a good idea to ask for clarification before popping off with bigoted comments.

I don't really have the time to cover all the facets of leadership, team building, espirit de corp, duty, integrity etc but everyone has their own leadership style so let me clear some things up. All Soldiers go through an adjustment period where they transition from their civilian lives to a military lifestyle. Most do it with a few minor hiccups to include inner city kids. Most issues require small azimuth checks and corrective training but insubordination cannot be tolerated. A Soldier that is insubordinate will get verbally counseled and then written counselings. So once we reach a point where I've exhausted all of my tools to adjust a Soldiers behavior it becomes the commanders discretion of what type of UCMJ he will face (loss of rank, time, pay, confinement etc). When a Soldier tells me that he doesn't have to listen to some honkey that he doesn't respect b/c I'm not from the street I'd explain that we can do 1 of 2 things: 1 I can make my recommendation to the commander for UCMJ or we can go behind the barracks and handle it man to man. On the two occasions this happened the Soldiers both decided they'd whip my ass. We came back from the barracks with a few bumps and scrapes respectively and the Soldier had a new perspective that for starters they weren't nearly as tough as they thought they were and two that maybe this honkey might be a good guy to follow into combat. The story to explain the bumps and scrapes was to tell the commander they "fell down the stairs" or "slipped in the shower". That was why I used the quotation marks. The end result was a Soldier becoming a valuable part of his team and not having a UCMJ violation over his head. But hey according to P4P we are all a bunch of low moral mouth breathers so whatever is clever I suppose.