an actual ad for joining the navy.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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Chaplains were at one time the Christian Soldier, giving last rights and leading prayer basically.
The role is no longer a religious role, but the title has remained. They now function entirely in a multi-cultural/Multi-Faith/Non-Religious role. Essentially they are there to be emotional/spiritual support to anyone who needs it. If I'm not mistaken, they all are trained in some variety of counseling/therapy.
There has been major progress in allowing that role to become what it is.
Ideally, there would be no war and no need for soldiers.
But we live on earth, and while we can,and must, continue to work towards that ideal, the fact remains that, in this moment, there are many people who are enlisted.
Many of these people enlisted because they came from families/areas that have generations of trauma and oppression, and the military was their ticket out. These broken people are often lucky to have ever received any kind of 3rd party mental health care. Add to it the trauma of combat on behalf of a government they don't necessarily even want, and you have a shitstorm of emotions to wade through.
Complain about the MIC, the political greed, and the assholes who join and abuse their fellow man. But for fucks sake, have the mental fortitude to hold a bit of complexity when judging a situation.
I know the history of military chaplains. They were particularly important when the soldiers were all expected to be Christian (if not devoutly Catholic) and not only needed last rites, but forgiveness when they killed in the line of duty (which has always been a morally questionable act).
Nowadays they're still presumed to be Christian and are spiritual counselors first, with a major presumption the former serves as an adequate replacement for the latter. My understanding of it comes from being a peer with some peer counseling experience among veterans who suffered from TBI or PTSD or both, and who got fucked by their service and the DVA, which is how they ended up in the same program for insolvent civilians as I was. The DFA told them to walk it off, so they ended up sitting in a group circle with me. And I got to hear the tales that drove combat-hardened soldiers to tears and despair.
When someone comes to me telling me they're thinking of enlisting, it's their stories I tell, a few out of thousands. Not of horrors on the field (though bullying in the ranks and sexual assault infest the troops like lice), but that he US armed forces don't care about the marbles of their enlisted, and will gladly leave veterans on the street in the cold. Even if they pay for your college tuition (which they won't if they can weasel out of doing so) you're at high risk of coming home too traumatized to get a degree, or a decent job.
The troopers of the US are still dealing with the aftermath of the spiritual readiness subprogram from the George W. Bush administration, when Rumsfeld was still dreaming of devoting divisions of marines to be soldiers of God and non-Christians (anyone who wasn't specifically Protestant Evangelical that was approved by administration) was downgraded and forced to attend Evangelical services listed as training. Probably because it was rough depending on PMCs to clear villages of civilians who were in the way, and if God tells you to massacre a village of civilians, you don't ask if it's legal or ethical.
So no, I expect chaplains in the US Navy to be about as functional when it comes to counseling as school chaplains in Tennessee that might be replacing school counselors and school psychologists. And I expect chaplains to explicitly balk when a patient has life experiences or identity that runs against a chaplain's identity. Even when the LGBT+ or socialism-curious soldier is reporting for counsel because he can't visit his family because everywhere he looks on the homefront are danger points where the enemy could be hiding, and his family wants him to tell war stories, but none of his experiences are the kind of thing they show in action movies.
And the funny thing is this is a real problem. It's not about if the world were a better place. Chaplains who aren't adequately trained to counsel disrupt unit cohesion and diminish combat readiness. It would be a benefit to our units if they had access to real counseling, and could actually report a sexual assault without being silenced and discharged. But Washington cares more about its ideology and identity politics and getting hits on social media more than it cares about a fighting force that is actually functional.
Counter-recruitment writes itself, and it's been this way for decades in the US armed forces. Long before my recruiter lied to me and bullied me in the late 1980s in a blunt effort to get me to enlist.