Vienna, Austria—The below opinion piece is authored by George Bottorff, Gunnery Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, retired. The piece reflects on the author’s experiences while in uniform and provides his perspective on today’s policy-making coming from the White House. George is a California UOCAVA voter, resident of Austria, and a Member of the Democrats Abroad Global Veterans and Military Families Caucus.
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“Once you understand the question, you will know the answer.”
– Quote often attributed to Socrates
What is “education” and how do we obtain it? Does it grow on trees? Is it in the water we drink, the air we breathe, or the ground we stand on? Let’s revisit this question in a moment. As a military retiree, allow me first to provide a perspective on the current political situation.
For a Commander-in-Chief who once remarked, “There’s nobody that respects the military more than your President,” it is unfathomable that Donald Trump and the current Administration would make bad decision after bad decision when it comes to addressing the needs of our service members, veterans, and their families. Frankly, the only evidence to be found supports the complete opposite of his claim.
Though masked through Pentagon jargon like “modernized lethality” and “transformational reform,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just fired an entire battalion of the Army Aviation Reserves. This should raise alarms with Americans everywhere.
In regard to our Armed Forces, one does not simply fire entire units because they are considered “no longer wanted” or their equipment “no longer needed.” Common sense and precedence tell us they should be integrated and their equipment supplied to other units. This logical shift in personnel and resources would be known as “downsizing.”
During the Iraq War in the 1990s, the U.S. military deployed units out of Germany. At the end of the war, those units were integrated with units in the United States. The Cold War had also just ended a few years prior, so some of the U.S. military bases in Germany were returned to the German government. However, this was not at the whim of a Commander-in-Chief who posted this major policy shift over social media; this was all strategically planned. But what this Administration is doing right now with the Army aviation units sounds like nothing less than a hope and a prayer.
Secretary Hegseth has failed to understand the numerous indirect impacts of gutting the Army’s aviation units. Meaning, it is not just the aircraft being taken out of service; it is the weaponry that goes on the plane, the maintenance shops, the refueling vehicles, and all the other support systems that enable these units to function and maintain combat readiness. The jobs surrounding these units: gone. The thousands of hours of training to support the Army's aviation missions: useless. The amount of U.S. tax dollars spent on these once-critical units: wasted.
For this to happen – at a time when the U.S. is engaged with hostile foreign powers – it demonstrates a few items of interest: a lack of presidential seriousness when it comes to diplomacy abroad, a lack of maturity within senior DoD ranks in strategically planning the future of our Armed Forces and the individuals who have volunteered to serve, and a lack of responsible resource assessment given the many questionable decisions coming from this Administration. When it comes to America’s national security interests, this requires unit personnel to be present and not worry about what job needs to be done or even if they will have a job to do. However, media reports indicate that the military’s junior ranks have not received clear guidance on the day-to-day policy changes from the officers and senior enlisted personnel in charge, as they too are uncertain about how to handle these situations. It does not take a rocket scientist, White House intelligence report, or someone with three PhDs to look at the evidence and see that what is currently unfolding before us is leading to chaos.
Now, let’s pivot to observe what has been happening with military-connected women. In 1973, American women earned the right to control their bodies. Gone were the days when a woman had to wait for a man to allow her to see a doctor. The legal system started to support them against rape and sexual harassment. Other significant changes began to occur, such as women now being allowed to take out their bank loan and have a credit card in their name. Women’s rights advanced a milestone, but some focused solely on the abortion part of the law. But the simple right over one’s body had given them more rights as individuals, and this is especially true regarding women’s reproductive health care.
Military women may need an abortion for serious health reasons. According to an article from NPR, nearly 40 percent of female service members are stationed in states with abortion bans or expanded abortion restrictions; this anti-women working environment has led to an “Underground Railroad”-like network of military women having to navigate life challenges to seek the health care they need that is unattainable through the military’s health network. Additionally, a common misconception is that TRICARE “automatically” covers in vitro fertilization, or IVF. About a quarter of service members report infertility, and not having IVF coverage often means the military misses out on retention goals due to this disparity in health care.
Equally abhorrent, the VA recently announced it would no longer provide abortion care or counseling for women veterans. SECVA Collins has failed in giving evidence that America’s women veterans and their health care needs are essential to the VA. Any qualified medical expert can tell you that pregnancy complications are not uncommon, and it is critical that everyone, regardless of pregnancy intentions or circumstances, be able to access the full range of reproductive health care services, including abortion.
Under the current Administration, military-connected women are being treated as if we’re back in my youth. If making America “great again” means removing women from official government websites and removing women’s reproductive rights, Defense Secretary Hegseth and VA Secretary Collins have achieved these goals. Yet, was there any evidence indicating these actions were needed in the first place? Women service members and women veterans have shed blood, sweat, and tears more than this Administration will ever know, and it is astounding to see these leaders rip away women’s rights and somehow correlate this to an “America First” agenda.
“Education” is widely understood to be the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and understanding through various means, including formal schooling, informal learning, and personal experiences. To me, education is one of the key traits of the Marine Corps. Obtaining new knowledge is not achieved only by sitting in a classroom with a textbook and absorbing theories, but it also includes putting what was learned into practice and developing your own theories based on what you have learned, and learning again from observing those results. Because I understand this to be true, I believe that one becomes an effective leader by first learning how to follow.
A couple of years back, I taught a class on population growth and the education of women. Economists theorized and provided factual data that when women in a community were offered educational opportunities, their population would not exceed their resources. This Administration has proven to ignore sound science and ethical behavior. As a result, our citizenry is stuck with right-wing propaganda about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and accusations of how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are somehow “harmful” to the military-connected community.
And so, no, education does not come from trees, beneath the ground, from the air, or from the water we drink or the land we stand on. It is what one could call “homegrown,” and it is crystal clear that education itself is completely gone from this Administration.
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U.S. citizens living abroad, both civilian and military, are highly encouraged to check your voter registration status and request your ballot for any upcoming elections in your home voting state that you are eligible to vote in.
The VMF Caucus, proudly comprising veterans, military family members, DoD civilians, and strong allies of veterans and military family causes, has approximately 1,400 members located in dozens of countries.
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