I was the Special Assistant to two Chiefs of Naval Operations, Admirals Elmo Zumwalt, and James Holloway, and before that the editor of Sea Power Magazine, and it taught me that in the culture of the military promotions have many implications virtually unknown to civilians. A typical tour in a specific job for an officer is 36 months accompanied by your family 24 months unaccompanied. But the thing that is particular to the military is that when your tour is up you could be moved, whether you like it or not, to another state or another country. It is an enormous hassle. You have to take your kids out of school, and they have to leave their friends. If your partner works they will have to leave their job, and the whole family will have to start over in a new locale, sometimes at the higher ranks in assigned housing. And then there are the financial implications that accompany a promotion, which don’t happen until your promotion is confirmed. For career military this semi-nomadic lifestyle is typical, and you know it is going to happen with a promotion, and the system is set-up to make something always difficult as easy as possible. So when a cretinous MAGAt like Alabama’s Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, blocks promotions the whole system gets stressed, and upended, and that is exactly what Tuberville has done, as this article describes. And note you see none of his Republican MAGAt colleagues publicly urging him to stop behaving like the lout he is. Also please note the American Navy is now to be headed by a woman. As one of the team that created an all-volunteer military that was racially and gender neutral, that gives me great satisfaction.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti underscored the “uncertainty” Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blockade has created for Navy families, who face delayed moves, issues with school enrollments and other problems. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP
President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said it could take the service years to recover from the impacts of Sen. Tommy Tuberville‘s blockade of hundreds of senior military promotions.
Franchetti told the Senate Armed Services Committee during her confirmation hearing Thursday that the impasse has created “a lot of uncertainty” for Navy families.
“Just at the three-star level, it would take about three to four months just to move all the people around,” Franchetti said. “But it will take years to recover … from the promotion delays that we would see.”
More than 300 general and flag officer nominees have no clear path to confirmation over Tuberville’s objections, which he put in place over his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy that reimburses troops who need to travel to seek abortions and other reproductive care. The Pentagon is standing […]
Albus Eddie
on Friday, September 15, 2023 at 5:31 am
The link to the article is broken. I look forward to reading it. What I will look for: Is Ms. Franchetti able to articulate concrete ways that the actions of Tommy Tuberville will harm the Empire? I doubt it, I suspect that the Empire will march on, unimpeded.
The link to the article is broken. I look forward to reading it. What I will look for: Is Ms. Franchetti able to articulate concrete ways that the actions of Tommy Tuberville will harm the Empire? I doubt it, I suspect that the Empire will march on, unimpeded.