{"id":220,"date":"2007-03-16T18:46:16","date_gmt":"2007-03-17T01:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=220"},"modified":"2007-07-07T13:35:33","modified_gmt":"2007-07-07T20:35:33","slug":"on-second-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=220","title":{"rendered":"On Second Thought . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of my military career, US Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak<\/a> instituted a host of changes.\u00a0He was\u00a0one of those egomaniacs who, put into a position of great power, are compelled to change everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He killed\u00a0Strategic Air Command.\u00a0He made us rewrite every USAF regulation because he didn’t like the word “regulation.”\u00a0He forced a bullshit\u00a0business school\u00a0fad called Total Quality Management upon us.\u00a0He redesigned our uniforms and made us wear US Navy rank insignia.\u00a0He realigned bases to host both fast-moving fighters and slow-moving transports, with at least one spectacular accident<\/a> to show for it.\u00a0He even got into our underwear, for Christ’s sake (we had to wear V-neck T shirts, not crew necks). Skeletor, as he was known, ate not, neither did he drink.\u00a0Who can trust a man like that?<\/p>\n

We thought he was crazy.\u00a0Although he retired in 1994, his changes (save for the US Navy rank) live on.<\/p>\n

And now, as a member of a Rolling Stone<\/a>\u00a0panel convened to critique the Iraq war, he has this to say:<\/p>\n

This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country’s international standing has been frittered away by people who don’t have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn’t make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment [laughs]. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You might think this would prompt me to revise my opinion of Merrill McPeak.\u00a0Nope.\u00a0He was crazy then, and he’s crazy now.\u00a0 But even crazy people make sense once in\u00a0a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of my military career, US Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak instituted a host of changes.\u00a0He was\u00a0one of those egomaniacs who, put into a position of great power, are compelled to change everything. He killed\u00a0Strategic Air Command.\u00a0He made us rewrite every USAF regulation because he didn’t like the word “regulation.”\u00a0He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-military","category-politics","category-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}