On American Military and "Extremism"

Bruce Hoffman describes the extremists infiltrating the US military to obtain training, the insider threat sabotaging military, and the veterans who join extremist groups, insurgents, or commit suicides. However, Hoffman did not have any solutions other than "no Stand-downs".

Hoffman is stupid. Mostly, because he misunderstand the problem. As a note to all analysts, describing the problem is the first and most important step to any analysis.

There are 2 problems here, basically. In a People's Army, such as US military aspires to be, loyalty to the political system depends on the political system's loyalty to the People. Loyalty, after all, is a two-way street. Women and Gamma often do not understand this, believing that the abstracted political regime (or any institution, really) is and always will be. But no. If veterans, who did not start out radicalized, then radicalized during or after service, then that is a primary indicator of political failure, of regime corruption. A veteran, with his intimate experience of a government system, like the US military, understands, at a visceral level, how (at least a part of) the government is supposed to work. For him to then lose faith in the regime, means that he thinks the system is failing. At the very least, that the system is not returning his former loyalty.

The other problem, infiltration and sabotage, is self-limiting, or supposedly so. A major benefit of a People's Army, is that it would take care of the sabotage problem for you, naturally. The People, who staff the Army, loves the Institution. So they readily detect any deviation in loyalty, aka the Insider Threat. They will readily report and respond to insider threat without external pressures. The moment they stop dealing with Insider Threats, is when the People stop having faith in the political system. When there has to be a Commissar system, or to "educate" the soldiers about the political system, is when you know the regime is in trouble. (Or that it has ceased to be a People's Army.)

So, the fact that people want to talk about the supposed "extremist infiltration" problem, is an indicator that these people know they no longer has the loyalty of a large chunk of The People. Which is just another signpost to the Fall of Pax Americana.

(For the problem of monetary corruption, that soldiers take money to divert weapons etc to the black market or etc. That is likely more of a cultural / ethnic problem, that they think money is more important than loyalty.)