your views
”I have grown more than tired of the same ole, same ole after 10-plus years hearing, ‘The Afghans are just about there.’“
—Maj. Dee C. Christensen, USA (Ret)
Afghanistan Reaction
You can’t help but admire [Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F.] Dunford [“Evolving Mission,” December 2013]. His bona fides are beyond question. What I do question is his lack of skepticism. I have grown more than tired of the same ole, same ole after 10-plus years hearing, “The Afghans are just about there.”
[Dunford] bristles at the bias of the reporter, then bypasses the question by telling the American public how many more young Afghans are in school. I suspect it’s because in order to train an illiterate army, you must first teach it to read. He then goes on to praise their combined arms capability, while previously noting after more than a decade, the U.S. still provides them with combat support and combat service support. As an infantryman commissioned at the same time as the general, excuse me if I question their combined arms operations ability.
I quit reading after he noted the level of violence in the country is “consistent with previous years.”
General Dunford probably has the toughest job in the service, and I certainly don’t envy it. I would simply suggest he quit blowing smoke.
—Maj. Dee C. Christensen, USA (Ret)
Tallahassee, Fla.
Military Pay Advocacy
I know MOAA means well, but your biased report on the attempts at pay caps [“Slow the Growth,” Washington Scene, December 2013] is counter to what professional career officers have advocated since at least my commissioning in 1979.
We know there is a pay gap between the civilian and military sectors. We accepted this gap in current pay because we knew that we could retire at 20 years and draw half of our base pay as retirement pay. A soldier can retire at 40 years of age and receive retirement benefits for 40 to 50 years. Our culture of instant gratification demands more pay now rather than deferring some of that money until retirement. If we keep pressing for more parity between military and civilian pay, the reasonable approach at some point will be to eliminate the possibility of receiving retired pay until later in life. We might be doing more harm than good in the long term.
—Lt. Col. Jay Hale, USA (Ret)
Life Member
via email
MOAA Director of Government Relations Col. Mike Hayden, USAF (Ret), replies:
Comparability is a guiding principle of military pay, where pay comparability with the private sector is needed to recruit and retain the force. The retirement benefit recognizes the arduous conditions of service in the military. It is the primary element used to induce a small segment of Americans to agree to a unique compact, under which they must subordinate their personal interests to serving the national interest over a period of multiple decades.
“Unpaid in Uniform”
[Washington Scene, December 2013] details how the Public Health [Service] and NOAA Corps officers were both left out of the Pay Our Military Act of 2013. This is not the first time we have been left out of legislation for being in a loophole where “military” or “armed services” is used instead of “uniformed services.” It is likely not to be the last, sadly.
I just wanted to say thank you to the magazine and to MOAA for all the help and advocacy work you do for all the uniformed services, and especially for those of us in the smallest uniformed service, all 321 of us!
—Lt. Carl Rhodes, NOAA
Woods Hole, Mass.
16 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2014
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