Talented Officers Leaving Army, Expressing Disappointment
By Chad Groening and Jim Brown
(AgapePress) – Army officers, disappointed with eight years of Bill Clinton, are leaving the service in droves.
According to the Army Times, the Army is losing about 300 more captains per year than the planned 1,125. The exodus means that some captain posts go vacant–and in the long term, the talent pool for future majors and senior officers shrinks.
One reason for the mass departure of promising young officers has been a lack of spare parts, which has hurt training.
Shane Walsh, the son of a Vietnam combat officer, became an officer in 1996 to proudly wear Army green for at least ten years. He was also hoping to command a tank company. However, today he works in his family’s pump business in Houston, Texas.
“The Army [as] I thought it would be and the Army [as] it was were two different things,†says the former first lieutenant, who led a tank platoon in the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas.
One former captain, Glenn Hemminger, a 1996 West Point graduate, said he decided to leave the Army because the training budget was cut in order to fund Clinton-Gore administration peacekeeping duties.
Chris Ewolski, a graduate of West Point’s class of 1995, is back home working for General Electric, because while commanding a tank platoon, he rarely had the sixteen soldiers required to man four tanks.
“I looked down a tunnel, and I didn’t see light at the end of it,†Ewolski says. “Five more years? I did not see the Army making any substantial improvements over the next five years to make me want to stay in.â€
These examples illustrate why many people believe it is imperative that George W. Bush becomes the next President. Bush has often noted that the Clinton-Gore Administration has allowed preparedness to decline substantially. Al Gore has repeatedly dismissed the charge, saying the U.S. military remains the world’s best.