Tag: U.S. Army

I would have handled this differently in this situation, but of course the media is making this into a racial incident when it is not:

A white Fort Jackson soldier seen in a video pushing and yelling at a young Black man in a northeast Columbia neighborhood has been criminally charged, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

The incident took place in the Summit neighborhood, a sprawling community located between Clemson and Hardscrabble roads.

At an evening news conference, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott identified the man charged as Jonathan Pentland, 42. Deputies charged him with third-degree assault and battery.

The State

You can read more at the link. Pentland did push the guy in the video after he walked towards his wife. The rest of the time he was just aggressively questioning and yelling at the other man. Of course the media is trying to frame this as a white guy doesn’t want a black guy walking around this neighborhood narrative.

What many in the media are not mentioning is what happened before the confrontation. Four days before the incident a man sexually assaulted a woman on the sidewalk in the neighborhood. Then two days before the incident a man tried to walk away with a baby he took from a woman and had to be stopped. The day of the incident caught on the clip something else happened because Pentland’s wife can clearly be heard in the video saying that the man picked a fight with one of their female neighbors. According to the Washington Post the man that Pentland pushed is being investigated for the prior assaults on women in the neighborhood, however police say he has an underlying medical conditions that could explain his behavior.

So essentially we have someone who has possible mental issues assaulting and harassing women in the neighborhood and Pentland intervenes more aggressively than he should of, but should this make him a racist? I see nothing in this video indicating that Pentland targeted him because he was walking while black like the narrative is claiming. If the man was just walking down the sidewalk not bothering anyone, no one would have bothered him.

Pentland was charged for pushing the man and will likely face bigger punishment from the Army, but is anyone going to charge the man in the video with assaulting and harassing women in the neighborhood? Additionally is anyone going to charge the protesters who vandalized Pentland’s home? Pentland is far from the only person in the wrong in this incident, but he is the only one many in the media are focusing on because of the narrative they want to push.

It is amazing that Army leadership did not foresee how controversial a fitness test that puts females at a great disadvantage would be with Congress:

The defense bill halts the implementation of the Army Combat Fitness Test until a study is complete to assess the test’s impact on recruitment and retention. The study, which has to be conducted by an entity independent of the Pentagon, also has to investigate whether troops in different environments where outdoor activity is hindered are at a disadvantage.

The test has already been on hold. Army leaders have said units can conduct the test now, but will not count on a soldier’s record until 2022. This is to give troops more time to train for the test and as a reaction to the pandemic, which has restricted gym access across the country.

The ACFT replaces the decades-old fitness test with more events aimed to gauge a soldier’s physical fitness for combat. This includes CrossFit-style exercise events, hand release pushups, and leg tucks. The test retains the timed two-mile run.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is what the Army Secretary had to say about the SHARP program:

“My preliminary review of the report, recent cases and recent media coverage, have hardened my belief that the Army’s SHARP program hasn’t achieved its mandate to eliminate sexual assaults and sexual harassment by creating a climate that respects the dignity of every member of the Army family,” McCarthy said in a video statement Wednesday afternoon.

Army leadership intends to also release an action plan to address the review’s recommendations when it’s released next month.

The Army’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program, or SHARP, has been under scrutiny in recent months following the death of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, a Fort Hood soldier who prosecutors say was murdered in an armory on post by a fellow 3rd Cavalry Regiment trooper.

Guillen’s family said she had been sexually harassed by a fellow soldier prior to her death, but she didn’t report the incident for fear of retribution. Following those allegations, Army Forces Command sent a small team in June to specifically look at the SHARP program on Fort Hood.

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but the problem I see here is setting an unattainable goal. The Army will never eliminate SHARP incidents, just like it will never end theft, murder, assault, and other crimes in the ranks. Everyone who has ever served in the Army has experienced barracks thieves. What makes SHARP different is the politics involved with the issue. When have you ever heard a politician claim theft between soldiers needs to be ended?

What needs to be determined is if the system is allowing soldiers to report and seek investigations and ultimately punishment of those responsible. It is pretty clear that a large number of soldiers are reporting based on the numbers from the Pentagon, what is tricky is the punishment portion when you get into the he said, she said cases particularly when many of them involve alcohol.

This is the same problem that civilian courts have and no one is trying to blow up the civilian court system like politicians want to do with the military justice system.

This is a gigantic fail by whoever was responsible for Ft. Bragg’s Twitter site:

“Holy s—, this is the largest US military installation,” an OnlyFans adult-content creator said to herself on October 22, moments after one of her Twitter posts went viral.

The sex worker, who asked that we refer to her by her stage name, Quinn Finite, was in the car with her boyfriend when she started receiving hundreds of alerts after the official Twitter account for Fort Bragg, the home of the US Army’s Airborne and Special Operations Command, had replied to her tweets with sexually charged messages in public view.

The elite Army base’s Twitter account commented on her pubic hair and reacted to one of her nude images by suggesting that Finite and the Twitter account should engage in sexual acts.

As the minutes passed by, hundreds of Twitter users began noticing the sexually charged tweets and replying back with jokes. The installation responded roughly an hour later by claiming its account was compromised by a malicious entity.

“As many of you may know, there were a string of explicit Tweets from our account this afternoon,” a representative for the North Carolina base said in a statement. “This was not the work of our admins. Our account was hacked. We apologize to our followers.”

The next morning, the XVIII Airborne Corps apologized for its earlier statement and identified an “administrator” as the source of the tweets. “Appropriate action” was underway, the unit said.

Fort Bragg’s official Twitter account was taken down the same day and remained offline as of Tuesday.

Yahoo News

You can read more at the link, but the sex workers says that the Tweet caused interest in her site to rise so much that she went from making $7,000 a month to $35,000 a month.

It never made much sense to me to have U.S. military bases named after Confederates other than an olive branch towards southerners that live in those states:

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy is open to starting a conversation about changing the names of 10 of the service’s posts named for prominent Confederates, an Army officials said Monday.

McCarthy wants to have a “bipartisan discussion” about the controversial issue, the official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide further details, including what sparked McCarthy’s willingness to discuss the topic.

It marks a substantial change in the Army’s position on the naming of the 10 Army posts: Camp Beauregard and Fort Polk in Louisiana; Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia; Fort Bragg in North Carolina; Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia; Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but renaming these bases can become a slippery slope. What happens when Navajos, Apaches, and Blackfeet demand that Ft. Carson be renamed because Kit Carson brutally defeated and subjugated them? Or the Nez Perce demanding that Ft. Lewis be renamed since Meriwether Lewis was an explorer that opened the door to their later subjugation by the U.S. government?

I could probably find more examples of bases named after people who did not have perfect backgrounds. The Army just needs to be careful on this issue or next thing you know every base will need to be renamed because of demands from various activist groups.

This guy is the definition of a Jody:

Scott, an Apache helicopter pilot, met the woman — the wife of a deployed sergeant first class assigned to the 19th Special Forces Group — in May 2015 at a spin class she was teaching at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The two soon began dating, according to court documents.

Unaware for some weeks that she was married, Scott introduced the woman as his girlfriend to co-workers. By October, the command had learned the woman was married and Scott’s supervisor, a colonel, ordered an end to the romance. Scott did not comply.

After the sergeant’s wife ended the relationship in January, Scott began harassing her by text message, alternately threatening her, demanding sex and professing his love, court documents say.

In one message, Scott sent the woman a link to a news story about a Special Forces soldier who had been killed in Afghanistan, and asked if her husband was dead.

When she responded that his unit was surrounded and that members of the unit had been killed, Scott “suggested that she might get lucky if (her husband) were to be killed in action,” according to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals case summary. He also told her, “No man wants a whore for a wife.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

As I thought this would turn out to be, more fake news:

When the story broke in March, an incident at Fort Carson was portrayed as a clear-cut example of anti-Muslim bigotry.

But a lengthy Army investigation released to The Gazette shows something far more complex: Army regulations clashing with Islamic concepts of modesty and a recent convert to the faith whose religious life conflicted with her military duties.

The Army debunked the discrimination claim, but investigators admit leaders need to learn more about the interaction with a faith that’s unfamiliar to most Americans, and a source of contention for many soldiers.

The Army’s investigation was triggered by a March 6 incident that occurred as soldiers from the post’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team attended a suicide prevention class. Sgt. Cesilia Valdovinos, a cook, was in the class along with one of her bosses, Command Sgt. Maj. Kerstin Montoya.

The sergeant major told investigators she spotted something amiss with Valdovinos’ hair under a hijab, a head covering commonly worn by Muslim women.

“Even though Sgt. Valdovinos was wearing a religious head cover, I could see that the bulk of her hair did not meet regulatory standards,” Montoya wrote, citing an Army rule that requires women to wear long hair in a bun.

Montoya talked to a chaplain and her boss, a female captain, before taking a step that wound up going viral worldwide: She took Valdovinos and the captain outside for a closeup inspection of the sergeant’s hair.

Valdovinos removed her hijab as ordered, but then complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and its founder Mikey Weinstein, who launched a media offensive, with the Muslim sergeant as the star of the show. Newspapers as far away as Great Britain picked up the tale, along with television networks and websites by the dozen.

“I felt naked without it,” Valdovinos told the Colorado Springs Independent. “It’s like asking you to take off your blouse. It felt like I was getting raped, in a sense.”When the story broke in March, an incident at Fort Carson was portrayed as a clear-cut example of anti-Muslim bigotry.

But a lengthy Army investigation released to The Gazette shows something far more complex: Army regulations clashing with Islamic concepts of modesty and a recent convert to the faith whose religious life conflicted with her military duties.

The Army debunked the discrimination claim, but investigators admit leaders need to learn more about the interaction with a faith that’s unfamiliar to most Americans, and a source of contention for many soldiers.

The Army’s investigation was triggered by a March 6 incident that occurred as soldiers from the post’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team attended a suicide prevention class. Sgt. Cesilia Valdovinos, a cook, was in the class along with one of her bosses, Command Sgt. Maj. Kerstin Montoya.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but she brought up this hijab-gate controversy after she was facing punishment for an inappropriate relationship which she was eventually found guilty of and demoted for.

Here comes another badge for U.S. Army soldiers to train for:

Soldiers outside the infantry, combat medic and Special Forces fields will soon have the opportunity to earn a badge acknowledging their experience at critical skills, the Army announced Friday on the service’s 244th birthday.

The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command recent approved the long-anticipated Expert Soldier’s Badge, which will be awarded to top performing soldiers who pass a test demonstrating their prowess in physical fitness, marksmanship, land navigation and warfighting, the command said in a statement. The badge will be the equivalent of the Expert Infantryman Badge and the Expert Field Medal Badge, and it is expected to be introduced in early fiscal year 2020, according tothe command.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Congratulations to Command Sergeant Major Grinston:

Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston, who has been in the service for more than 30 years, has been selected to be the 16th sergeant major of the Army, the service announced Tuesday.
Grinston is the senior enlisted leader for U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., and he will be sworn in to his new role at the Pentagon on Aug. 16, according to the Army. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel Dailey, who has been in his position since 2015, is retiring.
“I look forward to working with Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston,” Army Secretary Mark Esper said in a prepared statement. “The Army is in the midst of a renaissance, and he is a great choice to carry on our readiness, modernization and reform efforts.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.