Why 18-year Old Warfighters Should Be Allowed To Drink Legally

 @Old PH2 @SEAN SPOONTS LOL, slightly before my time....but I do remember seeing it on the news, and reading about it a few years later....

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @Old  @Trango I saw a couple after the fact, pretty hilarious if you ask me.  Where do I buy the T-shirt?  My EOS was 10/10/92 so i saw the first year after the witch hunt.  Phrases like Train wreck, Fratricide, witch hunt, debacle, Political Correctness, are all too mild to describe what happened.  

@Old PH2 @Trango Do you remember the "I survived Tailhook" moto patches that some of the pilots were wearing? They told them to take them off,.....or else. So the guys started wearing them sewn inside their flight jackets. lol

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @Ben Sean ain't joking I had to do TAD with Base Security during the six months it took for my TS/ No Foreign Clearance from the FBI.  I was getting calls from teachers and old Bosses asking me WTF was I getting into?  I remember a Briefing while deployed to the Caribbean, discussing possible Bingo sites, did you know that drunk driving in Ecuador is punishable by summary Execution?  At least it was in the 80's.  

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_614_8DBE1JI/TL0Wp6xg1WI/AAAAAAAADr0/sniSgyf1x3k/s1600/Chinese_execution-725211.jpg

Sorry Couldn't find an Ecuadoran execution, settled for Chinese, you get the point.

@Ben K ...Well, we weren't the only guys doing that kind of shit in the Navy back then. On night at NATC Millington three of us came back from town blasted out of our minds. I woke up in the back of this Dodge Omni and see blue lights flashing around, the MA's had my buddy who was driving doing a field sobriety test behind the car. It turns out he was passing people on the right, driving on the grass with his lights off. Rather than throw him in jail they made us get a guy from our barracks to drive the car the whole 150ft to our parking lot and surrender the keys to our barracks security watch til morning. Today, it would be DUI, treatment and discharge for that guy. Two or three 18 year olds sitting around drinking beer is probably not going to result in much mayhem, but in the military you have hundreds of 18-21 year olds in a SINGLE building. That's were the big epic fuck ups happen, a mass of young guys all boozed up and showing off for each other trying to make their bones in the unit. I tihnk the lesson has already been learned(perhaps the hard way) that those three years mean something in terms of maturity and judgement. Brandon's perspective on things may be tilted by being a SEAL, who's platoons are much more tightly knit, with a virtually closed chain of command and are generally considered untouchable by people outside that chain. You are more likely to see a SEAL blown out by his own team for something he does than to see the guy get blown out by an outsider. They're a pretty chumy bunch. As for the comparison made between these young guys being trusted with security clearances and multi-million dollar equipment and not being trusted with a beer I would just offer this in reply. The military doesn't just give you an F-18 to take care of and tell you to do the right thing with it. You are trained, drilled, tested, qualified and accountable to a whole chain of command for what you do with that trust. You aren't just trusted with a security clearance. They carefully investigate your background, talk to your school teachers and neighbors and ask them about your political views and trustworthiness. If the military put the same inventory controls on a can of beer that they put on a single bullet before they 'trust' you to put it in a gun and shoot it downrange, drinking would be more hassle than it is worth. Now, the Europeans certainly are liberal with their booze laws, but they are pretty tight on their drivers licenses. France just passed a law that requires everybody to have breathalizer kits in their cars. EVERYBODY has to have them, not just young people. That isn't liberal drinking laws. Hell, they probably drink to forget just how unfree they really are as a people. Oh, an in Europe generally, there aren't any DUI trials and fancy lawyer tricks. If you blow over the limit you're guilty right there and then, no trial. You go to jail and lose your license....period, no appeals. So, you can drink at a younger age, but you can't drive. When you can drive, you have to carry the evidence kit that will put you in jail for 6 months right there in your own glove compartment. And the cops decide if you are guilty, not a judge and jury. Be careful what you wish for guys. I starting to lean towards keeping the underage drinking illicite and illegal. Hell, underage drinking is like jacking off.....Its not as much fun if you have permission to do it.

 @Old PH2  @SEAN SPOONTS LOL, yeah, you have to be in the Secret Service to do stuff like that now....

 @Trango  @SEAN SPOONTS Yeah buddy, your post Tail Hook, they put a leash on all the AIR wing plus the Surface fleet.  The USN has never been the same from what a couple of my old buddies that lifed out tell me. 

I ever mention the old CWO that had a habit of walking into foreign bars asking young honeys to beat the shit out of him?  I bet that doesn't happen anymore.  Well maybe not as openly!!!  Old dude's gotta get his freak on somehow, am I right?

 @Old PH2 @SEAN SPOONTS That's for sure. No way it would have worked out this way when I was in during the late 90s. Still, Navy Chiefs are some of the best NCOs in all of the branches in my opinion. There were a few I would have jumped into hell for if they would have asked it.

 @SEAN SPOONTS Oh man, these stories are fantastic.  Legendary even.  On one hand you did kinda ruin it for future generations but on the other hand, what's the point of living if you can't dream big, 'miright?

 @SEAN SPOONTS That's leadership, Old School USN CPO leadership.

None of this blowing into a damn breathalyser at morning muster.  Christ the last two weeks of my closest buddies tour, both of us were so drunk we got sober.  I walked through security check points with a mug of "Gatoraide" that was mostly Vodka.  Went to work every day and inspected maintenance, Oh did I mention I was a collateral duty inspector for TARPS and the AO's?

It's a different Navy now that's for sure.

 @Matt2  @Chairborne Commandos Radio LOL, yes it was! When we went through the laser  range "simulator" I was thinking, I didn't sign up to play laser tag. One of the things that has always stuck with me from boot though, was towards the end where a few divisions got together and were addressed by the RTC command staff. Someone asked the CMC why there wasn't more physical testing, O courses and such. ....the CMC's response, "How strong do you have to be to push a button!" Everyone laughed but in my head I was like, REALLY??? Still, I went through boot in the fall of 98' and to this day cold fall mornings reminds me of that place; and for some sick and twisted reason....it makes me smile....

@Chairborne Commandos Radio @Matt2 Similar. At NTC Great Lakes I recall three days of cinderella liberty after graduation(barely). I only recall two of them a day in Milwaukee and one in Chicago, On the third day I pulled duty at the main gate. They bussed us into Milwaukee and dropped us off at a hotel downtown at 0900. I recall having a walk down strairs to the bar which was below street level At 0900 there were people in the bar drinking! Milwaukee was the most booze soaked city I'd ever seen. The mall downtown (Grand Avenue?) spanned several blocks with enclosed walkways across the city streets. They served liquor in the mall and I don't mean at TGI Fridays. They had a window you would just walk up too and order a drink or beer and you could just walked around with it at the mall. Hell you walk around with a drink in your hand on te city streets and it was fine. By 1100 hrs we were all pretty stewed. If you wanted a drink in Millwaukee you didn't have to look very far. Chicago was much more sedate by comparison. My duty at the gate comprised of evaluating returning sailors that were being dropped off by buses or returning on foot from the train station that took them to Chicago. If they were visibly inebriated we culd not send them back to the barracks(where they could puke in their racks and drown in it. There was a large room at the gate house with the floor lined with mattresses, you got put in there and a roving watch kept an eye on these sailors to ensure they didn't puke on themselves and inhale it. We tried to get them to puke before we even put them in there. That was actually a fun night. The Navy sent us to NATC Millington(outside Memphis) by charter bus. At lunch time the bus pulled into this diner in a small town and we sortied to the liquor store across the street and came back with bags full of beer and liquor. We smoked and drank and had quite a party the rest of the way to Millington. The driver was as cool as Clint Eastwood about it. We had the good manners not to puke on his bus. I don't recall ever having to produce an ID. We arrived in Millington all loudly singing Strairway to Heaven completely smashed at about midnight and had to be escorted in two and threes to the transit barracks. They wouldn't let us go to the e-club which is where we all wanted to go. Now at Millington they did check ID at the e-club which pissed a lot of guys off. I remember a lot of moonshine was available at roadside places in TN. None of that mason jar shit either, they sold it in plastic gallon jugs. Quite a few guys had those in their rooms and drank it with orange juice. I don't remember beer being as popular as liquor, maybe just because of my own perferences in that regard.

 @Matt2 I hear you but I look at myself now and what could have been and I am truly regretful. This ain't about me bro, I was relating a personal experience so that (Hopefully!) Al here gets the gist and moves forward in life with the knowledge that there are rough and ready men, ready and willing to do violence on our behalf so that we sleep well at night. I've made my peace for the time being and when I have the chance I make damned sure vets know that I appreciate them.

 @Chairborne Commandos Radio  @Matt2 Never made it past the sophomore year of ROTC in college. I was a shitbag and bugged out. No excuses, only performance. I didn't persevere and for that I will always feel less than. That said, I got drunk with all the senior cadets every weekend. In the Cadet Corps and every weekend was like a trip to Vegas or Fight Club. First rule: You don't talk about Fight Club and the second rule is that YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB. First time in ten years that I've said that to anyone, the anonymity of the internet helps.