There are days when I am slightly inclined to think that the United States Air Force is, at best, not quite evil. Most days I think that those who wear light blue are evil. Forgive me. I am an infantryman of the United States Army, and for at least the better part of three decades I have swallowed the Kool-Aid of my service that the USAF is just one slight step removed from the anti-deity of your choice.

This even extended into my education and then perceptions as a professor at West Point, where we cast stones at our USAF Academy counterparts. See, at West Point we are very much about academic rigor. This is why you see some of the of the US Army in the past coming from the faculty of the Department of History at West Point. We are trained, essentially, as contrarians. Our contemptuous attitude, academically, towards the USAF is that, "We write history. They write propaganda and then add footnotes."

Ooooh, bitch slap.

But in seriousness, there is debate and discussion about which way to go about future military strategies, budgets, and threats, and how all of these things interact. All-in-all though, most Army officers do not trust most Air Force officers, and there is culturally more than a little bit of contempt, if not anger between them. But then one Air Force officer goes and blows my whole set of preconceived notions, biases and assumptions out of the proverbial sky.

So this is to bow my head and note that at least one dude is doing it right.

"Pioneering research showing that the vast majority of sexual assaults on college campuses – more than 90 percent – are perpetrated by serial offenders led investigators to expand their inquiries beyond the one victim who had come forward," Hinote recounts. "We started asking around to see if other females in the squadron were affected" – and they were, he says. The command prosecuted the predator, who was convicted. "But I felt I needed to do more," says Hinote. "That's when I got passionate about this."

Since then, Hinote has applied his experience at Kusan AFB. He began by setting up 86 tripods with a helmet and a placard on each one – one for each of the sexual assaults that had been reported over seven years – along a quarter-mile track on the base. On each placard: a brief outline of the assault. Then, during the course of the morning, Hinote had six commanders bring in as many as 500 people at a time to walk, single-file, past the tripods. (Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had declared a "stand down" that day for commanders to focus on sexual assault.)

"I've never had anyone do the walk and then say sexual assault wasn't a problem at Kusan," Hinote notes."

This colonel is doing it right. Read the whole article to know what right and wrong look like among leaders. This is one you should follow. His completely in-your-face approach might be part of the solution. This USAF colonel (are you listening Army and USMC colonels and Navy captains?) set the standard to be followed by other leaders. He made no fking bones about it and put the cold elements of the issue out there for everyone to see. In the process, he removed in a single instant the stigma of "squealing." It's not squealing, dammit. It is putting the gobsmack on those morons who need to be gobsmacked and the peckerheads who deserve the respect of the average fire ant.

We still need to find these bastards, but Colonel Hinote's method seems sound to bring them out of the wormy cellars they inhabit. Then, well, while I still wear the uniform I cannot say what the "and then" is or what I prefer it to be. You can guess what the father of four daughters might envision.

The opinions here are those of the author and not the DoD, the Army, or any unit he is associated with. I can be reached at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com.

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