FORSCOM Commander has confidence in JBLM
The commander of Forces Command, Gen. David Rodriguez, felt the need to announce that he still has confidence in the troops at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last Friday in the wake of the murder of 16 Afghans by one of the soldiers at that base and the report that a Lieutenant Colonel had been arrested for plotting the murder of his wife and his girlfriend according to the Seattle Times.
“There is nothing different here than most places,” said Rodriguez, a four-star general who previously served in Afghanistan.
“Those things happen … Everybody knows that doesn’t reflect our standards and our values, nor does it reflect the majority of the leaders and soldiers that serve here every day as well as overseas.”
Well, yeah. Two incidences don’t make a crime spree. There are about 34,000 people at the base, and 33,998 of them haven’t participated in those crimes. In January, My Northwest.com, tried to raise an alarm about troops at JBLM because there had been 1000 more arrests there than the year before – misdemeanor arrests. I sure would like to see what those arrests were for rather than just look at the final numbers. In an age when everything is a misdemeanor, it’s hard to imagine the number of arrests going down.
In fact, if you look at arrests in the District of Columbia, a mostly non-military population 7 times larger than JBLM’s population, gets arrested at a higher rate with 700 arrests a week. So what is the media’s point, exactly? The majority of the troops behave themselves, but that’s not news apparently.
Category: Military issues
One bad cop doesn’t make a police force… one bad soldier doesn’t make an Army.
I’m glad the “Army of One” slogan was shit-canned.
As for Ft. Lewis… just a quick look around and you can see some of the U.S. Army’s finest- 1st Group and 2nd Battalion!
The problems is— the Generals are so far away from the real troops that they have no idea what they think. Nobody is allowed to tell the General the truth…
This shit is going to be heavy for the next few weeks as all the talking head and doctors who have never seen a shot fired in anger and will never even get to talk to him start their pysco babble on why he did this. It is only going to get worse in the next few years, especially when a veteran does in fact go ape shit, most likely from the bs the government gave him when he asked for help…anyway I lived through this shit before after Vietnam and I can’t wait for the circus to start again. Just my opinion.
Why is it when a military or conservative person goes off the rails is it a reflection of the group? But when a group of African Americans or Union thugs attack others it is not a reflection of their group? The flash mobs, Islamic terrorists, Occupy Wall Streeters or Union thugs are always seen in a sympathetic light and restraint is advised to not tar the group with the bad behavior of some but a lone abortion clinic bomber is an indictment of the whole pro life movement. I am getting really tired of filtering this stuff.
I agree, BinW. Most of the LSM are ready to jump, with both feet, on anything they can to make the military look bad, but turn a blind eye to what you cited. Their selective outrage is pervasive.
It all boils down to being a “victim” of circumstance. Convenient but plausible, and it does work from time to time. Any competent investigator might swear an oath to such. It usually starts with…”Officer, officer! I saw the whole thing”….and gets embellished from there. But, nothing beats cold hard facts and evidence. As for Bin W’s question? If it fits the meme….