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The Swift, quiet rise of Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel to SOCOM Chief.....

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Those details, reported in the Wall Street Journal in May, are among the only recent public characterizations of Votel. The Army Ranger has led the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command since June 2011, overseeing the military's most highly classified missions and well trained units. They include the Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, commonly known as Delta Force, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, often called SEAL Team Six, and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, which frequently deploys with them.



Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Tuesday that Votel is President Barack Obama's pick to serve as the next commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, the powerful four-star command that oversees U.S. Special Operations forces across the globe. The decision requires Senate confirmation, but it's hardly a surprise. Rather, it continues a swift, quiet ascent by Votel through the most elite forces in the military.

Votel's résumé is bolstered by command assignments in a variety of influential jobs. As a colonel he led the 75th Ranger Regiment — the Army's elite light-infantry Rangers — as its members parachuted into Afghanistan on Oct. 19, 2001, to set up what would become Camp Rhino, the first U.S. base established in the country. In 2003, Votel established the U.S. Army's Counter Improvised Explosive Device Task Force as a one-star general, advancing the military's ability to respond to the threat IEDs posed in Iraq. The organization was eventually broadened to become the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Task Force, or JIEDDO, and Votel stayed on as its deputy director. He later became the deputy commanding general of the Army's famous 82nd Airborne Division, of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and served as the deputy commanding general of operations for the Army task force that oversaw U.S. military operations in eastern Afghanistan for 15 months beginning in February 2007. He was subsequently selected to become a two-star general in September 2008 while serving as a deputy commanding general at JSOC. He held that job from July 2008 until July 2010.

Votel's JSOC forces also have been busy within the last year in several high-profile missions, including the capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed al Ruqai, an alleged al-Qaida official, outside his home in Tripoli, Libya, in October, and the more recent raid in Benghazi, Libya, that led to U.S. troops — said to be Delta Force operators — taking one the top suspects of the 2012 attacks on U.S. compounds there into custody. Ahmed Abu Khattala is now believed to be on his way back to Washington to be prosecuted, and is likely traveling under guard on the USS New York.....snip~

The swift, quiet rise of Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel to SOCOM chief - U.S. - Stripes


Alright My military brethren.
Anyone know about Votel? He is BO's choice for SOCOM. Is he a BO-Bot or is he just being used by BO? Army Ranger.....Sua Sponte.

Everything I am reading would say he is very capable of this Command. What say ye?
 
So I take it not to many are up on General Votel who BO has chosen.....Most Army knows him. As do the Seals.

Do you think BO will do to him.....what he did to Gen. Petraeus?
 
So I take it not to many are up on General Votel who BO has chosen.....Most Army knows him. As do the Seals.

Do you think BO will do to him.....what he did to Gen. Petraeus?

Im not ex military but I will need to do some reading up on him. Is it wrong to say Im skeptical of anything Obama supports at this point?
 
Im not ex military but I will need to do some reading up on him. Is it wrong to say Im skeptical of anything Obama supports at this point?

You're not going to find much about Gen. Votel. He seemed not to have made waves during his career, no notable quotes are known and no distinguished combat awards but was awarded the Officers Good Conduct Medal aka Bronze Star. :lol:

Question is, he has all of sudden moved up the ranks very quickly and quietly.

Lets hope he's not a yes-man.

Nobody on the military blogs and forums websites have commented much because nobody really knows the guy.

One comment I did read, "Maybe Votel is good at retreating ?" since Obama approved.

Lets just hope that Gen. Joseph Votel is not another Obama yes-man who will put his career above country ?
 

Well we already know what Obama does to leaders who aren't yes men.
 

It is fairly easy to see why he is not a very public figure. Look where he spent most of his career. Who the hell cares if he has not made any notable quotes, quotes do not a good leader make. The units he has spent a lot of time in are not the big speech dog and pony type units. So no surprise there.
Also the units that make up JSOC are not really known for retreating.

With that said don't really know much about him and time will tell if he is a good fit to lead SOCOM. It is a very big organization with lots of cultures and political implications involved.
 

I'm not going to past judgement on the man. But I do know that over 200 flag and field commanders have been purged by the Obama administration for political reasons and someone down the ranks has to be prematurely promoted to fill the empty slots.

An officer will establish his career early on as a company grade officer. Those who are recognized will move to field grade. After field grade is when politics becomes involved.

Every former Commander of USJSOC there was no one asking does anyone know anything about this guy ? Everyone knew the history and what type of a guy of every former commander of JSOC.

Do you trust the instincts of a community organiser ? :lamo

The only good thing I'm hearing, finally an Army General is in command of JSOC not a sailor or an airman. I've been trying to figure that out for some time now. It's like when a U.S. Marine General is put in command of all American NATO forces. :thinking Not to long ago an Army General was being considered to be in command of the pacific. :screwyn
 

Refresh my memory aren't you a Ranger?
 
I was just looking at Gen. Joseph Votel's awards, especially the "officers good conduct medal" aka the Bronze Star. Three awards but no "V" device.

I was no war hero, the highest award I ever received was the Navy Commendation Medal, twice with one "V" device.
I've been in the **** and never done anything more than what was expected of me. But if I were an officer, I probably would have earned three Bronze Stars with three "V's", the Silver Cross on one particular night and maybe the Navy Cross on one operation. But I was an enlisted man. We had to earn our awards. (We all couldn't be John Kerry.s)

Personally the only medal or piece of ribbon that really mattered was the Marine Corps "Combat Action Ribbon." Back when I served the criteria no matter what your MOS was, someone had to be shooting at you trying to kill you and you had to be shooting back at that person. You actually had to be involved in a firefight.

The Army has it's "CIB", the criteria not that much different the Marine's "CAB." But how does a Lt. (rifle platoon commander) or company CO earn the Marines "CAB" or an Army Lt. or company CO the "CIB" ? If a rifle platoon commander or a rifle company CO is actually doing his job, he's to busy controlling the troops who he commands than to be shooting at the enemy. Unless the **** hits the fan.
 
Im not ex military but I will need to do some reading up on him. Is it wrong to say Im skeptical of anything Obama supports at this point?

Mornin' USC. :2wave: Nah.....I wouldn't say you are wrong to be skeptical. All one need do is look how BO played General Petraeus. What BO did to McChrystal. Still I see that Votel has been fast tracked. Which.....I can't say that is all due to BO. Could be the Army wants one up in Command to know what the hell they are doing.....since it is Clear BO's other Choices will screw up and we may have to play with whatever handicaps they leave us with.

Also it is like Apache has said.....BO has purged the military of those that can handle the heat and has politicized the Military and All their top Commanders. Worrying about what they are getting away with and what laws they break. Not only that.....but he has placed us on the Defensive to respond and Cost us plenty of money. All which will need to be undone.

Anything he touched with the Military.....needs to be overturned and all EO's By BO rescinded. First thing the Republicans should do. Then make Sure most junior grade Officers coming in aren't about just playing Citizen Soldier. If they are.....run their ass out.
 
How is he going to be used to the benefit to the US here at home?
 

Sounds good to me.
 
The military is not used to it. A sexually groping general gets dismissed, an admiral commanding nuclear weapons and who uses fake poker chips gets called to account, a four-star who criticized the White House in a media interview gets retired instead of court martialed as would have happened in WWII.

Then there's the Tom Ricks review of the Bob Gates tell-all book Duty, "Gates had some strange encounters of his own with the military. In June 2007 he was discussing the state of the surge in Iraq with Gen. David Petraeus, then the American commander there, when Petraeus mused, with a small chuckle, “You know, I could make your life miserable” — presumably by asking for more troops, which would create huge political problems. Gates writes that he interpreted the comment as a threat. (He notes in an aside that years later, Obama declined to nominate Petraeus to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs because “the White House didn’t trust him and was suspicious that he had political ambitions.”)

At another point, Petraeus was so aggressive in arguing with the president that “I came within a whisker of telling him to shut up,” Ricks notes of Gates' memoir.

Ricks continued in his review of Duty by noting, Gates describes the deliberations over Afghanistan policy in 2009 as a “train wreck.” Emerging from that bruising process, Obama was wary of his generals, at one point asking why he was being disrespected by them and their constant griping to Gates, “Do they think because I’m young that I don’t see what they’re doing?” Gates reports sitting in a meeting in the White House Situation Room and thinking unhappily that “the president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Which brings us back to the Vietnam War, as Ricks ties things up by observing: "I have the feeling that every time a secretary of Defense or a general walked into President Obama's office, he saw the face of William Westmoreland, a Vietnam general who basically helped destroy the Johnson administration (continually calling for more and more troops, and getting them, up to 500,000). Obama doesn't want to be Lyndon Johnson, and these generals make him feel like they're - he's being dragged into that."

“Of course he doesn’t own the war — he came into office against this. He called it the good war, contrasting it to Iraq. Nonetheless, it was clear Obama took office never intending to be a national security president and really had his eye on domestic policy,”

Which reminds us of Truman removing Gen Douglas MacArthur, which Truman back home in Missouri much later explained to Time magazine, saying, "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."
 

You left out the Marine colonel who was forced to resign his commision because he told a gay Marine officer that he was acting gay.
 
You left out the Marine colonel who was forced to resign his commision because he told a gay Marine officer that he was acting gay.



Thanks for the reminder.

He's one of many dinosaurs still serving in your father's military so it's up to each or any of us to pick our favorite case. I choose to provide the website below, the previously untold one by Walter Brasch.

My view is that civilian law does not necessarily or even sometimes desirably apply to military life or to the UCMJ itself. Col Merna was required to resign because he created a "hostile work environment" which when chronic is a viable reason for termination in the normal every day civilian environment, but which need not necessarily apply to military life in the combat arms especially. It's well recognized war is a pretty hostile environment so our society should have different expectations of its combat forces than it has of even support units of the military.

Hell, Islamic terrorists who happen to be gay still have to skulk off in secret to get it on under their laws and attitudes.


Senate: Gays Can Serve Openly in Military

The U.S. Senate voted 65 to 31 today (Dec. 18, 2010) to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell act, sending President Obama legislation to overturn the policy and allow gays to serve openly in the military.

Senate: Gays Can Serve Openly in Military

Gay Military Signal 070327Brasch


Gen Votel btw spent a lot of time during the Bush administration with only that one star on his shoulder. Gen Votel makes clear he will emphasize research and development into stand-off detection and neutralization of chemical and biological weapons. "We will only have very limited opportunity to get that one right when the situation is presented to us by violent extremists organizations and others [who] continue to exert a desire to acquire these types of weapons. So our ability to detect and neutralize them effectively will be a key piece for our country.”

I would note that Gen Votel's promotion to four-star and nomination to command SOCOM was made simultaneously with the appointment of Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Campbell to command the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and of Navy Adm. Bill Gortney to head the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Gen Campbell is former CG of the 101st AD and had said the withdrawal from Afghanistan is “going to be very tough — very different from Iraq. The level of violence isn’t the same drawing out of Afghanistan as it was in Iraq.” While commander of the 101st Gen Campbell oversaw the withdrawal from Eastern Afghanistan while simultaneously continuing to engage the enemy.

New Leaders Tapped for ISAF, SOCOM and NORAD | Defense News | defensenews.com
 
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First of all, my fathers military just not won battles but won wars.

And when Congress repealed DADT and legalized buggery in the military, it just didn't happen during a lame duck session of Congress with no debate on the floor of Congress but the Obama administratrastion cooked the numbers of a survey given to the troops and actually had the results of the survey before the survey was conducted and then lied to Congress. < DoD IG Report Exposes Improper Activities to Repeal Gays in Military Law - Search - Center for Military Readiness >

BTW: The mission of the U.S. military is all about creating a hostile work eviorment. Now I know many liberals think that the military is for social engineering and it should be looked upon as a job not as duty to country of killing people and winning wars.

I also noticed that you brought up LBJ and Gen. Westmorland.
LBJ was unlike his predecessor (JFK) who didn't trust the military and always relied on his Harvard buddies aka the "Young and Brightest."
It was JFK who ignored a former five star general (President Eisenhower) and scores of Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force flag officers who warned JFK not to get involved with the corrupt RVN government and not to make a stand against communist expansion in Southeast Asia at the 17th parallel.

LBJ picked the wrong flag officer to run the war that JFK got us involved in. From 65-68 you had four star, three star, two star generals and admirals down to small bird colonels who openly (without being forced to walk the plank) opposing Westmorland and LBJ how the war was being conducted from LBJ micromanaging the war, PC rules of engagement, wrong tactics on the battlefield, not fighting the war as total war and not allowing the American soldier to win the war.

But I digress.

President Truman, the same President that allowed China to go RED fired a five star general and the military veterans of WW ll decided Truman was no longer fit to be CnC. The Democrats paid the price in 1952 and America put a five star general in the White House.
 
First of all, my fathers military just not won battles but won wars.

From the War of Independence in 1776 to the present our forefathers have fought and won battles and wars straight or gay fighting side-by-side in the same units. There have always been gays in the U.S. military, it's just that now we publicly recognize it. Nothing about this is on stone tablets either way as we have seen since ancient times.



That's what I said in the post you're responding to. The U.S. armed forces need to be a lean mean fighting machine which is a mission not a job. I don't think the colonel should have been issued his retirement papers based on the one remark, but I don't know the principals and I wasn't there. It's been said military justice is to justice as military music is to music, which I suppose is why after so many years in the Crotch the colonel went quietly. I wouldn't toss the guy for what he said nor would I myself have said what he said to a staff officer ("You act gay").



President Truman did not stand for reelection when the retired General Eisenhower won the election in 1952, defeating Illinois Gov Adlai Stephenson. By 1952 Truman had been president for 7 years, having succeeded FDR who'd died in office in 1945 in his 13th year as president and commander-in-chief. WWII vets voted in large numbers for Ike, yes, much as they had voted for Truman in 1948.

President Truman sent Gen George Marshall, his secretary of state, to China to negotiate a coalition government or some peaceful division of the spoils between Mao and Chiang, but Marshall came back with a no sale. Many historians say the truce that led to the ultimately failed negotiations allowed Mao to recover from a downward spiral and to regain the initiative. Those were early daze / days of dealing with revolutionary communism so, if nothing else, it should have been a good lesson learned.

I was amused by your revised history of the Vietnam conflict and era but I did like Ike's foreign policies to allow the old empires of Europe to collapse, dissolve, disintegrate, disappear. When in 1954 the French asked Ike for the bomb to use at Dien Bien Phu against the NVA Ike immediately said no despite the urgings of his SecState JF Dulles to hand out the bomb to any European colonial power that might want it. The day after Dien Bien Phu fell Ike looked out the window and noted the sun was still shining.

President Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne to desegregate Bill Clinton's high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
 
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