The only two women to participate in the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course (IOC) failed ongoing tests to determine which infantry positions should be available to women …
The two women both volunteered to participate in the IOC. Two other women had previously volunteered in September but also failed.
Looks like the standards still exist to some degree. 12 men and 2 women out of the most recent class washed out.
Just like I said the first time, it’s still a social experiment that doesn’t belong. It’s a task very, few men can do. The desire to have women in combat has already resulted in lawsuits against reality, and it will result in further dropped standards and both women and men who aren’t up to the task being sent into situations that set them up for failure.
After the accidental burning last year of Qurans by U.S. troops in Afghanistan sparked deadly rioting, an Air National Guard chaplain from Springfield stepped in and potentially saved countless American lives.
For his effort, Lt. Col. Jon Trainer received the prestigious Bronze Star — a medal given for heroic or meritorious achievement in connection with operations against an armed enemy.
The blue, red and white Distinguished Warfare Medal will be given to servicemembers that demonstrate “extraordinary achievement” related to a military operation after 9/11. But unlike every other combat award, it does not require the recipient to risk her or her life…
An official speaking on condition of anonymity prior to the announcement from the Pentagon has indicated that the award will be higher ranking than a Bronze Star, but lower than the Silver Star — the nation’s third-highest award, the Army Times reports.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – With tensions in the Middle East rising over Iran’s nuclear program and the Syrian civil war, the United States and NATO began their largest annual joint-exercise this week, Operation Enduring Freedom. …
“In an uncertain world, we believe that Enduring Freedom shows that the NATO alliance is still a relevant force,” said International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Colonel Nick Page.
United States Marines are being told to preserve ammunition and gasoline as a deal softening the impact of automatic spending cuts continues to elude leaders in Washington.
Marine Corps Commandant James Amos urged personnel in a video posted online Friday to “save every round, every gallon of gas,” and to “take every single aspect or opportunity in training to get the most bang for the buck,” a reminder of the cuts’ immediate effect on the U.S. military.
An Illinois father wants a school district to reconsider its dress code after his son was asked to remove a U.S. Marines T-shirt or be suspended, FoxNews.com has learned.
Daniel McIntyre, 44, of Genoa, told FoxNews.com that his 14-year-old son, Michael, was asked to remove the T-shirt by eighth-grade teacher Karen Deverell during reading class at Genoa-Kingston Middle School on Monday. Deverell, citing the school’s dress code, said the garment’s interlocking rifles was problematic and had to be removed from sight, McIntyre said.
If that’s the case, most Marines in uniform above the rank of PFC wouldn’t be allowed in.
I’m sure his school administrators would’ve loved one like this:
And there are plenty of military-themed shirts that are far more aggressively styled.
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has lifted the military’s ban on women serving in combat, a move that will allow women into hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando units, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.
Over at HotAir, they have a writer, Sentry, who echoes all of my criticisms of this stupid move by Panetta and the PC idiots in the Pentagon. And the writer is a PT stud female Marine.
I’m a female veteran. I deployed to Anbar Province, Iraq. When I was active duty, I was 5’6, 130 pounds, and scored nearly perfect on my PFTs. I naturally have a lot more upper body strength than the average woman: not only can I do pull-ups, I can meet the male standard. I would love to have been in the infantry. And I still think it will be an unmitigated disaster to incorporate women into combat roles. I am not interested in risking men’s lives so I can live my selfish dream.
We’re not just talking about watering down the standards to include the politically correct number of women into the unit. This isn’t an issue of “if a woman can meet the male standard, she should be able to go into combat.” The number of women that can meet the male standard will be miniscule–I’d have a decent shot according to my PFTs, but dragging a 190-pound man in full gear for 100 yards would DESTROY me–and that miniscule number that can physically make the grade AND has the desire to go into combat will be facing an impossible situation that will ruin the combat effectiveness of the unit. First, the close quarters of combat units make for a complete lack of privacy and EVERYTHING is exposed, to include intimate details of bodily functions. Second, until we succeed in completely reprogramming every man in the military to treat women just like men, those men are going to protect a woman at the expense of the mission. Third, women have physical limitations that no amount of training or conditioning can overcome. Fourth, until the media in this country is ready to treat a captured/raped/tortured/mutilated female soldier just like a man, women will be targeted by the enemy without fail and without mercy.
Everyone wants to point to the IDF as a model for gender integration in the military. No, the IDF does not put women on the front lines. They ran into the same wall the US is about to smack into: very few women can meet the standards required to serve there. The few integrated units in the IDF suffered three times the casualties of the all-male units because the Israeli men, just like almost every other group of men on the planet, try to protect the women even at the expense of the mission. Political correctness doesn’t trump thousands of years of evolution and societal norms. Do we really WANT to deprogram that instinct from men?
The answer, Sentry, is yes. They want to deprogram that instinct, because to a stupid, petty, foolish human with female attributes who lives in political worlds of cocktail parties and in the ivory towers and ivy halls of academia, chivalry and chauvanism are the same. Any acknowledgement that women and men are different not just biologically but physiologically and simply by nature; would mean that such things can be judged.
Remember “How Modern Liberals Think”?
The leftist philosophy opposes the objective judgement that women simply are inferior to men in their capacity for war.
Though I’ve said it before, it bears repeating that doesn’t mean there’s any judgement of a woman’s character or civic virtue due to physical, physiological, or other limitations.
Doesn’t mean you don’t have the character or virtue to stand up for your nation. Does mean you’re going to be a liability if you want to go to BUDS.
The leftist philosophy has an ulterior motive, though. It also supports the idea that an “empowered” woman will, to be very blunt here, put out to an inferior man. A sniveling, cowardly toad academic, or a womanizing rapist politician who has his state police procure conquests for him – these are the kind of “men” whose actual character is no longer called into question when their behavior is viewed as normal, and when men and women are to be treated as “equals”. They subjugate women by destroying the privilege that women used to enjoy as part of their nature; all while decrying it as “chauvanism”, “antiquated”, “anti-feminist”, or other such nonsense, and claiming that those who would put women on a pedestal are in fact engaging in a “war on women”. (Contrast GirlWritesWhat’s comments about bonobos.)
A woman may well find that society (depending on region) has stigmatized her virtues as a provider and protector of life, traditions and values that she sticks to in order to give better chances for success at providing and protecting life. Why is “women’s rights” synonymous with destruction of infants today, rather than protection of infants, children, and all life? Why is “women’s rights” about a woman being denigrated to the point that she is just a few “parts”? Is she a mother or a “breeder”? What is really being supported with these ideas?
One could dissect the destructive nature of leftist philosophy that denigrates women – and also denigrates men’s roles – but that’s a broader (no pun intended) topic than could be looked at in any single blog post.
If you want a very intelligent analysis of modern feminism and the leftist philosophy that denigrates both women and men, consider Girl Writes What (you could start with this most recent video and go from there if you’re not familiar with her very intelligent critique of the modern feminist movement). You’ll note her own analysis has changed as she went on, but it’s all a series of very fascinating opinions and reasoning. Her look at it is from a fairly utilitarianist point of view (at least as it seems to me).
I’ll finish this section with this quote from Thomas Sowell:
“For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.“
Many things are done for a reason, and throwing women into combat because it feels good to some limousine liberals who will never see the two-way range is a violent idiocy, stupidly rejecting billions of years worth of human lives that said no.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s first female combat pilot yesterday defended the Pentagon’s decision to allow women on the front lines of war, dismissing an argument that the genders shouldn’t be blended into the same battle environment.
“So that’s like saying Pee Wee Herman is OK to be in combat but Serena and Venus Williams are not going to meet the standard,” Air Force Col. Martha McSally said on “Fox News Sunday.”
I know not all Air Force pilots are imbeciles, but this one is. If they were all three to try out, Paul Reubens has to meet the same standard as all of the current men. If standards at boot camp are held, he doesn’t go. If he fails an indoc for a unit, he doesn’t go. Serena and Venus maybe could meet one physical standard, but they’re exceptions that prove the rule. Also, tennis is not combat. Tennis does not last for 10 months in cramped, nasty conditions with poor sanitary facilities and if you lose at tennis, you don’t end up in the hands of jihadis who will behead you after mutilating your body.\
But there’s another dimension to this – how simply out-of-touch the comparison is.
Guess what, Colonel? Paul Reubens is 5’10″. He ain’t exactly a small guy. He’s also 60, and more an example of how she confused Reubens’ character name with him actually being small, as well as naming someone who was popular decades ago. Why not compare Billy Barty to Allison Hayes?
Or someone more modern like Verne Troyer and Carmen Electra?
Or how about a more apt comparison of wannabe badass couch-jumper Tom Cruise to the much more badass Claudia Black?
Tom Cruise wasn’t tall enough to get into the picture even when he wore elevator shoes, so you’ll just have to pretend you can see him.
The Air Force Colonel doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She is not a subject matter expert on groundpounders any more than a “leg” is going to know about Immelmans or the Thach Weave. Air Force pilots do not endure the same conditions that infantry or any other land or sea combat unit does.
As a last note, for some unfathomable reason, unplanned pregnancies are very high in the military. What’s usually ignored (outside of those who deal with women in the military) is that it’s a free pass out of a deployment. A young woman who’s already given special treatment in the military environment (anyone who says they aren’t doesn’t have a clue) has an easy out. On top of this, there are financial incentives as well as personal incentives. The military, in effect, has enabled the use of the female agency against it. A female servicemember can’t be hit with malingering because they created a medical condition that prevents deployment.
When military units do exercises, somebody has to be the good guy, somebody has to be the bad guy. The bad guys are the opposition force, or OPFOR. A Red Cell functions much the same, acting as a dedicated enemy element for purposes of exercises. Going up from the tactical level to the strategic, you have Red Teams. Basically, people who come up with scenarios for enemy forces.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have ignorant leftist political ignoramuses put in a position to do some of that Red Team work.
I’m not sure there is a strategic facepalm yet.
Sipsey Street Irregulars has a long, very informative piece here, about the scenario some idiots came up with, proving once again that military intelligence is quite often an oxymoron. Here’s the crux of the scenario, from some idiots (Retired Col. Kevin Benson and Associate Professor Jennifer Weber) at the Small Wars Journal:
The Scenario (2016)
The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.
In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest. Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action.
With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish “check points” – in reality, something more like choke points — on major transportation lines. Traffic on I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery; I-20; and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for “illegal aliens.” Citizens who complain are immediately detained. Activists also collect “tolls” from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition. They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted.
When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups. At the press conference the masked militia members’ uniforms sport a unit seal with a man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a musket over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” When a reporter asked the leaders who are the “red coats” the spokesman answered, “I don’t know who the redcoats are…it could be federal troops.” Experts warn that while these groups heretofore have been considered weak and marginal, the rapid coalescence among them poses a genuine national threat.
The mayor of Darlington calls the governor and his congressman. He cannot act to counter the efforts of the local tea party because he is confined to his home and under guard. The governor, who ran on a platform that professed sympathy with tea party goals, is reluctant to confront the militia directly. He refuses to call out the National Guard. He has the State Police monitor the roadblocks and checkpoints on the interstate and state roads but does not order the authorities to take further action. In public the governor calls for calm and proposes talks with the local tea party to resolve issues. Privately, he sends word through aides asking the federal government to act to restore order. Due to his previous stance and the appearance of being “pro” tea party goals the governor has little political room to maneuver.
Yup. That’s what they came up with. Tea Party are terrorists. Anyone quoting the Constitution must be destroyed, because the regime and order must reign, and the Constitution is just a piece of paper. When they quote it, it’s because they’re terrorists.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
Mike at Sipsey Street notes that the comments are almost all in stark contrast to the article. The responses, from the kind of intelligent thinkers who read things like the Small Wars Journal, are by a great majority articulate, eloquent, and offended.
One of the sharpest is this one, by “Obvious Moniker” that criticizes the failed methodology of the scenario. He starts off by pointing out that not only is it as offensive to Constitutionalist Tea Party folks as it seems, it also fails from the start as a utility to develop strategies.
by Obvious Moniker| August 5, 2012 – 11:48am
I’ll admit to being one of the many offended by the choice of parameters; however, for the sake of discussion, I’ll try to minimize repeating what previous commenters have said.
First, it has been claimed that any group could be substituted for the Tea Party types in the scenario. While this claim is undoubtably true on its face, from the detail in the scenario given and the current political climate, I cannot help but wonder if said claim has not been made disengenuously. Several other commenters have wondered how many axes are being ground with the setup used, and I must echo that feeling.
Having been stationed at a 3-star level staff command for 5 years, there’s a reason why our J5/J7 guys had all the local powers in each scenario represented by Pineland, Treeland, et.al. That methodology avoids accusations that the setup may be politically tainted or skewed along ideological lines that would otherwise be unnecessarily detract from the training and potentially make sharing said scenario with our allies unwise.
One untrained in military planning might get the impression from the universal application of said naming obfuscation by such a wide variety of planners whose scenarios truly did not depend on taking place in a location that such a principle was something those planners were taught in their training. In that light, I hope you can understand my skepticism of your claim to being unbiased, as it seems so woefully poor form as to stretch credibility with such denials. (ST: Much more to this comment, worth reading through them at the link.)
For those who don’t follow the Moniker’s jive, he’s saying you train for scenarios, not for specific enemies. You can’t share your playbook if you have one place you’re planning on fighting; and you can’t reapply the scenario when it’s too specific. If you get it in your head that you’re going to fight X and you end up fighting Y, then you’ve set yourself up for failure.
Another:
by Antylyzyk| August 6, 2012 – 7:44am
This is a chilling article—it has shocked me to the core.
The Army has been perfecting its counter-insurgency for decades in foreign lands. Terrorism has now become the function of the Department of Homeland Security—only Europeans had this type of machinery, we have always relied on being a people numerous and armed. Our police forces have become para-military forces in a perpetual War on Drugs. Recently, General Ralph E Eberhart expressed the view “that Posse Comitatus will constantly be under review as we mature this command, as we do our exercises, as we interact with FEMA, F.B.I., and those lead federal agencies out there”. Now Col Benson and Ms Weber posture the “Tea Party”, a movement that has never advocated violence, as the culprits in a future insurrection? Connecting the dots leads to a coordinated intelligence, police, and military system directed at controlling American citizens.
It is little wonder our Founding Fathers feared a standing Army. If this is the line of thinking that is emanating from Leavenworth and our generals, then the inevitable result will be the dissolution of the Republic and the establishment of a military dictatorship.
Another:
by RobJohnson| August 7, 2012 – 1:57am
Interesting choice of descriptors by the authors of this article. The Tea Party has proven to be one of the most peaceful and civilized of any political party in the country, proclaiming only a desire to unify the country around the Constitution and the rule of law. Why did they authors choose an actual, existing party to use in their “Wargames” article? Have they been to a Tea Party meeting? Where most of the members are middle class, middle aged working people? Did they really wish to spit in the face of tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of their fellow citizens? Their neighbors, friends, countrymen? Are they that full of hatred, ready to slap the face of fellow Americans they disagree politically with? Is this how Goebbels and Saddams and Stalins are created? What breath taking arrogance on the part of the authors. Have they been sitting too long behind their desks? If the “Tea Party”, made up of their fellow citizens, deserve to be mass murdered by American troops, what does that say about the authors state of mind? Are they so naive of history? Are they so ignorant and arrogant they think such an event will be a fun little bloody cake walk? Do they look forward to hearing about the hundreds, perhaps thousands killed in the streets, in front of their own homes? Why the Tea Party? Why not about a Marxist stealth coup by a Manchurian candidate president and the military coup to retake the republic? They are so sure of their own rightness? What if the US Army crushes the revolt in the little town but then finds out that it faces not one town but 150,000 across the country? What will they do when they, like the Redcoats marching for Lexington, find themselves surrounded on all sides, their supplies cut off, water cut off, electricity cut off, sabotage every where, even by their own troops and officers, who refuse to fire on their own people, even as many Chinese soldiers did during Tianamen Square? The average rural, heavily wooded county in America has tens of thousands of hunters of all ages. Hunters. Men with scoped rifles, camo gear, who know how to disappear into the forests and hunt things down. Imagine that multiplied across the entire United States. An irregular guerrilla force of millions of snipers. Millions. Blood would run in rivers. Is this what these Armchair Army officers want? Is this how they spend tax payer money? To sit at their computers and type out hate screeds against peaceful citizens? Despicable. Sickening. Twisted.
Another:
by MAJ_John_Pitcairn| August 5, 2012 – 6:04pm
A solid plan for unrivaled Success! However, if the rebels are to be suppressed sufficiently, I have it on good word that to their powder and rifle stores at Lexington and Concord you must go. Rest assured! Vigorous measures at present would soon put an end to this paltry rebellion. The deluded subjects are made to believe that they are invincible. When this glorious Fifth Army is ordered to act against them, they will soon be convinced that they are very insignificant indeed when opposed to regular troops. Once these rebels have been dealt a smart blow, they will fall to their knees and submit. Once disarmament is complete, effective resistance to the Crown will cease and policies of reestablishing order will proceed. God save his excellency King George.
Another:
by nfzgrld| August 5, 2012 – 5:17pm
This article is based almost entirely on false premises. The idea that the tea party would do what is described in the way and for the reasons described is laughable. If the American people act on behalf of their own constitutionally protected freedom then they are within their right. For the military to act in opposition to any effort to protect, defend or restore the veracity and force of the constitution would be, by definition, treason.
In addition, the idea that The Klu Klus Klan and other racist and Democratic party developed organizations would side with the tea party, or that the tea party would even associate with them, indicates either a complete lack of understanding of who and what the tea party is, or is purposeful disinformation disseminated in an effort to further deflect the left’s own goal to the right. Progressives, Marxists, fascists, and other government centered and racist organizations and ideologies are all LEFT. This is America, not Europe. Left and right mean something different here. Left is govt, right is freedom. The more you have of one, the less you will have of the other.
This is OUR country. It is OUR constitution. The govt, including the military, works for US. Aside from the LIMITED powers given the federal government in article one section eight of the constitution, We The People, and the States, have and are the authority. The authors of this article are fomenting an environment of discord and distrust between the people and our military. That needs to stop right now, because WE are the military. I don’t think it’s going to work the way they think it will.
Another:
by Carlos Perera| August 5, 2012 – 2:11pm
I must join the many other commenters who have taken exception to this article’s depiction of the Tea Party as a sort of neo-Klan, a band of lilly-white racists who can barely wait to wrap their ax handles around the heads of people of color. I myself–and, yes, I post under my real name–am a Hispanic Tea Partier, one of many in my area (Jacksonville, Florida). I have _never_ been made to feel unwelcome at any Tea Party event, nor have I ever heard the use of racist/xenophobic invective or seen any literature of that ilk at any Tea Party meeting or demonstration (except in signs wielded by outside _agents provocateurs_ trying to discredit the organization: they are quickly surrounded by Tea Partiers holding signs saying, “not with us). Do many Tea Partiers object to the near non-enforcement of U. S. immigration laws? Yes–I do!–but we simply ask that the federal government enforce those laws (as it is Constitutionally obligated to do), and seek electoral, not insurrectional, solutions to the problem on non-enforcement.
As other have already noted, Tea Party demonstrations are models of civil, orderly behavior. Not only do we not indulge in violence–though on some occasions counter-demonstrators have physically attacked Tea Partiers–we usually leave the public areas we use cleaner than before we arrived. Compare and contrast with left-wing groups’ violence, vandalism, and utter disregard for the public order when they demonstrate: think OWS!
In using the Tea Party as the fictional bad guys of their scenario, the authors of this article have truly–and unjustifiably–derogated a model group of citizen-activists, using their Constitutionally protected right of free assembly, by innuendo. Isn’t there a Commandment against bearing false witness against your neighbor?
I’d add some more commentary, but these folks have pretty much nailed it.
While all of the questions in this survey should have stimulated concern, the survey’s final question has generated an enormous amount of attention:
The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.
The survey results: 42.3 percent strongly disagreed with this statement; 19.3 percent disagreed; 18.6 percent agreed; 7.6 percent strongly agreed; and 12.0 percent had no opinion. In one of the footnotes appearing in his thesis, Cunningham quotes comments placed by some of the Marines next to their answers to this question: “What about the damn Second Amendment? … I feel this is a first in communism! … Read the book None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen.” “I would not even consider it. The reason we have guns is so that the people can overthrow the gov’t when or if the people think the gov’t is too powerful.” “Freedom to bear arms is our Second Amendment. If you take our Amendments away then you can take this job and stick it where the sun don’t shine! … It is a right to own firearms for defense (2nd Amendment); I would fight for that right!”
Based on the disagreement expressed by 61 percent of the Marines, Cunningham concluded that “a complete unit breakdown would occur in a unit tasked to execute this mission.”
It’s a couple years late, but well worth watching, as the ending lesson more than applies today.
Stumbled over this reading about Palin’s recent speech to Right Online, and how some people’s opinions of her are still colored by media clowns and how she elicits a Pavlovian response from leftists and elitist beltway Republicans.
Also worth noting is Bill Whittle’s retelling of one of the Marines’ first encounters with the Japanese at Guadalcanal.
…humans evolved to crave sugar, store it and then use it. For millions of years, our cravings and digestive systems were exquisitely balanced because sugar was rare. Apart from honey, most of the foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate were no sweeter than a carrot. The invention of farming made starchy foods more abundant, but it wasn’t until very recently that technology made pure sugar bountiful.
Unsurprisingly, a Harvard professor is ignorant of the outside world, and ignores that there are fruits and melons and berries and even vegetables of the squash family that are quite sweet. There are many that have been more refined and developed through agriculture, but there were plenty of them around in nature beforehand.
The food industry has made a fortune because we retain Stone Age bodies that crave sugar but live in a Space Age world in which sugar is cheap and plentiful. Sip by sip and nibble by nibble, more of us gain weight because we can’t control normal, deeply rooted urges for a valuable, tasty and once limited resource.
The constant cry that there is an evil villain out to ruin The People, the constant drum beat that The People are weak, unable to control their urges, and must be controlled are all present. This is going to be very predictable.
What should we do? One option is to do nothing, while hoping that scientists find better cures for obesity-related diseases like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. I’m not holding my breath for such cures, and the costs of inaction, already staggering, would continue to mushroom.
Mr. Lieberman opens his piece by saying that criticisms “most worthy of attention” are the libertarian arguments that this is bad. That’s Lieberman’s way of ignoring them. His questions are based on false premises. His question of “what should we do?” is really – “what should the government do to The People?” He, being an elite Harvard professor, is clearly a ruler of men, an intellectual powerhouse whose huge brain means that he is of course exempt from being lumped in with The People – but the “we” he speaks of is that of the Ruling Class.
The “do nothing” argument is flawed. If the government does nothing, individual citizens will make their own decisions. Off the top of my head, I can think of two writers here who’ve lost double-digit weight in the last year because they got sick of being heavy. Nature solves its own problems. Nobody wants to be at an unhealthy weight. Modern individuals, with modern, sedentary jobs balance the costs of health issues against those of other pressing matters in their daily life. If they have families they need to spend time with, that time at the gym may become less important. If to maintain their standard of living, they need to work more in a sedentary job and there’s a health cost, that’s a decision they make. If they recognize that their weight (whether that be too big or too small) is effecting their quality of life, then they work to change it.
The relative availability of modern foodstuffs is not an issue in their weight. Their decision to eat and drink the amounts that they do is. This goes to Lieberman’s second flawed point. Everyone knows what makes you fat. Everyone.
A more popular option is to enhance public education to help us make better decisions about what to eat and how to be active. This is crucial but has so far yielded only modest improvements.
A team led by obesity expert Prof Fredrik Karpe made the discovery by asking volunteers to eat fatty foods containing traceable carbon isotopes.
They tracked the fat’s path from the gut, which they assumed would be taken around the body by the blood to be ‘burned off’ by the muscles, with the excess slowly adding to our girth over time.
Instead, they found the first fat from a meal entered the bloodstream about an hour after it was eaten by the volunteers.
‘By the time three to four hours have passed, most of it has been incorporated into our adipose tissue, mostly in the shorter term fat stores around our waists,’ Prof Karpe said. Fat around the waist is used only for short-term storage, and can be burned off when people need energy.
Your body tells you you’re fat. You feel it. Education isn’t that difficult. Calories in > calories out, you get fat. Calories out > calories in, you lose weight. Calories in = calories out, you stay at your present weight. You intake calories with food, burn them with activity. Millions of pages have been written about this, but ultimately, it’s not that complicated. Most of those millions of pages are spent trying to balance lifestyle and eating habits and the best ways for each individual, which government cannot do anyway.
The final option that Lieberman comes up with is, as usual, that of all other final answers to problems that the state has deemed worth destroying. Of course the “final option” is the one he states that he laments by listing last. He then notes that the paternalistic state is really a good thing, and by introducing coercion to mimic the “nasty, brutish, and short” existence of primitive man, we will finally have the best solution to fighting obesity.
The final option is to collectively restore our diets to a more natural state through regulations. Until recently, all humans had no choice but to eat a healthy diet with modest portions of food that were low in sugar, saturated fat and salt, but high in fiber. They also had no choice but to walk and sometimes run an average of 5 to 10 miles a day. Mr. Bloomberg’s paternalistic plan is not an aberrant form of coercion but a very small step toward restoring a natural part of our environment.
For all the academic twisting here, no, the government’s function is not to reduce us to animals. Lieberman’s graphic represents what they think of the public – mindless apes:
And the solution is sitting in the ad bar, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Lieberman continues, justifying his desire for control of The People’s bodies:
Though his big-soda ban would apply to all New Yorkers, I think we should focus paternalistic laws on children. Youngsters can’t make rational, informed decisions about their bodies, and our society agrees that parents don’t have the right to make disastrous decisions on their behalf. Accordingly, we require parents to enroll their children in school, have them immunized and make them wear seat belts. We require physical education in school, and we don’t let children buy alcohol or cigarettes. If these are acceptable forms of coercion, how is restricting unhealthy doses of sugary drinks that slowly contribute to disease any different?
Paternalistic laws have only propagated in the last few decades because the state has sought to replace the parent. Youngsters don’t have to make rational, informed decisions because that’s their parent’s jobs. Society doesn’t agree at all with Lieberman. Government bureaucrats and the Ruling Class have decided to instituted controls regardless of what society thinks. Paternalistic laws now try to change adults into children, all of whom “need” controlling by the state.
Lieberman’s arguments are founded on a basis of overreach that has never been part of the American tradition – those aren’t acceptable, either. Taking parental authority from the parent and placing it in the hands of the state is part of Lieberman’s academic ruling class society – it is not part of greater American society. Mandatory education laws often force children into crappy schools run by governmental bureaucrats – in comparison, home-schooled children often do better because their parents have a personal vested interest in the well-being of their own child. The parent of a child will almost invariably be more interested in the well-being of their child moreso than the most enlightened, wonderful schoolteacher attempting to teach a hundred in a day.
Requiring immunizations has taken place as part of disease-reduction initiatives, but you can catch mumps or rubella. You don’t walk by a fat person and suddenly gain 40 pounds. There are also plenty of arguments against mandatory vaccinations, some of which come from Hollywood kooks, and some of which come from folks who really don’t like that medical industries can simply force people to buy their products through government mandates. If there were benefits to it, people would choose to do it. Flu vaccinations are pushed, but not mandatory, and people volunteer for them.
Children drinking and smoking were stopped by their parents, not by the state. The push for control over drinking is what begat Prohibition, wherein the moral busybodies in the Temperance Movement declared that people were too drunk and stupid to be trusted with their freedoms. That resulted in the entire nation rebelling against it. It also resulted in the state murdering its citizens for their own good.
As for seat belts:
Seat belt laws are part of the same problem. They assume that individuals can’t make good decisions, and that people must be forced into those decisions. For years, there were no seat belts in automobiles. Individual manufacturers came up with ways to make cars safer, some of them being far ahead of the curve, and as individuals saw safety features, they chose to buy them. Notably, Volvo owes much of its reputation in the US to numerous safety features. With the exception of seat belts where a person could become a projectile and impact another person, seat belt laws do infringe on personal freedom.
The children in the truck bed above are not going to be violently flung out of the truck. The driver, knowing he has a load of precious cargo, is going to drive safely and slowly. If he does, the children won’t ride with him again – their parents won’t let them. Or, even without seatbelt laws, a law enforcement officer could stop the truck and deal with the driver as necessary for endangering his passengers.
Back to Lieberman:
Along these lines, we should ban all unhealthy food in school — soda, pizza, French fries — and insist that schools provide adequate daily physical education, which many fail to do.
The state is not the parent. If parents tell the schools to stop serving foods they deem unhealthy, then the school – which is employed by the parent-taxpayers, must respond. To do otherwise is a failure of the school to live up to the contract is has with the parents. Of course, in Lieberman’s world, the school, as a function of the state, is superior to the parent. As such, the school can dictate how they will raise children.
The assumption that rich foods are a cause of childhood obesity is also contingent on portions served. 100 calories of pizza, with bread crust, a layer of cheese, a pretend piece of meat, is the same as 100 calories of sandwich, with a slice of cheese, a bread crust, and a pretend piece of meat. The decisions to eliminate soda, pizza, and french fries are based on Lieberman’s Ruling Class notion of “what is good for you”, not on what actually is. As noted in his own article, these rich foods are incredibly good for you if you’re in a state of constant activity. So their elimination not only restricts the freedom of individuals to choose their own foods, but also assumes that children aren’t engaged in any activities, and penalizes the active for the sake of the inactive.
I note that it restricts individuals freedoms, and not just those of children, because parents who send their children to school have already had lunches confiscated. The parents’ authority to feed their own children is stomped on by the state. This isn’t some case of child abuse or neglect (aside from in the minds of fascistic nanny-staters), this is a case of the state dictating how you shall live.
Adults need help, too, and we should do more to regulate companies that exploit our deeply rooted appetites for sugar and other unhealthy foods. The mayor was right to ban trans fats, but we should also make the food industry honest about portion sizes. Like cigarettes, mass-marketed junk food should come with prominent health warning labels. It should be illegal to advertise highly fattening food as “fat free.” People have the right to be unhealthy, but we should make that choice more onerous and expensive by imposing taxes on soda and junk food.
And here we get to the “nudging”. Make choices so onerous and difficult that people will be forced into what the dictator desires. The iron fist of an authoritarian state is wearing a velvet glove.
Adults who face the consequences of their own decisions will make choices. No one wants to be a bloated fatass. The mayor was wrong to tell people what they can and can’t put in their bodies, but he’s a tyrant across the board, and his only redeeming quality is that he’s a wonderful example of one.
The food industry doesn’t need to be more honest about portion sizes. Individuals need to be responsible for their own actions. Saying “people have the right to be unhealthy, but…” is another excuse justifying dictatorial control. These taxes and impositions aren’t about health, they’re about control. Individuals who eat foods in moderation can eat what they like and have no issues. Those individuals are being denied choice foods by their own government because other individuals make poor decisions. None of this is the province of government.
Individuals then don’t have the right, with onerous taxes and impositions, they might have the priviledge of being unhealthy. It will be restricted to those who can afford it. The wealthy and powerful will be able to afford one lifestyle, while those who are relatively poorer will no longer be able to enjoy the fruits of their own labor. The reason the term “fat cat” came about is because previous to the last few decades, the only people whose labor had ceased to be vigorous manual labor and who could afford enough food to be fat were the very wealthy. Today, thanks to advances in technology and agriculture, everyone can afford the bounties of those foods. Lieberman is desirous of price controls and taxes to socially return us to a time where only the wealthy and privileged could enjoy dining as they see fit.
This would hardly be progress, and does not improve the life of the individual.
Additionally, labeling doesn’t work. A study I’ll link to as soon as I can find it again brought up that people who guess calorie amounts of foods usually get them fairly close, or overestimate. If you’re looking at this breakfast:
You know there are a LOT of calories in it. You don’t need a chart to see that it will make you full, it will keep you powered for most of your day, and you can eat a light lunch, because you had a massive breakfast.
With regards to Lieberman’s absurd statement that food makers shouldn’t be allowed to say “fat free” if a food can make you fat, that’s just stupid. Fat is a substance. If the substance is in the food, it’s has fat, it has lipids. If it doesn’t have fat, it’s fat free. Anything eaten in excess can make a person fat.
Finally, Lieberman sums up with this cry for tyranny:
We humans did not evolve to eat healthily and go to the gym; until recently, we didn’t have to make such choices. But we did evolve to cooperate to help one another survive and thrive. Circumstances have changed, but we still need one another’s help as much as we ever did. For this reason, we need government on our side, not on the side of those who wish to make money by stoking our cravings and profiting from them. We have evolved to need coercion.
We did evolve to eat healthily. We evolved to eat what our bodies need. We didn’t evolve to go to the gym, we evolved to live at the gym. Modern workplaces and modern conveniences mean we’re enjoying a sedentary life. The key word there is that we are ENJOYING. Millenia of our ancestors as poor dirt farmers working their way up from misery have allowed us modern luxuries. It’s up to us as individuals to do something with them.
We didn’t evolve to cooperate, we cooperated to survive. The individual’s survival first, and the enhancement to individual survival that a group provides is why we got together in groups. Here Lieberman’s thinking is exposed in such a short sentence. He shows a collectivist mindset, that there is “the people” and not the individual. We banded together to aid each other, not to coerce each other. We as individuals found that survival strategies worked better when we formed voluntary bonds. The government, as it was intended, is a voluntary cooperative that exists as a construct of the Constitution. It follows the orders of We The People – each individual – it is there to provide for our security and defense that we as individuals might live freer lives. We established our government to provide for our rights to live free of the rule of a king or dictator, that we might exercise our inalienable rights as bestowed by our Creator.
Lieberman’s cry for the government to crush the free market is that of a Marxist useful idiot. “Those who wish to make money by stoking our cravings and profiting from them” are the usual class-enemy capitalists, and his desired government is one that will crush capitalism. His desire is for tyranny. He makes a plea for coercion, and through his warped world-view, demands that the state protect us from ourselves. The people are stupid, unreasoning, mindless apes who are still trapped by their weak bodies and weak minds, fooled by the decadent capitalist exploiter! Thus we need the government to beat us, to crush our freedoms, he reasons. He demands a government that will coerce us in order to free us from our exploiters, trading in someone who offers you what you want for someone who tells you what you are allowed.
This is the very heart of tyranny.
And it’s complete bullshit.
Circumstances have changed, and we have one another’s help. Lieberman views us as unreasoning apes, and it’s not much surprise that his apes are black, seeing as how demeaning races tends to be a theme for Harvard academics. The very page that Lieberman posted his desperate cry for government to oppress and crush the freedoms of individuals refutes his own idiotic claims.
Look to the right of his misanthropic screed and you’ll see the solution.
We have one another’s help in voluntary cooperation. It’s called freedom.
In the form of the free market, CocoaVia there is introducing a product that fulfills that desire for sweet foods. Interestingly CocoaVia links to Mars Botanical, which links to Mars, as in M&M Mars, who make all kinds of candies and food products, for humans and our animal friends.
The very same “those who wish to make money by stoking our cravings and profiting from them”, as though profit, money, and desires of free individuals are all dirty things, are here to provide us with options we want. If our sedentary lifestyles result in us getting fat, we’ll change to diet soda. If we still want candy, but we as individuals know that a king size Snickers is going to be a lot of calories, then we swich and try something like “CocoaVia” and enjoy the taste without the calories.
Stoking our cravings and profiting from them is why we aren’t Lieberman’s ideal of a caveman. Our cravings for food, water, shelter, sex, and the rest of Maslow’s Hierarchy has driven us to the point where we can communicate these ideas through the digital realm instantly across the entire planet, and for some ideas, even beam them around the planet and off into space. Our desires are what drives us. To squelch these desires, to have them crushed beneath the boot of a tyrannical government that knows what’s best, is the dream of a power-hungry fool. Lieberman is an idiot of the most educated, highest caliber. Lieberman views us as the sum only of our nature, and not of our minds. He sees the people as a mass of idiot cavemen who must be controlled and coerced – forced by government into doing what he has decided they should. If he includes himself among the cavemen, it is only in a self-flagellating gesture of his own misery; but he still views himself as more intelligent than the foolish fat cavemen around him, viewing them as Cass Sunstein’s ideal of the average American as Homer Simpson, an idiot roaming through life who needs government to control him.
Freedom itself refutes the needs that ostensibly cause demand for tyranny. Freedom itself, as shown above, has generated a response to the demand for healthier alternatives. People don’t want to be bloated fatasses. People want to be thin – and there are plenty of people who want, through voluntary cooperation, to help their fellow man. There are a myriad of programs available, and there have been for years. There have been people selling or giving away fitness advice for years from Jack LaLanne to Richard Simmons to Billy Blanks to Jillian Michaels to Suzanne Somers to Zuzana:
There have been groups of free individuals who voluntarily cooperate in order to help themselves, and others, be healthy. The luxuries afforded by millenia of slow standard of living improvements have made it so.
To demand that a ruthless government oppressor force people into being healthy is at best a pathetic indictment of the character of the person demanding it, and at worst a sniveling plea to allow the egghead arguing for it to become a greater power in the dictatorial Ruling Class.
While doing research for this piece, I stumbled over some supporters of these measures. Most fall in line with Cass Sunstein’s idea that people, as opposed to individuals, are dumb Homer Simpsons, too stupid to live, and need to be controlled. A few even indict themselves for the same traits, as here:
What is going on here?
I know you think I’m going to come down on the “food police” banning cupcakes in schools. But as an adult constantly struggling with my weight who was a fat kid, I have to say that schools being forced to serve healthier food could literally be a lifesaver.
There are a few who want to be treated like Private Pyle because they can’t take care of themselves. You want to eat how you like, you pay the price in your own life. You want to budget some fat into your life because you enjoy chow? That’s the prerogative of the invidividual.
Lieberman and the “Serious Eats” fatbody, however, want everyone to be treated like the platoon because a few people are fat. They want everyone to pay for one individual’s decisions. Notably, the world of the military exists through voluntary cooperation, through voluntarily subordinating the will of a free man to that of a state forged on a Constitution made by free men to protect the rights of men to be free. The US military swears an oath to a piece of paper that protects the right of the individual to eat those jelly donuts, while they themselves go without. There is actually a purpose for it there. In free society, there is not.
Lieberman and the “Serious Eats” no-self-control fatbody begin to fall into a subset of that leftist mindset of the “Moral Equivalent of War”, wherein they believe the state should use force against its citizens – for their own good. These fools believe it is moral to hurt one’s own people; it is moral for the state, which exists at the behest of the individuals, to oppress the people, because it’s what they’d really want. They want free men outside the realm of that squad bay to be treated like recruits becuase it’s “for the people’s own good”.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
- CS Lewis
Lieberman, you are demanding force be used against free individuals, free men. You view us as rapacious, mindless black apes; you dismiss the individual’s will and wish to control men as a collective. Yesterday was the anniversary of D-Day, where we fought against your kind of ideas. You want us all to suffer and couch it in your pseudo-science belief that people are in biological need of control.
The Army is addressing the specifics of the plan to allow female soldiers to join infantry battalions and – associated with that move – to make the prestigious Ranger School co-ed, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said Wednesday.
The Army’s top leader said he wants to give women every opportunity to succeed in infantry battalions since the military reversed the policy barring them from infantry duty earlier this year.
Odierno noted that nine out of ten senior infantry officers have graduated from Ranger school and wear the Ranger tab on their uniforms. Not allowing women to earn their own tab could hinder their infantry careers, Odierno said.
Ranger school is made to be difficult. It is not easy. Many men fail out of it. There’s a reason most dogfaces are legs, and not airborne. Now there’s the push for women in ranger school because not going might “hinder their careers”. Oh, the tribulations of the lifer.
Women in infantry roles makes sense if you’re a nation with it’s back against the wall, on it’s last legs… moreso if you’re a dictatorial regime that doesn’t care for human life whether female or male. Women in infantry roles otherwise is idealistic foolishness at best, dreamed up in think tanks and well away from the pointy end of the spear.
In this case, Ranger school is now being viewed as a resume-building experience, rather than a formative one that creates a special breed of warriors. Ranger school already has a substantial washout rate. Since women are going to be sent there so they can check a box off on their way to becoming Pentagon bureaucrat officers, Ranger school will be forced to be toned down so that women pass – because women are going to be sent to the school in order to pass. The standard isn’t important – the tab so they can become senior officers is now what’s important. The earned value, the substance, will be taken away in order to create the appearance.
For those who’ve forgotten, the army didn’t used to wear berets. Elite units, like Rangers and Special Forces wore berets. It made them stand apart, because they are elite units. It displayed the espirit de corps of their units. So then the army brass decided that the whole army didn’t feel happy enough, and didn’t feel elite enough. So they gave everyone the beret. It was the “everyone’s a winner” participation ribbon. It did nothing except make elite units resentful of the brass, and make a lot of line units equally resentful – because they didn’t earn it.
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As this topic seems to be getting bounced back and forth with No One Of Any Import – most recently on Import here and Patriot Perspective here, I notice there are a couple things worth revisiting.
Even more important than all of that, Short Timer says that the Marines will use something called “gender neutral” tests, and that quotas will be imposed.
Additionally, new functional fitness tests are being developed to help Marine Corps leaders determine how women and men perform in, and cope with, various combat tasks. The goal is to establish “gender-neutral” physical fitness standards.
The current PFT is noted here:
The Marine Corps defines gender-neutral physical standards as being identical for men and women, rather than weighted — or “gender-normed” — like those applied in the service’s annual Physical Fitness Test. During the PFT, women can earn a minimum or maximum score with fewer repetitions and a slower run times than their male counterparts.
The “gender-normed” test involves men doing pull-ups, at 5 points per pull-up, maximum 20 pull-ups, or 100 points, minimum is only 3 pull-ups, or 15. The women’s PFT has the “flexed arm hang” which is basically pulling almost to the “up” position and holding there for a number of seconds. Minimum for the event is 15 seconds, max is 70. Crunches are the same, as many as you can do in 2 min, max 100, 1 point per. The women’s run maximum is 3 miles in 21 minutes for 100 points. For men, it’s 3 miles in 18 minutes. On the men’s you lose 1 point per 10 seconds, same thing on the women’s. Last time I ran a PFT (a while back) I did 21:30 on the run. On the men’s (obviously), it was 79 points. A woman running the same time would have 97 points. Pretty big shift.
The flexed-arm hang, while it sounds easy, is quite physically taxing. Women’s muscles are built different, and they tend to do it better. In boot camp, we were made to do it – our DI said our platoon was acting like girls, so we’d do their part of the PFT. We had only one guy, who could normally only do 3 or 4 pull-ups, able to do the full 70 second hang time. Guys who could knock out 20 pull-ups were shaking and falling before then. Different musculature, but the guy who could do the flex-hang would get pummeled in a brawl with the big guys. (Except for the 90-pound tiny guys who could do 20 pull-ups but couldn’t carry a pack.) The day-to-day humps with full packs, the quarterdeck sessions, etc., showed that the guys who could knock out the 20 pull-ups were far better athletes. There’s plenty that can be looked at with regards to how PFTs and other PT requirements are done, but the difference in musculature and endurance which varies by gender (and within gender, as noted) means that you’ll have a lot more women who can’t meet the standard (and some men who don’t, either).
A gender-neutral PT test is going to end up dropping the standard to let in more physically weaker people, because women are in generally physically not as strong. Just how it is.
To put it another way, consider the difficulty in doing a fireman’s carry of a comrade of fighting weight (neither scrawny nor fat) who’s carrying another 20-30 pounds of gear, and consider who can do that better. I can think of many men who can do this (and plenty who can’t), but I find it difficult to think of more than a rare few women who can.
As for quotas, there probably won’t be a list next to each MOS saying “we need 12.5% women in the 0800 field”. They may be behind-the-scenes, or they may be kept quiet, but there will be a push to make sure women get into the new jobs. There will be a political push for the actual candidates just like there’s a political push for the program itself. That’s what’s happened every time before, and that’s what will happen again. It happens in the military, it happens in law enforcement, it famously happened with firefighters in the 1990s – where members of the LA fire department released videos of women failing miserably at training.
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If the standards are kept as high, women won’t pass. If there’s a 75% pass rate for men, and a 10% pass rate for women, the bureaucrat social-engineer leftist political-correct hack who came up with this idea will, as always, refuse to accept that men and women are different. And the test will be changed. Ranger school will be changed. The instructors will be viewed as sexists good ol’ boys and face retribution at the hands of the social engineers. The loss will be to the country, to security (one of the few legitimate functions of government), to the Marines and Rangers, to the men who pass, and to the women who actually could pass without the standard being lowered.
The way this will work out (as it almost always does) is that the first few women through will be hand-picked all-stars. They won’t be first in their graduating class, they won’t be the most capable of the class, but they’ll be capable – they’ll be the kind of women who could’ve applied for waivers and gotten in without a service-wide push as highly motivated individuals. But even in their initial class, there will be some favoritism. There will also be the fear of EEO and career destruction on the part of instructors, who would rather get the problem the hell away from them than deal with it. A man who stands up against bureaucrats and says “women aren’t fit for this” will find himself the target of plenty of political retribution.
The subsequent groups with horrible attrition rates are what will result in a modified course curriculum, modified PT tests, and modified MOS schools. The subsequent fears of EEO and sexual harassment complaints will result in destroyed morale, more distant instructors, and good people who don’t want to deal with the hassles that go along with being in that environment.
Look at it from the POV of the instructor, as well. No one wants to teach a class of students that starts making EEO complaints. Nobody wants to be in a situation where they have to deal with it. It disrupts the class, and means the instructor has to walk on eggshells. A good instructor won’t want to be there – he can’t make the course difficult enough to prepare the candidates for their careers as Rangers or Marine combat arms MOSes. He can’t ask for the same level of performance when someone can’t give it – and washing someone out who has a (as a horribly politically incorrect coworker once said) “career enhancement device” – isn’t much of an option without facing retribution from higher-ups, bureaucrats, EEO, and harassment charges. There are plenty of people when faced with difficulty who will take the easy way out, and claiming harassment or unfair treatment is an easy way to pass. It’s hell for the instructors and dissuades good instructors from ever signing on. The knowledge base there is lost. The instructors who will join up will be those with the same political agenda, who will pass everyone at a lower standard in order to get the 100 points on their cutting score, or whatever other incentives they have for promotion.
Who will be the more popular instructor – the Ranger school instructor who had a 95% washout rate for the females in his class, or the Marine MOS school instructor who had a 95% passing rate for the females in his class? To the bureaucrat leftist political-correctness social engineer, clearly the Ranger is a reactionary throwback and the Marine is an enlightened New Man who knows how things should be. Never mind the Ranger sees them as they are. Reverse roles as necessary, wash, rinse, repeat. The instructor who makes a class that prepares his students or candidates for combat will improve their survivability and their ability to end a conflict; and that instructor will do so at the risk of retaliation. The instructor who doesn’t prepare his class and sends them off weak will be rewarded for supporting diversity and Pentagon initiatives, even if his students are unprepared and die because of it.
Again, one could write a book.
Fred does not care that you need something on your resume. He only cares that he is carried or dragged across the line to safety.
ShortTimer
JBH
