Ethics and Special Forces

We’re all still processing the recent events at Bragg with 3rd Group. I think most are more than a little embarrassed, fairly pissed off, and likely concerned. The allegations are about as heinous as you can get. Human fucking trafficking?!? The drugs are really bad as well, but human trafficking is just beyond the pale.

How did we get here? How did so many guys capable of such depravity get to Group? The quote about guys being ‘bored because they aren’t deploying as much so what else were they supposed to do’ is about as absurd as one could imagine. The deep narcissistic immaturity that predicates that sort of statement would be difficult to miss during screening, wouldn’t it?

We all know how rare tab revocations are…maybe one a year? Prior to 2011 I can only recall one, ever. In ~2001, a MSG in 7th Group was busted for repeatedly raping his 14 year old stepdaughter. The charges were sexual assault, but he raped her, he is a rapist. We revoked his tab. Publicly. He was by all accounts a ‘good guy’ and well liked. But we officially removed his tab and we PNGed him. He was convicted and hauled off.

But that was it. The only one I can recall. I’m certain that there were others, but my point is that that stuff was rare. Big boy rules because we acted like big boys. We specifically screened for these sorts of abnormal behaviors, or even indicators of abnormal behavior. The NEO-PI-R (our psychological evaluation) is pretty good at this. But we also used to have some other behaviors that we looked for.

There used to be a rule that you couldn’t have a domestic violence, an alcohol related incident, or any felony record. Any one of these was grounds for denial. There have been various versions of this over the years. At one point it was just DUI conviction, other years it included any alcohol related incident, but there were markers.

Then during the surge, around 05-07 timeframe, MG Parker lifted those restrictions. Anyone in SWCS at the time can tell you that these were desperate times. Cadre we’re told that they would double the output but that standards would not be lowered. Anyone with even a scintilla of smarts knows that this isn’t possible. Cadre we’re stretched to the absolute limits. We damn near broke the system. I’ve seen the data and the overall selection rates weren’t that different than historical averages. But we were sending more candidates overall, so total output did go up, slightly.

So how did we recruit more candidates? We entirely lifted the ‘moral’ standards that I listed above. This doesn’t mean that every guy who has a DUI is a child rapist, not by a long shot. But the cumulative effect of lifting this barrier was predictable.

Around 2011 we had a whole slew of tab revocations. Something like 19 over a ~2 year period. The SWCS CG had us look into it, and 17 or 18 of the 19 (I can’t recall the exact numbers and I can’t find my notes) were guys that had one of these issues in their records, but got waivers during recruiting. There was a pretty clear correlation.

So the CG established the CGs Unwaiverables. No alcohol related incidents, no DV, and no felony. No waivers. No exceptions.

I thought that this policy was and has always been in place, but I’m hearing stories of guys with DUIs going to selection. Where there is smoke there is often fire. There are likely more waivers.

So, how many of the recent 3rd Group detainees will have one of these indicators in their file? Did we lift these restrictions? This is a pretty dark black eye that we’ve given ourselves. It was bad enough when 7th Group had the little Command Group meth mistress scandal a few years ago, but it’s getting pretty hard to sit up on our moral high horse when that horse keeps stepping in piles of shit that we leave all over.

I guess it’s fair to say that the SOCOM Comprehensive Review from 2020 really amounted to “good news everyone, we’ve inspected ourselves and guess what…we passed!” It’s just the sort of bullshit that we knew it was.

How much more are we willing to endure? When will we learn? When will we put scumbags like this in the public square and rip our tab from their shoulders? Let everyone know what we are. I know it’s only a few rotten apples, not all GBs, etc, but holy shit…enough is enough.

We’re not looking for Boy Scouts, but last I checked, human trafficking and cocaine weren’t in the scout handbook. They shouldn’t be in ours either.