Some of you may have heard that the latest Military Times poll says that 60% of active duty service members are wary of our President-elect (hat tip: Instapundit). I can't say as it surprises me very much, to be honest.
Something that most people outside the military will never understand is how much duty, honor and integrity mean to us. Those are the keystones on which we have built the greatest military in the world, and without them it would simply fall apart. When we tell you that we'll do something, we mean it. And if we don't mean it, we don't say it.
Well, politicians are a bit of a different breed, to say the least. With a Republican, especially one who has been in uniform, we feel a bit more comfortable (think: Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43). Democrats tend to make us very nervous, since the majority of the current crop have not served, and really don't understand the military or what it takes to make it successful (or even how to properly use it, but that's a subject for another post). Imagine that you worked at, say, Home Depot and had been pretty successful as a manager. Your sales are up, you're beating the crap out of the competition, your employees are pretty satisfied, and you have new hires coming out your ears. Enter your new CEO, who says you're doing it all wrong, and here's how he's going to fix things.
That essentially sums up the Clinton years - we knew what we were doing, how to do it, and what we needed to make it happen. The boss saw it differently, and eight years later we didn't have even half the stuff we needed when the time came to go to war. Remember the big issue over body armor at the start of the Iraq war? Well guess what - the Interceptor armor we were issued had been in the inventory since the early 90's (the Rangers had it in Somalia). The reason the rest of the Army didn't have it is because (you guessed it) it was too expensive. The last Democratic administration decided that it wasn't cost effective to better equip Soldiers - after all, it wasn't like we would ever have to fight anyone, right?
So, yes, we are a little leery of the incoming Commander-in-Chief, especially considering how he's stacked his cabinet with Clinton retreads. The fact that he's keeping the SecDef on is a positive - but only if he listens to him.