Really TL;DR warning**** You've been warned
Rant switch: ON -- light steady
OSI can be a very corrupt animal, at least in my and family's experience. They lean on junior enlisted's inclination to not assert themselves legally due to their stipulated youth and lack of life experience. Miscarriages of justice abound. It's a system without much in the way of power checks, compared to our civilian legal system. In fairness to OSI, it's not just them, but incompetent and petty/overzealous squadron level commanders who have no business in such role.
At any rate, Military (UCMJ) justice is a bit of a kangaroo court. Historically designed not for justice, but for the rather the punitive preservation of command structure and
unit order while forward-deployed and in
wartime during a time where female membership was negligible. As such, it is not really adept at the day to day drudgery of modern peacetime garrison/shore/homebase life.
A Few Good Men is a movie that makes constant dramatized reference to that dichotomy, but the subtext that underpins that narrative is not wrong. The UCMJ
is anachronistic for modern co-ed garrison life.
Civilian counsel literate in UCMJ proceedings routinely clean clocks with the
I-commissioned-for-the-loan-repayment clowns that mark the plurality of counsel running the JAG/ADC offices. First order of business for anyone when military "justice" comes after you, is to get a civilian lawyer who speaks DOD-crayon-eating lawyer. Problem is most junior enlisted are usually dispensed with by over-reaching NJP thrown about too casually. Often with the intended effect because again, most don't know they're being pincered by a system they barely have enough service time in to spell article 15, let alone digest what is happening to them.
Yes, the DOD deals with a lot of junior enlisted misbehavior and insubordination compared to the rest of the force. But, this is the equivalent of insisting in trying minors as adults for non-violent misdemeanor offenses that the service already stipulated as a sunk cost, when they chose to staff the force with a bunch of 18yos in the first place. Surprise surprise, retention thence sucks, and civilians complain about defense budget waste. Can't have the cake and eat it. Again, UCMJ is imho not an adequate tool for these types of in-garrison, non-combatant personnel management nothingburgers. The constant 3/9 overshoots are a result of that mismatch.
In a prior life, my junior enlisted now-wife was immediately accused by the keystone cops with furnishing the young girl who committed suicide in the adjacent room, (junior enlisted dorms, shared bathroom through contra-facing doors) the container of medication she ended up overdosing on. A complete witch-hunt except my wife, being the closed-fist throwing type of 'girl' she is, pushed back without reverence to authority.
Leadership didn't like her bedside manner when defending herself from a false accusation, color me and my own tone-policing counseling paperwork, shocked. The accusations ultimately fizzled. All cleared on the criminal front, but still got paperwork during her tenure precisely for that assertiveness. Tone-policing abounds in the military...again ask
me how I know.
She got plenty of LOCs in her short 3.5 years and had promotions/preferential assignments scuttled over it (which galvanized her resolve to GTFO the military at the first opportunity). Didn't get anything more lasting than that on her 214 because nothing would stick of course. Turns out speaking the truth in life with a verbal inflection or mannerism your supervisors merely dislike, is ultimately NOT a dischargeable offense. Don't tell the thin blue line types that of course.
The environment of junior enlisted usaf life is so schizophrenic, they actually gave her Airman of the Quarter at the Group level award ( a very public ceremony, complete with a shadowbox and eagle brass trophy)
in the same quarter she's getting slapped with a letter of counseling. Same quarter. You can't make this stuff up. Zero credibility left as a so-called justice dispensing legal system.
I've seen plenty of serious criminal complaints in military life lobbed at the officer level to know this isn't just about "enlisted being enlisted" either. Funds embezzlement, uncorroborated sexual assault, fraternization (and I'm on the record stating I don't think it should be a crime as presently so-broadly defined), adultery (another one that's long overdue for removal), even attempted murder/assault with a deadly weapon. Psychiatric adjudications concocted out of trumped up charges, undue command influence (UCI) in NJPs and actual court martials (CM). Latter two later overturned (with aid of competent civilian lawyers) on appeal at the HAF level! A treasure trove of incompetent jurisprudence. This stuff makes Russian/Chinese courts look high-minded.
In closing, you want to take the clowns behind that rank oxymoronic adjudicative behavior at their word? Knock yourself out. But I can tell you if I was airline HR, homeboy's DD214 wouldn't raise a single hair on my eyebrow. I'd be more skeptical of the marathon-running just-retired O-5 with 100pct VA rating for "SA" and all-body arthritic range of motion, walking in with his AFG turkey shoot AM-saturated 214; if we're going to be casting aspersions at people's character and Honor, from the cheap seats.
Like I said in the first post. OP has a class I already. OP has a
honorable discharge equivalent in his 214. IOW: OP has 99 hurdles to get to a major airline right seat, but his 214 ain't one of them. There's nothing to see here.
One last data node: That hack Kelly Flinn got an actual insubordination discharge in lieu of court martial, all the way direct from SECAF level (due to the media hype that ensued) on her way out of the Buff. Then wrote that self-serving ghastly book, changed her name while at ASA (now long defunct), and ended up with a multi-million dollar career at UPS. Hers was a general discharge as well. Different spanks for different ranks? Not on my watch.
And I happen to agree with Flinn on the anachronism behind adultery and frat charges in the UCMJ, much as it pains me to agree with that opportunist of a woman on anything. But spade is a spade: this DD-214 is not going to be an issue for the OP. To suggest otherwise is targeted misinformation.
