Still around

Just finished our rotation at NTC. I'm not sure what the point of coming here was. Our brigade was cut approximately half due to the troop reduction (probably the first serious thing that has made me seethe with hatred over a Presidential decision) and will be broken off into individual task forces spread across Afghanistan. NTC only trains brigades. Brigade SOPs and brigade level training was conducted for 3 weeks yet in about 2 weeks, our brigade will dissolve and we will not work with them ever again. We learned nothing - we proved ourselves to be the best CoIST in the brigade and did nothing but utilize our company and BN SOPs. That being said, I witnessed some really terrible shit that makes me glad we will not be working with our own brigade soon enough. A no cell phone/outside communication policy that resulted in more than one soldier missing the chance to talk to a loved one before they died. A restriction on red cross messages to immediate family only to prevent them from leaving "the box" and pictures of pizza boxes in the brigade TOC while at the company level, we were usually restricted to MREs or sometimes nothing. Sometimes I am so excited and proud to be a member of the military and other times I am so disgusted that I regret ever joining. I suppose everyone in the military feels like this at one time or another, and that I am not extraordinarily unique in this thought process.