Hasan Sent To Lecture Series on Islam: Eh.
November 12, 2009
Ed’s upset with this. I don’t see this as a problem a few years ago, while the Army was trying to preserve Hasan’s viability as an Army shrink, but it appears that there was no follow up.
What happened between Walter Reed and Ft. Hood was that Hasan (apparently) became “someone else’s problem,” and upper management got to breathe a sigh of relief. This tactic is rather like sending pedophile priests to other parishes, or shipping incompetent teachers or principals to other schools within a given school district. A change of scenery, after all, always solves this sort of problem.
Sort of.
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November 13th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
From what I read, it’s very hard in the military to give an officer a bad rating - unless he really screws up. Which means that Hasan’s next rating will be “less than excellent”. One reason is that it causes a lot of paperwork, it makes you (his superior) look bad, it makes your superior look bad.
And an Army doctor gets an automatic promotion to Major after 5 years (or thereabouts). Unless he really screws up.
Which means he can say goodbye to those silver Lt. Col. leaves.
In other words, you’re right - they ignored it and hoped it would go away.
November 14th, 2009 at 7:02 am
From what I read, it’s very hard in the military to give an officer a bad rating - unless he really screws up.
Well, at least in the Marines that’s not true at all. What you may have read is that, due to “fit rep inflation”, the way to deep six an officer’s career is to damn him with faint praise.
To a civilian a fitrep won’t be read the same way it is to a military person. To us, what looks like a glowing recommendation is closer to being torn a new one. There are certain phrases and remarks that, if they’re not on your fitrep, will cause you to be in a world of hurt.
That said, different MOSs have different promotion rates. In some specialties the promotion rate is close to 100%. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Medical Corps - due to natural shortages, weren’t one of them. The combat arms are overstaffed, so the promotion rates are much lower.