JOHN HUGHES COLUMN | OPINION | PENTAGON
Weeds Show How GEN Brown’s Air Force Has Lost Focus Due To DEI
By John Hughes
July 26, 2023
Most who have served in the military have done police call at some point in their time in service. Some more than most. Sometimes it was done for punishment. Many times it was done as a routine task. Whatever the motivation to clean the military areas, it was invariably done to keep the areas around government buildings clean and free of weeds, trash, and other debris. Enlisted, NCOs, and officers alike could then take pride in a clean area to live and work in. Its real purpose, at least in the old military that still functioned correctly, was far more important. It was about taking care of government property, discipline, and attention to detail. I recall, as a paratrooper, picking up cigarette butts and painting rocks to beautify the unit area. We were also expected to have immaculate uniforms and…immaculate weapons and combat equipment. The one keeps the soldiers’ focus on the other. Our mission was to be ready to deploy anywhere in the world in 2 hours to go to war.
Yesterday, I went to the Lackland Air Force Base Ambulatory Surgical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. A decade ago, the US government spent over $3 Billion constructing this new building and a myriad of other new buildings and performing renovations as part of the Base Realignment and Closure of 2005. This new clinic is a beautiful concrete, metal, and glass building sporting a modern, open design. As I approached the building two sights caught my eyes. First, at 10am in the morning (not mealtime) I noticed a dozen USAF NCOs at a Hawaiian/Asian desert food truck out front. Each had the newly authorized hair styles with hair going down nearly to the waist of each one. Right in front of them, was a half-acre of weeds over 2 feet high in the rocked in flowerbed lining the sidewalks that led to the entrance of the hospital.
This struck me as the epitome of what is wrong with GEN Brown’s new USAF. Personnel flocking together by tribal identity which is contrary to the concept of single unified Air Force where the individual is subordinated to the larger USAF entity. It should be: airmen first, individuals a distant second. Then, there are the dirty, overgrown entrances to the hospital at the “Gateway to the US Air Force.” Lackland is the home of the basic training for all USAF enlisted with nearly weekly graduations and very high public visibility. Worse, NCOs were standing around and seemingly not caring that their place of work looks like an overgrown, abandoned lot in front of a building that cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
https://armedforces.press/weeds-show-how-gen-browns-air-force-has-lost-focus-due-to-dei/
