re: "Exactly Backwards"

The late, great Lex at Neptunus Lex (" The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy! ") cut to the heart of what repealing DADT was really all about.

Money quote(s):

"The national debate over gay marriage is not “spilling over” into the military – this is no accident. The repeal of DADT had much less to do with any open right to serve than it did with federalizing the national debate over gay marriage, thereby taking it out of the hands of state legislatures. The military will, by logical steps and measures, be required to treat all formalized partnerships as equal under military law. Military law is federal law, and it will be used as controlling federal precedent in civil law.

Paeans to the patriotism of those who would serve if only they could chat about their private proclivities in the workplace was never anything much more than smoke and mirrors. The real prize has always been the tax code, shared benefits, etc." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

That being said, CAA was taken by surprise at several of the "coming outs" that occured among servicemembers of his acquaintance once DADT was repealed. Folks about whom CAA had never so much as wondered "Is he/she....?"

It's resulted in some considerable rumination.

"To pretend otherwise was a momentary tactical necessity for the gay rights movement, but for the news media to portray this as anything other than an ultimate, even if incrementalist destination is mere puffery.

The barricades of the culture wars were not battered down. They were bypassed." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

2/2

re: "Too Many White Guys "

Spook86 at In From the Cold ("Musings on Life, Love, Politics, Military Affairs, the Media, the Intelligence Community and Just About Anything Else that Captures Our Interest") addresses military diversity.

Money quote(s):

"The U.S. military has a problem, according to a DoD advisory panel.

And no, we're not referring to the demands of two on-going wars (and the toll on those who serve); escalating personnel costs, a shrinking fleet, aging nuclear forces and combat aircraft that are equally long-in-the tooth. The group wasn't asked to address those pressing concerns.

Instead, the panel was asked by Congress to look at diversity in our military. In fact, the Military Leadership Diversity Commission spent two years looking at the issue and released their final report earlier this week. You can probably predict their findings without reading this Associated Press article."

No real surprises. Just like recent recommendations about, for instance, DADT.

"It's tempting to dismiss the report as little more than PC drivel. But the commission's chairman, retired Air Force General Lester Lyles, has a reputation as a straight-shooter and an outstanding leader. It's hard to imagine that he would simply compile the usual rot and sign off on it. If General Lyles is willing to stake his reputation on the report, then it's probably worth a look."

"The armed forces need to train and promote the best and brightest, regardless of their ethnic background or gender. The advancement of minority and female officers has been slow, but no one can dispute that more members of those groups are reaching senior ranks in the U.S. military.

Which leads us to another point: the commission (and elected officials) say they want an officer corps that reflects America. That's a worthy goal, but are you willing to trade mission effectiveness to achieve it? Among its various recommendations, the panel urges DoD to "open additional career fields and units involved in 'direct ground combat' to qualified women."

Trouble is, the vast majority of military women will never qualify to serve in such positions, the result of physiology--not discrimination.

Almost 20 years ago, columnist Fred Reed published results of an Army study, comparing fitness levels among male and female soldiers. The data reaffirms that most women simply lack the upper body strength and endurance required by an Army infantryman, a Marine rifleman, or most special forces MOS's."

Insert obligatory blather about how many jobs don't require upper body strength and enduranc (ignoring the fact that we're talking about some specific jobs that actually do).

"(W)hat's a chief diversity officer supposed to do (don't laugh--the commission recommends creation of that very post, reporting directly to the SecDef). Water down the standards so more women will qualify for combat service, removing that "barrier" to reaching the flag ranks? Or create some sort of double-standard, allowing females to punch their resumes in the right places and continue their climb to the stars. Either approach is unacceptable, yet some sort of "modification" is inevitable, to open up more combat billets to women."

The goal is apparently to allow women to become chair-person of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, no matter the "unintended" consequences. This caters to the roughly one-percent of female military members who are trade-school types (i.e., military academy grads) resentful of a presumed glass ceiling.

"General Lyles insists that military performance and effectiveness remain the real bottom line, but if the commission's recommendations are fully implementing, the armed forces will be walking a very fine line.

No one disputes the benefits of more flag officers who are women or members of minority groups. But the real emphasis should be on demanding excellence from all who aspire to flag rank, and promoting those who meet--and exceed--a very high bar. Some of the "remedies" outlined in the Lyles report seem closer to social engineering, particularly when you introduce the notions of "measurement" and "metrics." "

re: "Columbia Student Body and Faculty Pure Class. [Ben]"

Open Blogger (Ben) at Ace of Spades HQ is spitting mad.

Money quote(s):

"Columbia University recently had hearings to determine whether or not the ROTC should be allowed back on campus. At the hearing a Disabled War Vet, Anthony Mascheck (sic)* decided to wheel up to the mic to voice his opinion on why the ROTC program should be instituted at Columbia University.

And by wounded I mean a wheelchair bound amputee that was shot eleven times during a firefight in Kirkuk.

He was treated with the dignity and respect you would expect from a college whose student body is made up of spoiled trust fund children whose parents pay over $50,000.00 a year in tuition alone."

Yes, he was treated that badly.

"Also, for those of us who knew the DADT law was a bullship excuse to keep ROTC programs off elite(read rich) college campuses, we now have confirmation of it. The student left is trying a new excuse out. See how this fits you.

"Transpeople are part of the Columbia community," said senior Sean Udell at the meeting, referring to the military's current ban on transgender soldiers.

The military has a long and sordid history of keeping Transpeople down. The first documented case being Corporal Maxwell Klinger during the Korean War. "

Transpeople?

(You learn a new word every day on the internet.)

_____

* It's actually spelled "Maschek."

Last Week's Links

Joerg Wolf at Atlantic Review ("A Press Digest for Transatlantic Affairs") in "The U.S. is increasingly looking to new partners."

Money quote(s):

"For the European Union stating the obvious is already progress."

So it is.

-----

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") in "Now Comes the Purge."

Money quote(s):

"(A)ll work is easy if somebody else has to do it."

If at first you don't succeed, don't worry about it: someone else will do it for you.

"(O)ne of the joys of punditry: One need only have a strongly held opinion, not any subject matter expertise."

CAA really tries, you understand, to opine on those subjects he actually knows something about.

"The general is targeted because he gave his soundest military advice, based upon decades of personal experience, to the National Command Authority, as he was duty bound to do."

So are we all, by our oaths of office, duty bound to give the best professional opinions we can provide, not merely parrot whatever the popular party line or flavor of the month might be.

&

"It is not enough for Mr. Cohen to win the policy fight. Those who opposed him cannot have done so from any principled standpoint, and they are therefor unfit to serve. The ranks must be purged."

-----

Lt.Col P at OPFOR ("Fair Specimens of Citizen Soldiers") at "Marine Corps Commandant Has To Stay."

Money quote(s):

"I detect also a note of good-war-ism; you know, those old WWII movies were great because WWII was the last good war, not what we have today with these awful provincial people and their tacky state university degrees who beat up on various Third Worlders and refuse to love gays."

WWII was also the last good war, in certain circles, because the socialists (at least of the non-NDSAP variety) were on the same side as the U.S., (at least once the national socialists in Germany launched their attack on the soviet socialists in Russia and her near-abroad).

(Until they did that, at least once Stalin and Hitler had made their mutual non-aggression pact, WWII wasn't a "good" war at all.)

(History matters. Especially the inconvenient kind.)

"(T)hose of us who have served know that Hollywood can't match reality, and that the real soldiers and Marines in the platoons aren't simply pets or mascots for the chattering classes."

Remind me to discuss the whole "hero" phenomenon sometime.

"When he writes "education and training" what he really means is "re-education and indoctrination." Those who lived through the purge-trial aftermath of Tailhook will know what I mean."

Active duty personnel can look forward to eve more hours and hours of mandatory "homosexual awareness" training. Yes, that's what it's actually called and has been going on since Pres. Clinton signed DADT into law way back when.

Good thing nobody needed any of those training hours to prepare them to fight a war or anything.

"The Commandant is stating his considered professional opinion that repeal of this law will have a detrimental effect on the combat readiness of his service, and furthermore that doing so during active overseas operations is a particularly ill-conceived course of action. Remember how long this man has been in uniform, and the positions he has held. He understands his Corps, and what makes it tick, and he has been entrusted with shepherding it through the next four years of war."

&

"Unit cohesion keeps the force together when things aren't going well. Unit cohesion is born of hundreds of Americans dedicated to a single cause, welded together into a fighting instrument by hard realists who do sometimes hold contrary opinions. But what has no place in the realm of unit cohesion, or of any aspect of combat readiness, is compulsory acceptance of behaviors that most find distracting at best and deviant at worst. The gay soldier or Marine who subordinates his behavior for the greater good of his unit gets treated like a soldier or Marine, like one of the family."

-----

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive in "Concealed carry is counterterrorism."

Money quote(s):

"We simply do not have the resources to expect that we will have police wherever the terrorists decide to attack us. They have obviously figured out that our soft underbelly is nationwide. What is going to happen when the jihadi maroons stop failing at bomb-building and decide to succeed at firing a gun into a crowd? Ignorant as these goat-raping clowns are, they can pull that off. At that point any who is not armed is a victim in waiting. But if the swine happen to hit a food court at the Mall where I am having a snack, it will turn out quite differently.

At the risk of revealing my true arrogance, I do not recognize the right of any individual or group to disarm me. So regardless of what rules petty bureaucrats may enact, I will retain my right to self defense."

Which is why the terrorists will lose against us in the end. Badly.

"This type of response is most likely to happen in red state areas and if the jihadis had any intellectual firepower they would concentrate their efforts in Chicago, NYC and DC where the government has disarmed the populace."

&

"The bottom line is that when seconds count the police are minutes away. Yet the unorganized militia is all around, kinda like the Founders figgered."

Personally, I prefer the formulation "Militia of One."

-----

Bing West at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") in "Bigotry as Opportunism."

Money quote(s):

"Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote that the Commandant of the Marine Corps “is one step short of being a bigot.” Cohen, who strongly supports homosexuals in the military, insisted that the Commandant be fired because he held a different view. According to the dictionary, ‘a bigot is one who is strongly attached to his view of politics and intolerant of those who differ.’ It is Cohen, not the Commandant of Marines, who defines the word bigot."

"His column is a clarion call to incite the very divisiveness the legislation was intended to expunge."

&

"The best way to treat a bigot is to ignore his opportunistic self-promotion. Let the Washington Post correspondents who risk their lives alongside Marines deal with Cohen and his warped journalistic ethics."

-----

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") in "Green Light."

Money quote(s):

"Ivy League schools provided the services with gifted officers for the front lines, many of whom served heroically in combat before coming home, tempered by both experiences, to build a great nation. It also provided undergraduate students who lacked the money and connections a fully-funded opportunity for a first rate education at our country’s flagship universities. All of that ended at certain Ivies during the culture turmoils of the late 1960s."

The Ivies have a golden opportunity to make themselves relevant again to the nation beyond the academic ghettos and law firms of the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Washington corridor. Or they can simply beclown themselves in an orgy of self-parody. I expect a mixed set of results, with perhaps a third of them taking the opportunity to redeem themselves.

"Now that the dreadful discrimination of DADT has been swept into the ash bin of history, the rationale for the prohibition against on-campus ROTC has lost whatever veneer of plausibility it once held."

And a thin veneer that was, a mere vapor of substance.

&

"(I)t is not just the military who have shifted south (and west). The country is doing so, or at least those who can afford to; those who are not immobilized by joblessness or the paucity of after-tax income traceable to Ivy League social and economic theories. Both the working and entreprenurial classes have seen what modern day political liberalism has to offer and are voting with their feet. The heart of America is shifting south, and it does not much surprise that the military is moving with them.

As for the Ivies, it appears the rest of us have decided that, when it comes to building and defending our nation, we might just have to do it without them."

Relevance, to coin a phrase, matters.

re: "Don't Care About "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" But The Headline Is Wrong"

Eagle1 at EagleSpeak ("The main focus of this blog is maritime security. Other matters may appear.") pretty much captures my thinking on this. Word for word.

Money quote(s):

"The military will obey the law - as it has been all along.

Now, let's see that big race to the enlistment office."

Read the whole thing.

S&S - Gay servicemembers urged to remain silent

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

Gay servicemembers urged to remain silent

By Teri Weaver, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Sunday, June 22, 2008

TOKYO — As the military considers its options in the latest round of court action surrounding its "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy regarding gays, some servicemembers are considering theirs. In her uniform, on an Army base far from home, "Stacy" searched the headlines in late May and wondered if the results of a U.S. appeals court ruling in Washington state meant she could come out as a lesbian.

Read the whole article here.

re: "Obama Aide Promises End to Don't Ask, Don't Tell; Survey Shows That 10% of the Force Won't Reenlist If He Does"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ points out the readiness issue.

Money quote(s):

"Yes, indeed, let us lose 10% of our forces during a long war in order to make life marginally easier for the 1% of our forces who are gay, and really want to tell the world about it."

"A great many progressive liberals find fault with this policy and they desire a military that embraces people's various sexual lifestyles in an open, respectful way. Unfortunately, a great many progressive liberals have absolutely no desire to serve in the military -- whether don't ask, don't tell is the law or not -- which means that the military will continue recruiting from a population which does not share the enlightened, humane, pro-homosexuality goo-goo of the progressive liberals.

Don't ask, don't tell makes military service less attractive to gays and progressive liberals. But they, largely, are not inclined to serve in any event. Repealing the code makes service less attractive to traditionalists and, yes, conservatives (as well as blacks and Hispanics) who tend to be liberal on many issues but not particularly progressive about homosexuality) who actually are inclined to serve."

&

"If Gleen Grenwald and other humane, compassionate, forward-thinking liberals announce their intention to sign up in great enough numbers to offset the losses among the current cohort of recruits, fine, we can dispense with the issue of how this policy affects the military's actual purpose -- to fight and win wars. And then we can have the debate solely on the grounds the liberals wish to have it on, on the questions of fairness and dignity and openness to diverse sexual orientations."