Category: Military issues

Has anyone seen a more embarrassing Senate hearing than the one we watched last week as Chuck Hagle did his best imitation of a doddering old fool? If that wasn’t proof that the ill-prepared ex-Senator is being nominated because he’s just going to be an executioner for this administration’s defense policy then nothing will ever prove that. If any Republicans confirm him, they need to start packing up their offices. There’s a difference between bi-partisanship and condemning our troops to the leadership that Chuck Hagle won’t bring to the Defense Department.

Even Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post thinks that Hagle should be sent back into his retirement;

It is precisely for this reason that the burden falls on Republicans to rescue the country, and I use that term deliberately. If Hagel had been nominated by President George W. Bush, not a single Democrat would vote for him and he would be scorned by the mainstream media as a dim, inappropriate candidate; they know as do Republicans that he is unfit for a serious job and the absence of a capable and competent defense secretary places the nation’s national security in jeopardy. No president who cared about the Pentagon or wanted the best and the brightest would have picked him. However, Obama did — so draw your own conclusions. And unless one party stands up to him and the Democrats, Hagel will be confirmed on a near straight party-line vote.

Of course, in a link sent to us by ROS from Time Magazine, they think that Hagle earned his third Purple Heart last week;

While many in the national-security community have endorsed Hagel’s nomination, some GOP lawmakers have argued that he is too soft on Iran, anti-Israel, and too eager to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Hagel denied the charges, but he did stumble, and many of his answers seemed tentative. He said, most notably, that the Obama Administration endorses “containment” of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, when it actually embraces “prevention.”

The consensus among congressional aides late Thursday was that Hagel will likely win committee support, largely along party lines, and also ultimately confirmation from the full Senate. But their mood was less certain late Thursday than it was on Wednesday.

Anyone who cares even a little bit about our defense will not vote for this idiot. Like I’ve said before, Hagle stepped up for paratroopers and pushed National Airborne Day through the Senate for us, but calling the surge a military blunder was undermining our efforts there. And did I mention that VoteVets likes him?

The Associated Press reports that a in a survey of 53,000 Marines, 17% of them threatened to leave the ranks if women were allowed into combat-related jobs. That number increased to 22% if women were forced into those specialties;

About 4 percent of female Marines surveyed said they would consider leaving if the ban was lifted. Even more would drop out if women were put into those positions involuntarily with about 17 percent of female respondents expressing they would cut their careers short under those circumstances.

About 31 percent of female respondents say they would be interested in moving into a combat position.

The commandant of the Marine Corps said the infantry side of the most male of all military branches is skeptical about how women will perform in their units, and some positions may end up closed again if too few females meet the physically demanding standards of combat.

Apparently, Leon Panetta knew about the results of this survey before he made his announcement last month that he’ll force this square peg into a round hole, but he’s going ahead with it anyway. I wonder if those social scientists who are pulling for this are willing to fill the slots of one-in-five Marines who say they’ll leave while their replacements get trained.

I’ve seen the media use this line as some sort of justification for putting women in those jobs;

More than 150 women have been killed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in support roles.

So, see? Women can be killed and that makes them fully qualified for combat. Its as if the media just discovered that women are mortals and that combat troop’s only significant job in combat is to die.

The other day, when Marty Dempsey and Leon Panetta announced that they were going to open combat jobs, Dempsey, they were asked by the press if their decision would lead to women being registered for the Selective Service System. Dempsey answered that he didn’t even know who the guy is that runs the SSS. Well, Marty, that guy’s name is Lawrence G. Romo. I’ve heard speculation here about whether women will be drafted or not. Well, the short answer is; no, they won’t until the Selective Service law is changed by Congress.

[In 1998,] GAO examined the issue from Selective Service cost and staffing points of view, recognizing that registration of women would require legislative action and operational and budgetary changes. “Selective Service System could register women if its authorizing legislation, the Military Selective Service Act, is amended to allow registering women,” the report stated.

The Washington Post wrote about the subject the other day;

[When Jimmy Carter reestablished draft registration in 1980 in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,] A group of men sued the director of the Selective Service at the time , Bernard D. Rostker, arguing that the exclusion of women made the registration requirement unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s due-process clause. In a 6 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that it was acceptable to exclude women. Writing for the majority, Justice William H. Rehnquist determined that “the fact that Congress and the Executive have decided that women should not serve in combat fully justifies Congress in not authorizing their registration.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall chided the ruling, saying it “places its imprimatur on one of the most potent remaining public expressions of ‘ancient canards about the proper role of women.’?”

So, since women not serving in combat was the Supreme Court’s reason for ruling for their exclusion from the draft. Someone else should sue them now that the exclusion has been lifted and see if we can’t get them drafted, too. Fair is fair, right?

The folks at the NRA sent us their latest Frontlines video, starring LTC Oliver North and it focuses on the history of the Guantanamo base in Cuba and it’s current functions aside from it’s most famous as a detention facility for the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

The base at Guantanamo has become the world’s most powerful reminder of the contrast between American individualism and freedom, and its antithesis, communist socialism. Separated by a seventeen miles of well-guarded chain-link fence, the base is still a world apart from the rest of Cuba.

They also tell us that there’s another “Stand and Fight” video in the series coming out this week.

Our buddy, Tequila Volare, sent us this missive to clear his own head on the subject;

Putting pen to paper, okay fingers to keyboard, to express my thoughts on those arguing in defense of the recent announcement from outgoing defense secretary Leon Panetta to open up combat arms to women. I am doing this more out of frustration then anything. In stating my opposition to this decision I of course have been subjected to all of the obligatory name calling from the liberals and many an indignant female. My frustration stems from the fact that I spent 22 years in the Infantry meaning I have slightly more knowledge and experience in this particular argument then my critics. One can not convey the true meaning of what it means to be a member of the Infantry in 140 characters on Twitter or in some anonymous comment on a blog which gets swallowed up in the cacophony of others voicing their opinions.

Today I have also been treated to others who have worn the uniform ranging from truck drivers to helicopter pilots who support the lifting of the ban. While I respect their service they can not equate their jobs in the military to what a grunt does day in and day out. Listening to somebody who served as a hatch gunner on a HMMV and may or may not have gotten shot at while riding around doesn’t just quite match somebody who spends days, weeks, months living out in the environment exposed to the elements with no relief in sight. The things which bind an effective Infantry unit together are all of the intangibles which aren’t taught. When you upset that delicate balance you are inviting disaster. You can not ignore the physical differences, which are obvious to anybody and while that particular aspect has been beat to death I won’t belabor that point here.

What I want to address is that unseen bond which forms in combat teams who are forced to depend on each other for their very survival. It is not enough to merely dismiss such concerns by saying service members are expected to act as professionals. They are humans too. As such they are prone to such things as emotions and normal human behavior. What follows next will inflame feminist everywhere, but when you insert a female into a cluster of testosterone laden young males they are going to act like young males in any species on this planet do. There will be fights to establish dominance. Jealousy and envy will infect the ranks. If you are more worried of getting into a firefight because your rival may use it as an excuse to get rid of his competition you have a real problem. Often times the issue of chivalry is raised. Some discount this by saying once the bullets start flying you don’t care about the sex of the person next to you. For those with chivalrous tendencies that will not be the case. Somewhere in the recesses of their mind they will be keeping an ear and eye out and therefore not concentrating on the task at hand. Lastly, in what I call the “Hey Bubba watch this” Syndrome, which can be witnessed at any coed social gathering there is always going to be the guy who does some stunt to attract attention and therefore the eye, he hopes, of the females. Doing such a stunt while on a mission can lead to disaster. You can not regulate this sort of behavior out of existence for to attempt to do so is mere folly.

One of my other favorite arguments that has been thrown at me has been that women that live in such conditions would become unappealing to their male compatriots to which I respond have you ever been in a bar at closing time? I would like to see some reporters go ask some of the wives of married service members what they think about their husband sharing a foxhole with some woman for an extended period of time. I don’t think a lot of them would be on board with that idea.

Regarding the physical difference, without getting into the weeds on that particular aspect but in keeping in the vein of this missive does anybody think there might be just a wee bit of resentment in the ranks because the female is not expected to carry the machine gun, or radio, or mortar tube? She will still be eligible for promotion provided she meets the other criteria without having fulfilled all of the duties her male counterpart would have been expected to do.

Anyway that is what I wanted to say. Go ahead, call me a chauvinistic, misogynist, pig but it doesn’t change the points I brought up for to do so would be to refute the very essence of human nature since they first appeared on the planet.

While we’re on the subject, Dejah Thoris at the Victory Girls had this discussion with her significant man, and you should read it;

I know he feels passionately about this, because he has dedicated most of his adult life to making sure that I can sleep well and live free and he feels like they are taking the last thing he had that was really “his” away. This is one of the reasons I love him so much.

ADDED: Our buddy, Kira Davis, has another view from a former Marine female pilot;

Are there a handful of women who are capable of executing ground combat jobs? Yes…in fact, my husband and I came up with a list of five women that we knew personally that had the physical aptitude and mental temperament that would fit the bill. We have 24 years of military experience between us. Should America open up 230,000 ground combat jobs when there are only a handful of applicants that are qualified?

Both written and unwritten rules of land warfare in modern times have long provided a demarcation between combatants and innocents. American troops have traditionally been more observant of that line than some of the forces aligned against us. For the most part though, that term, Women and Children, has long been the line in the sand for the warfighters of most nations. Exceptions abound, that’s true, but for most modern, major militaries, the killing stops when there is no one left but the women and the children.

How then will that stark line continue to be honored when the United States unilaterally introduces armed female infantry into the battle lines? Our enemies, most certainly, will no longer have any moral proscription against killing fully-armed, professionally-trained and thoroughly-lethal, American, female troops. By putting women on the battlefield as infantry, the US will have erased the line that has held throughout modern times. By placing them in firefights, we will have signaled the rest of the world that the United States now approves the killing of women in combat. Our foolish, politically correct government, with deliberate, liberal intent, will have introduced women into the realm of ground combat, where, by necessity, on the part of our mortal foes, they must be killed, wounded or captured to render them no longer a threat.

Once the United States of America, under the liberal administration of Barack Obama, has removed the universal and historical proscription and stigma of killing women in war, women will become fair game in any conflict around the planet. And that doesn’t just pertain to those few American women who manage to demonstrate the strength and prowess to qualify as infantry, but all women who have the misfortune to find themselves in an area of armed conflict. Who, in our own forces, will be able to know which women among those in the cities, the villages and the farm huts out there are not armed and dangerous? Will the default judgment not be that they are armed and dangerous? Facing the prospect of female American infantry, are not other nations of the world justified in training and arming their own women to fight the American forces?

As is so often true of liberals’ social reforms, they haven’t begun to consider the negative outcomes of this political success, such as the possibility that it will nullify the long-standing rule of warfare which has guided warriors of most nations for centuries. By putting American women into frontline combat on the ground, the Obama administration will put all women in the world into the crosshairs of ground combat. To satisfy liberal orthodoxy, the gender-neutral fools of the Democrat Party will have rendered uncountable millions of vulnerable sisters around the world as helpless targets. Not inconsequentially, their American sisters will go in harm’s way as well; for what nation or radical cause cannot now justify an attack on any American woman or group of women as an attack on potential combatants?

A final thought: we already suffer a high incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. How high will those rates climb when our male troops begin killing female hostiles as a predictable outgrowth of this policy decision by the Obama Administration? For that matter, how many female infantry, who are traditionally and congenitally supposed to be more sensitive than men, will succumb to PTSD after experiencing the blood and guts of engaging enemy combatants?

Panetta, you have become Pandora.

Crossposted at American Thinker.