Your accountability impacts the Air Force

  • Published
  • By Maj. Brian Freiburger
  • 60th Maintenance Operations Squadron commander
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  One of the issues I struggle with as a commander is ensuring that I'm doing everything I can to provide my folks with the tools to make good life decisions in order to guarantee they can focus on the mission, while also knowing their home life is as happy and carefree as possible with today's hectic pace. 

After all, if an Airman has money, legal, relationship or health problems due to poor choices, the mission may suffer, even if I have the best career development course training program and the most high-tech equipment on base. 

So, what do we do Air Force-wide as leaders and supervisors to assist our Airmen in this way? We brief until we are blue, we create PowerPoint slide shows, we post flyers, we hand out safety cards at the front gate, we pass out key chains with phone numbers for a free ride home, we look every Airman in the eye at shift change to remind them to be safe and follow technical data and we write articles in the base paper to promote programs and certain behaviors. 

I could continue, but you get the point. The Air Force provides plenty of great support to its members. Now I ask, why do we still have so many Airmen making bad decisions which lead to personal issues/harm and decreasing our war fighting ability?
Not to dismiss the behavior, but we are human and for as many individuals as there are in the Air Force, there are that many unique ways to make a bad decision. Whether it's getting behind the wheel after drinking, cutting corners, or adding to credit card debt, we will continue to be plagued with these issues, or will we? 

To quote a fellow commander, Lt. Col. Sheila Robinson, 9th Medical Support Squadron commander from Beale Air Force Base, Calif., "When does the individual become responsible for, and when do we hold him/her responsible for those actions?"
Colonel Robinson goes on to explain in her January article how her organization took an afternoon to attempt to "crack the nut" on decreasing DUIs. At the end of the day, the conclusion up and down the chain was "Airmen wanted more discipline, to be held accountable and to work in an environment that encourages and fosters excellence."
In the often quoted words of Gen. George S. Patton, "If you can't get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?" General Patton speaks to discipline and duty but his words also apply to personal accountability. Simply stated, "If you can't get the simple things right, how can you ever expect any semblance of behaviors that would lead to the ultimate sacrifice?" This quote proves that personal accountability is not a new problem in today's military; it didn't come on with the advent of the personal computer, X-Box or the iPod. We as leaders and supervisors have been fighting this internal battle for years.
Lt. Col. Will Roberts, 17th Logistics Readiness Squadron commander from Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, provided an interesting saying in a February article, "You deserve what you tolerate." So, not only is there a component of personal accountability in all of this but also we, as a community, must hold each other accountable. That's airman 1st class to airman 1st class, captain to captain and up and down the chain. If you avert your eyes to a problem, you've just made your bed by condoning it, so lie in it. Our Air Force will not survive if we continue to accept those who walk by problems.
This accountability issue is not a new problem as evident by General Patton's quote. Gen. Ronald Fogelman, former Air Force chief of staff, addressed accountability in the 1990s and in September, Col. Steve Arquiette, 60th Air Mobility Wing commander wrote in an article entitled, "Accountability is crucial for military members." Other commanders are addressing this accountability problem, so what should we do? Create more slides, flyers, briefings and programs...how many more safety nets must we install to ensure good decisions are made? 

Pretty soon we will not be able to find the flight line much less an airplane through our safety nets made of trinket's, pamphlets and briefings. While these are beneficial and provide increased awareness, I suggest that we continue to insist on personal accountability and we, as an Air Force community, take action against those not able to walk the line. 

At some point individuals need to be held accountable. If you are wondering how to make our Air Force a better place to live and work, first and foremost - be accountable. Imagine if you will, that rather than sitting here holding the base newspaper and looking for answers in my words, you are actually sitting here holding a mirror...the answer to a better Air Force should appear to you.