VOTE E-9

I know, I know, there are those among you veterans who can’t find it in your hearts to feel any love for senior NCO’s, especially first sergeants and sergeant majors. Actually, I never felt much warmth towards first sergeants either, because if they saw you idle for a single moment, they’d find a working detail for you. Sergeant majors, on the other hand, tended to be a bit more discriminatory in the way they wielded their exponentially greater power. I say this with some inside knowledge because after a first enlistment as a mouthy screw-up, never rising above E-4, I got my act together on my second enlistment and played by Army regs: I soldiered. I really did, knuckling down and getting serious about being a contributing member of the unit. It paid off in spades with TDY to Army schools, special assignments and rapid promotions to positions of responsibility. I became a battalion staff Chemical, Biological and Radiological warfare NCO, a CBR NCO. This, mind you, in spite of the fact that the only “D” I ever made in high school was in chemistry. Ah well, that is the United States Army way, is it not?

But back to the point: my position on the battalion staff gave me my first opportunity to watch a sergeant major in action. It became quickly apparent to me that the guy who really ran this battalion was that hard-nosed, crusty old (he had to be all of forty) fart who reigned and roared from just outside the battalion commander’s office. I was both impressed and intrigued, so I closely watched how this managerial process operated. Later as the CBR NCO for an Airborne brigade at Fort Bragg, I watched the process as it functioned at an even higher level. What became apparent to me was that sergeant majors were a force unto themselves, with an old-boy network that bridged the world. That was 1967 when the war in Vietnam was really getting hot; my sergeant major and my colonel both urged me to go to OCS. Thinking about it, I preferred a future as a wheeling-dealing sergeant major someday rather than as a dead Second Louie in ‘Nam. However I finally opted to be a G.I. Bill student and finish my degree, a move which parlayed into a pharmaceutical marketing career in the military market for the next thirty years where I had many opportunities to observe the special skills of these remarkable E-9 creatures of every service.

So why bring up all this? Because America now has some of these Army and Marine sergeant majors, Navy master chiefs and Air Force chief master sergeants, all pay grade E-9, who want to apply their formidable managerial skills to the operation of our totally screwed-up federal government. They believe they have the managerial savvy to go into Congress and displace some of those effete lawyers and show this nation what can happen when management is taken out of the hands of the congressional officer corps and given to some hard-nosed but fair military professionals who truly know how to manage. I believe they are right.

One of these candidates is Jim Kuiken, who’s running for a congressional seat in South Texas. Jim is a retired Marine Corps sergeant major with a personnel file for anyone to envy. He’s Force Recon, a term that immediately grabs respect from those in the inner circles of the military. For those of you reading this with no military knowledge, Force Recon are the select tough guys who parachute or swim in ahead of the landing or assault forces to provide commanders with vital knowledge of the developing battlefield. Once ashore, they operate behind the lines and engage the enemy where necessary, without all the air and artillery support available to more conventional units. That requires them to be extremely capable and self-sufficient. To become a leader of this elite force, Jim had to earn his Marine gold parachutists wings as well as a Navy diving badge, neither of which is awarded to the faint of heart or shirkers from danger. He served in combat in Iraq, earning his nation’s award for being wounded in battle, the Purple Heart. This is a South Texas congressional candidate with some cojónes mas grande, a qualification not readily apparent in the Texas Democratic congressman he seeks to replace.

Would this old soldier like to see a bunch of retired sergeant majors, master chiefs and chief master sergeants go into Congress to kick ass and take names? You bet your sweet butt I would. These are the managers and administrators who have kept our military operating on insufficient budgets and a shortages of manpower for decades. They know how to accomplish the impossible with the insufficient. Can they be ruthless? Yep, they sure as hell can and this is a nation begging for some ruthless, but well-intentioned, effective leadership. Can they stop all the stupid wasteful spending on inane government programs that our current congress won’t?

Well we won’t know that until we elect enough of them…
We need a bumper sticker that says, VOTE E-9.

Category: Veterans in politics