Sorry guy's but I have to disagree that the Greatest Generation is the greatest generation. To me the greatest generation was the Vietnam era generation. I'm not talking about the vocal minority better know as hippies, but the hard working middle class and backbone of the country.
I'm sure many of you are going to blast me out of the water, but hear me out first.
The Greatest Generation did some great things but stop and look at some of the other things. They fought WWII and lost several million people while the US lost 292,000 soldiers. Then when they were put in charge they got us involved in Vietnam. Whether we should have gotten involved is not the question. The point is, if you're going to get involved do it right. The Greatest Generation was the ones who botched this one up. They tried the technique of WWII, just throw money and people at the problem. The result; 58,000 dead americans. Additionally, there were 21 new weapon systems fielded in Vietnam, all but 2 had to be recalled due to high failure rates and loss of life. The F-111 and the M-16 being two of the most notable. Why were these systems fielded so quickly, corporate greed and kickbacks.
In 1964 Lyndon B Johnson gave us Welfare as we know it today and along with Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Welfare has done nothing but encourage people not to work and in a time when corporations provided medical insurance to their retirees, allowed these corporations to dump their liabilities onto the federal government.
I could go on and on, but lets face it, when the Greatest Generation came home from WWII and in a few years were put in charge, they sent the US down a path of socialism and unchecked corporate greed. Those that say X/Y generation is the "take care of me generation" it is because of the policies put in place by the Greatest Generation.
As I said earlier the true Greatest Generation is the Vietnam era generation. They are the ones who came home from Vietnam and said "we're not doing that again". Needles to say they changed the laws governing the acquisition of new weapon systems and how we fight wars. Now, systems are fully tested before they go into battle. The F-15 was the first weapon system to go through the full testing system before it was fielded. During Vietnam we were happy with a 4-1 kill ratio and at times we had as low as 12-1. The F-15 has never lost an air to air engagement. The number I've seen is 196-0, but others dispute this number so I can't totally confirm this is the right number, but lets just say they got it right with the F-15.
During Vietnam there were no clear commanders. Every battle would have at least 2-3 different commanders in charge. I'm sure you've heard of the battles between the AF, Army and Navy over who's actually in charge, while guys were dieing on the field. The Goldwater/Nichols Act changed this to where we have one commander per area of operation. How well this worked became very evident during Gulf War 1. Nobody in the US or world had any doubts who was running that war. And the results speak for themselves. I know there are those who will argue that we didn't finish the job, but remember, there was a defined objective and the military accomplished that objective. I wish the objective had been bigger but it wasn't.
As far as the scocialist government the Greatest Generation started. The Vietnam Generation has spent many years trying to reverse this. Even Clinton signed on to welfare reform, which was all started in Wisconsin by Governor Tommy Thompson.
Everyone wonders why we don't have programs like the race to the moon any more. The answer is quite simple; we don't have the money, thanks to all the social programs put in place by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It was easy for Kennedy to say lets go to the moon when he didn't have any of the obligations he handed to the next generation.
I could go on and on, but lets face it, the "ME" generation was created by the policies of the Greatest Generation. And the Vietnam Generation is still trying to reverse the wrongs created by them.
However, after spending 20 years in the AF, I heard all the senior guys complaining about the young kids and how they're lazy and not "as good as I was when I was a 2LT". I've got news for all you old guys out there, the curent new generation is better than you were. They have better equipment, they are higher educated, they have just as much motivation. They are going to do a fantastic job, as long as we let them and stay away from turning the country into scocialist republic were nobody has an incentive to work.