What happened to discipline?

It seems to be that way from what I see as well, Sgt (Join to see), but I wonder if part of it can be attributed to the old "times were tougher back in the day" phenomenon (mentality).

I do see some great discipline exhibited at times, but I also see lack of discipline from time to time. And from my perspective, the trend is slowly moving toward something like what you describe.

I saw that prelude to it when I left the service in 2004 when the political correctness and hand holding began. For instance I had a serious incident and when I counseled the Soldier and recommended UCMJ my platoon sergeant told me it was too harsh and re-wrote my counseling statement. From that day forward I realized I was not going to have authority since all my squad would have to do is complain to the platoon sergeant that I was being harsh. So it is not just you or the Corps it is the military across the board.

My son and I were just talking about that this weekend. I served from 81-85, he just left active duty in December and is staying in the active reserves. He is an Amtracker by MOS. He says it is tougher to hold younger Marines to account due to concerns over things like hazing. They still do what they need to do in extreme cases but now they are not sure if staff nco's or junior officers will have their back.

I wouldn't say we were abusive back in the day but if you got out of line you were course corrected quickly. It always started with stern counseling and if no change in behavior/performance was seen, it escalated quickly. If you want a well disciplined, high performing unit you cannot have the ranks filled with under/non performers, bottom line. The recuriters and Parris Island/San Diego, keep a lot of the bad apples out but they still slip through.

The fish rots from the head down and unfortunately we have senior leadership more worried about protecting non performers (and their careers) than getting them out. We've all seen the low performers moving from unit to unit, you hear them say things like no one likes them, everyone is mean to them, I don't fit in etc. and it is always someone else's fault.