Commentary

On Wednesday, it was 4,384 days since the terror attacks of 9/11 in New York, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa. It has also been 365 days since the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In both cases, our national response involved using military action.

I stared at the email in my inbox with a slight mix of curiosity and alarm. I read the message again, this time aloud. Yep, I had been tasked. The email was sent to inform me that I would be serving as my unit’s designated Combined Federal Campaign-Overseas representative for this year. I wondered how much extra time this was going to take from my work schedule and most importantly, what exactly does a CFC-O rep actually do?

There is a lot to be said about how blaming a victim of sexual assault is devastating to a victim. When a traumatic crime like sexual assault occurs, many questions are asked of the victim’s history and behaviors, which communicate loud and clear he or she did something terribly wrong to provoke the attack.

The golden rule with relationships professionally and personally holds that respect is a reciprocal and two-way process. This rule can be a tool in the toolkit of every Airman — where we treat people with consideration and esteem and value their worth.

Airmen are no strangers to change. Our Air Force was born from change after an exhausting world war when nations were recovering and healing emotionally, physically and financially.

Slightly more than a decade ago, our Air Force senior leadership, recognizing a lack of diversity in the Air Force officer corps, began an effort to improve diversity.

Dwight Eisenhower would often quote 19th century Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the elder by stating, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Von Moltke also wrote, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force,” which we have reduced to the axiom, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”