Notes:BC1.wklystd.Breaking Trust

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The following appeared in the February 16, 2015 edition of the Weekly Standard magazine.

Breaking Trust

Feb 16, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 22 • By GARY SCHMITT and THOMAS DONNELLY

At what point do we--the institution and our nation--lose our soldiers' trust? The trust that we will provide them the right resources--the training and equipment--to properly prepare them and lead them into harm's way. Trust that we will appropriately take care of our soldiers, our civilians and their families, who so selflessly sacrifice so much.

This was the question Army chief of staff Gen. Raymond Odierno posed to the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, and it's one that expresses a point of view rarely considered in Washington: Budgets are moral documents' they express our government's priorities and what we value as a nation.

By this standard, we care less and less about our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines as military professionals. We have lavished benefits—pay, housing, especially health care—on them endlessly, and we “honor their service” without irony. But we have shortchanged their ability to fight, depriving them of sufficient resources—of personnel, equipment, and training—first to win the wars to which we sent them, then to prepare them for the next conflict.


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