Samstag, 28. Juni 2008

Saying goodbye to the army




What a special feeling, to turn back all army stuff (yes!, always surprising for foreigners, the Swiss keep their army rifle with 50 bullets at their homes as soldiers) that I kept for the last five years. However, after the 15-week recruit school in 2003, I just served one WK (annual repetition course that takes 3 weeks) in 2006, while the other years I "postponed" it:-) and - given the recent turmoil around the army, it's a goodbye with a multitude of meanings.

But, I fulfilled another annual duty so far, i.e. the also mandatory shooting on a 30om range with the SIG 550 (aka assault rifle 90 ("Sturmgewehr 90") of the Swiss Army) and I scored quite satisfactorily.
After that, furbishing and greasing, the weapong together with the uniform, bags and stuff turned went back to the army base.






The incident on the Kander river, some weeks ago, that killed 4 soldiers on a boat trip, stirred up emotions and all kinds of political opinions about what to do and what's wrong with the army.

Since the lost popular vote on the proposal for an army base in Rothenturm in the early 1980s (the location was a natural preservation area) and the first people's initiative to abolish the army altogether (also in 1980's) and the end of the Cold War, there is a kind of a vanishing consensus about what the purposes of an army should be.
Some important trends of warfare have been overslept, some equipment is outdated, the selection of the officers is ambiguous and a career in the army - in opposite to Cold War times - is highly unpopular in the business world.
Incapable officers, a lack of commitment and a complete lack of a meaning or understanding (in what to do on a daily basis in their role as soldiers if a war would erupt) have hollowed out this organization, so much that dramatic changes seem to be a necessity.
Who knows, maybe we too shift to a professional army (away of our Miliz-model), or reduce the size again dramatically.
One thing seems plausible: amidst all that shit around the army, we're definitely not in the need of new war planes, but of a huge clean-up in organizational/structural terms.