One Standard, High Standard?

Since Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense, I’ve been waiting for him to do something meaningful.  In my mind, that would be firing large swaths of flag officers.  He hasn’t done that and I’m disappointed.  However, he’s just announced something that may be significant … if he implements it correctly and ruthlessly.  He’s announced that all personnel in combat specialties will have to meet a single physical fitness standard. 
 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the military services to require everyone who serves in a combat specialty to meet the same physical fitness standard.[1]

The obvious potential flaw in this is that, yes, the military will establish a single standard but that it will be  watered down so that women can pass it which is what has happened in the past.  Here’s exactly what he had to say,
 

I'm signing this memorandum today. The services will review and see that we have nothing but the highest and equal standards for men and women in combat.[1]

A single standard is useless unless it’s a high standard.  Will he hold the military to a high standard?  I doubt it but I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised.
 
As the article notes,
 

Every time a gender-neutral physical fitness test is rolled out, it has two results: Most men aren't challenged, and most women can't pass.[1]

If Hegseth establishes a single, high standard, it will have the effect of virtually eliminating women from combat roles – as I’ve been calling for all along.  Will Hegseth have the courage and fortitude to stand up to the inevitable outcry from the Democrats in Congress?  Again, I doubt it but I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised.
 
 
Fair warning:  we’re not going to address the political or social aspects of this – only the impact on military effectiveness.  Comment accordingly.
 
 
 
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[1]Redstate website, “Pete Hegseth Requires Everyone in Combat Units to Meet the Same Physical Fitness Standards”, streiff, 31-Mar-2025,
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/03/31/pete-hegseth-requires-everyone-in-combat-units-to-meet-the-same-physical-fitness-standards-n2187346

Women, Credibility, and Standards

Here’s a couple of recent announcements from the Navy involving female achievements:

 

• The first female has supposedly graduated from the Navy’s special operations boat group (Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, SWCC).(1)
• Command Master Chief of USS Chung Hoon (DDG 93), Josephine Tauoa, was selected as the recipient of the 2021 Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Delbert D. Black Leadership Award.(2)

 

 

I’d like to believe that these achievements were fairly earned and well deserved.  However, given the prevalence of lowered standards, gender-norming, dual standards, and command-dictated achievements (looking at you, Rangers), one can’t help but wonder if either of these achievements are legitimate and that is the insidious problem with all attempts to impose equality of results without equality of standards.  You can never be sure if the person actually earned the achievement or was simply given it to meet a quota or public relations requirement.

 

To these two women, I say, I doubt you.  … … … …  And that’s the shame of it – that I doubt what might be a real accomplishment but until standards are set high and uniformly applied, doubt will always exist.  Women should be demanding uniform, high standards … but they’re not.  Which leads to further doubt.

 

What a shame.

 

 

 

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(1)USNI News website, “First Female Navy Special Operations Sailor Graduates from Training”, Sam LaGrone, 15-Jul-2021,

https://news.usni.org/2021/07/15/first-female-navy-special-operations-sailor-graduates-from-training

 

(2)https://www.cpf.navy.mil/news.aspx/110975

Marine's New Top Priorities: Maternity Leave and Sea Denial

The new Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. David Berger, is off to a mystifying start to his tenure.  He began with a guidance document that basically said that the Marines were going to dump conventional amphibious ships in favor of small, distributed ships and that legacy systems would be eliminated to fund modernization.  No details were offered and the military community has been expectantly waiting for more information.  His guidance document offered some welcome focus on the threat of China even if some of his solutions were questionable.  As we wait for details to emerge about his new combat focus, the Commandant has made some downright baffling public statements about his priorities. 

Gen. Berger has prioritized family leave for Marines with proposals for up to a year’s leave for new mothers (1) as well as,

Furthering gender integration in job fields previously closed to women, expanding maternity leave and raising the intellectual bar for infantry troops are among the Marine Corps’ priorities, the service’s top officer said.(2)

Is this really a priority?  Not only does it have nothing to do with combat but it will clearly hurt our combat capabilities.  It also raises a host of questions.  Will new mothers be counted as combat ready troops in the Marine’s table of manning?   Will returning mothers, fresh off a year of leave and the exhaustion of infant rearing be instantly combat ready?  Of course they won’t so what good are they?  Will returning mothers have to undergo some type of refresher boot camp to get back into shape and regain their combat skills (I can’t type that without laughing but …) – essentially amounting to even more time off in terms of being a combat asset?  The Commandant wants to give female/mother Marines what amounts to a year and a half to two years off to have a child and return to combat readiness?  If a female Marine wants to have multiple children are we really going to pay them to have several years off to do the family thing?  Theoretically, a female could have several paid years off (and highly restricted duty when back) to raise a family, all on the Marine’s dime and without ever serving on a deployment or being combat capable.  Isn’t that called welfare?  Since when did the Marine Corps become a kiddie day care center or a social experimentation program?  Who’s going to fill the female’s vacated billets?  Who’s going to deploy in place of the females?  Yeah, that would be the men.  I don’t see any resentment happening because of this.

The Few, The Proud, The Mommy Welfare Group

Additional priority items include (4):

• Exempting pregnant Marines from “standing at parade rest or attention for longer than 15 minutes”
• Increased gender integration
• Increasing enlistment test scores

The few, the proud, the out of shape exhausted mothers!  The Chinese are trembling in fear.

Continuing the befuddlement, the Commandant is now stating that the Marine’s top ground forces priority is sea denial which he envisions accomplishing by placing small units with anti-ship missiles on distributed islands or land.

The Marine Corps is all in on fielding mobile anti-ship missiles in the Pacific to challenge China’s growing Navy, declaring it in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee to be its highest ground modernization priority.

“A ground-based anti-ship missile capability will provide anti-ship fires from land as part of an integrated naval anti-surface warfare campaign,” the written testimony reads. “This forward-deployed and survivable capability will enhance the lethality of our naval forces and will help to deny our adversaries the use of key maritime terrain.” (3) [emphasis added]

The Marine’s ground mission is sea control?????

The Marines, who should be concentrating on figuring out how to get an amphibious combat vehicle from 50 miles offshore to the beach, who should be working to rediscover their amphibious assault capability, who should be taking on the core mission of port seizure (my opinion, not the Marine’s), who should be frantically working on mobile anti-aircraft/anti-cruise missile capability, who should be reversing their trend of shedding tanks and artillery, who should be emphasizing ground force lethality, are now going to switch to sea denial as their new top priority?  Isn’t that the Navy’s mission?  Have the Marines solved all their problems and have so much extra budget that they can now take on a Navy responsibility?

I’m sorry but sea denial is about dead last on my list of priorities for the Marines – just ahead of maternity leave.

So, setting aside my stunned disbelief, how do the Marines see this sea denial working?

The Marines are looking at not just one but two anti-ship systems:  one is based on a remote control version of the HIMARS vehicle (why remote control?  what does that gain us if the troops are there anyway?) firing a Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile and the other is an anti-ship version of Tomahawk which would be launched from an, as yet, unknown platform.  Okay, let’s look a bit closer at this concept.

What’s the overall concept?  According to the Marines,

The Marine Corps’ concept of operations, as outlined by Berger in last year’s planning guidance,  …  the Marines want to be able to spread their forces in small groups around islands in the Pacific and deny freedom of maneuver to the Chinese fleet. (3)

Has anyone wargamed this with even a small dose of reality?  How are we going to infiltrate Chinese controlled areas and land HIMARS vehicles, missiles, men, and supplies without being seen?  You don’t transport HIMARS vehicles and Tomahawk launchers on combat canoes.  They’ll have to be transported on amphibious or cargo ships of some kind.  Won’t the Chinese kind of … you know … see that?  Or, is this more of the military’s ever-growing tendency to assume that the enemy will cooperate in their own destruction?

Honestly, this sounds like some top drawer, high quality, fantasy thinking.

Marine Corps requirements and development chief Lt. Gen. Eric Smith told reporters last year during the Expeditionary Warfare Conference that the Marines want to fight on ground of their choosing and then maneuver before forces can concentrate against them.

“They are mobile and small, they are not looking to grab a piece of ground and sit on it,” Smith said of his Marine units. “I’m not looking to block a strait permanently. I’m looking to maneuver. The German concept is ‘Schwerpunkt,’ which is applying the appropriate amount of pressure and force at the time and place of your choosing to get maximum effect.”

So, we’re disbursing small units on scattered islands and they’re somehow going to ‘maneuver before the enemy can concentrate against them’?  Uh … they’re on small islands.  How much maneuvering can they do? 

Maybe the Marines think they can maneuver to another island?  Again, how will we get large cargo ships to these remote, scattered islands to re-embark the Marines and move them to another island without being seen?

Seriously, if we can sail cargo ships (and escorts? now we’re talking large task forces – won’t those be noticed?) with utter stealth and impunity all around the enemy-controlled waters, we don’t need to use Marines to control the sea, we can just send Burkes to sail up next to the oblivious enemy ships and board them.

Wait, there’s more …

Smith describes a concept where the U.S. fleet can herd Chinese ships into a contested area where the Marines can do damage from the shore.

“So, if I’m maneuvering in support of the fleet commander in a contested, confined space, through the mobility I bring in air and with surface connectors I can get to a point and block or strike something that has been herded into a contested space – something that has been herded into that space by the fleet commander.” (3)

Again, the degree of willing cooperation and the assumed utter cluelessness of the enemy is staggering.  We’re going to set up these magic, hidden anti-ship units and the Chinese are going to allow us to ‘herd’ them into range?  Again, if we have sufficient naval force to ‘herd’ the Chinese navy then we really don’t need a few more Marine anti-ship missiles, do we?

Here’s the takeaways from this:

How do we transport large vehicles to these small, remote islands and lands without being detected?

How do we find targets that are beyond the horizon?  Are we going to build airstrips and operate long range UAVs on these small islands all without being detected?  Or, maybe we’ll use the regional network that ties all the non-survivable surveillance assets together in one ginormous, real time tactical picture?

Without long range surveillance and targeting, the effective area is limited to the horizon which is 12-15 miles from shore.

A small unit’s single launcher with one to a few missiles is of absolutely no tactical significance.  Will we land large numbers of launchers and missiles (along with reload equipment)?  If so, again, how will we conduct these large scale landings and operations without being detected?

This Commandant is all over the map.  China is his number one threat and priority and yet his first actions have to do with maternity leave????  His top ground priority is sea denial?  This guy is not giving me warm, fuzzy feelings about his grasp of the issues facing the Marines.

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(1)military.com website, “Marines' New Top Officer Wants to Give New Moms a Full Year Off”, Gina Harkins, 17-Jul-2019,

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/17/marines-new-top-officer-wants-give-new-moms-full-year.html

(2)Stars and Stripes website, “Women in more job fields, added maternity leave on top Marine’s priority list”, Immanuel Johnson, 24-Feb-2020,

https://www.stripes.com/news/women-in-more-job-fields-added-maternity-leave-on-top-marine-s-priority-list-1.620075

(3)Defense News website, “To combat the China threat, US Marine Corps declares ship-killing missile systems its top priority”, David B. Larter, 5-Mar-2020,

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/03/05/to-combat-the-china-threat-us-marine-corps-declares-ship-killing-missile-systems-its-top-priority/

(4)Marine Corps Times website, “These Are The 21 Internal Memo Items The Top Marine Wants To Immediately Change”, Philip Athey, 4-Mar-2020,

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2020/03/04/these-are-the-21-internal-memo-items-the-commandant-wants-to-immediately-change-in-the-corps/

Deploy Or Get Out

The Navy remains mystified why there is resentment towards women in the service.  Well, for those Navy leaders too stupid to figure it out, the answer is that the service habitually shows favoritism towards women and gives them special treatment.  Here’s the latest example.

The Navy has declared that non-deployable sailors will be evaluated for separation from the service. (1)  Hey, that makes sense and ComNavOps fully supports that.  After all, the Navy is a sea-going organization, at its core, and those who can’t deploy are a liability and a burden that has to be compensated for by those who can deploy. 

Of course, what exception was immediately carved out of the non-deployable policy?  You know, right?  Pregnant women, of course.

Now, pregnancy is not something you catch, like the common cold.  It’s not something that just happens, like an accident.  Pregnancy is a choice.  Pregnancy is a self-inflicted condition.  Correct me if I’m wrong about this but it’s a violation of the UCMJ (Article 115) to cause a self-inflicted injury that prevents a service member from carrying out their duty.  How is pregnancy any different? 

Pregnancy is different because it involves women.  Women are coddled, catered to, and favored via policy, both formal and informal, in the military.  Is it any wonder that there is so much resentment towards women?

Rather not ship out on your next deployment?

• If you’re a man, tough luck.
• If you’re a woman, get pregnant.

The military claims equality for women but every policy that’s implemented favors women and offers them special treatment. 

I Need Someone To Deploy For Me

If the Navy wants to be taken seriously with regards to women then women have to be treated equally.  Pregnancy should be grounds for court-martial and separation.

Fun fact:  Roughly 9% of the women in the military are pregnant. (4)

Fun fact:  The Military Health website states that 13.1% of Women Of Child Bearing Potential (WOCBP – yes, that’s an actual category) had a least one “pregnancy related event”. (5)

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(1)Navy Times website, “Navy warns sailors who can’t deploy that they will be reviewed for involuntary separation”, Mark Faram, 26-Sep-2018,

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/09/26/navy-warns-sailors-who-cant-deploy-that-they-will-be-reviewed-for-involuntary-separation/

(2)Navy Times, “Go To Sea Or Go Home”, Mark Faram, 4-Oct-2018,

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/10/04/go-to-sea-or-go-home/

(3)https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military

(4)Calculated:  Ref (3) cites 1.3M active duty personnel across all services with women making up around 17%.  Ref (2) cites 20,000 women pregnant in the services, currently.  Thus, around 221,000 women serving making the pregnancy rate around 9%.

(5)https://health.mil/News/Gallery/Infographics/2017/12/21/Pregnancies-and-live-births-among-female-service-members

Navy Prepares For Combat

This was a real headline from a Navy Times article:

“Carrier John C. Stennis throws sexual assault awareness rodeo” (1)

 “The SAPR [Sexual Assault Prevention and Response] Rodeo consisted of games such as rope toss, trivia and an obstacle course all designed to teach Sailors about the different facets of the SAPR program.” (1)

And we’re unsure why our combat readiness isn’t what it should be and why our ships are colliding and running aground because we don't have enough training time?

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(1)Navy Times website, “Carrier John C. Stennis throws sexual assault awareness rodeo”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 23-Apr-2018, 

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/04/23/carrier-john-c-stennis-throws-sexual-assault-awareness-rodeo/

Recruiting Women For The Military

USNI News website has an interesting article about the military’s efforts to recruit women and why they aren’t doing more. (1)

“Lawmakers Friday morning challenged the military personnel chiefs to redouble their efforts recruiting and retaining female service-members …”

Here’s what the response to that challenge should have been:  “Why?  Why would we want more women in the military?  What do they bring to the table?”

What’s the official response?  Well, it’s along these lines,

“…not doing so means potentially missing out on selecting the best from half the nation’s talent pool.”

Yeah, we’d be missing out on the best of the least capable half of the talent pool!  That’s the point that everyone glosses over.  With a few job exceptions, women are not capable of contributing to combat. 

It’s not even debatable that women are a detriment in combat.  They simply don’t have the physical capabilities that are needed and, as a group, lack the mental/emotional aggressiveness to be effective in combat.

The problem with women in the military and, particularly, in combat, is that the discussion leapt right over the merits and into implementation.  All the studies that I’m aware of have uniformly shown that women are a detriment in combat.  I’m unaware of any study showing any benefit to having women in combat.  Despite that, we’re totally focused on implementation.

That said, there are jobs in the military that women can fill quite ably.  Here’s a few examples,

• Computers – computer operators, programmers, network techs, etc.
• Medical – Non-combat medical jobs such as doctors, nurses, med techs, lab techs, etc.
• Rear area maintenance – aircraft, armor, and equipment maintenance as long as it doesn’t involve strength (such as tank track maintenance)
• Pilots – non-combat transport pilots;  I’m undecided about female combat pilots.   I’d have to talk to male pilots to see if women can handle combat flying.  I have doubts but I don’t know.

One of the approaches the military is proposing to recruit more women is to have more contact with women’s sports teams – the theory being that these are the type of women who are already superior in physical capabilities and mental attributes such as determination, motivation, and toughness.  You know what?  They’re right!  Unfortunately, the best of women are pathetically behind even the worst male athletes or even average non-athlete males.  I’ve witnessed female college basketball players get demolished by extremely average high school males.  The physical disparities are simply too great to overcome.

According to the military,

“We’re making progress. It’s slow, but we’re making progress.”

Hey, don’t apologize for not wrecking the military faster!

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(1)USNI News website, “Military Branches Are Doing More to Recruit Women into Active Duty”, Ben Werner, 13-Apr-2018,

https://news.usni.org/2018/04/13/service-branches-want-more-women

Only A War Can Save Us From Ourselves

We’ve thoroughly documented the disjointed thinking of Navy leadership, the hollowness of the fleet, and myriad other problems.  Of all the Navy’s problems, social engineering is, arguably, the biggest and worst.  The other problems can be fixed in relatively short order.  Maintenance could be drastically improved almost overnight if the Navy suddenly wanted to.  Better aircraft and ship designs could be implemented within five years, as we’ve proposed.  Weapon systems could be brought up to the level of the rest of the world in a heartbeat.

The problem that can’t be fixed, once it takes hold, is social engineering.  Social engineering is the artificial manipulation of the military’s personnel with the goal of reflecting the demographic trends seen in society at large.  Well, what’s wrong with that?  Shouldn’t our military reflect the society it serves?  Even if it doesn’t quite reflect society’s makeup, setting that composition as a goal is admirable, isn’t it?  No, it isn’t.  It’s stupid, demeaning to those involved, and produces effects exactly contrary to those desired.  Let’s look a bit closer at the very concept.

Forcing an organization or group’s demographics to conform to society’s demographics ignores choice and human nature.  It assumes, naively, that all members of society want to be members of sub-groups in ratios exactly equal to society’s demographics.

Further, it assumes that all members of society are exactly equal in all respects - physical, mental, and emotional - and this is just utter nonsense.

Did you know that nearly 100% of live births are produced by women?  This is an outrage and must be stopped.  Men should be allowed to produce 50% of the births and, if necessary, the courts should step in to break the stranglehold that women currently have on this practice.  Women are practicing systematic oppression of men by keeping this important function to themselves.  Are not all people, men and women, exactly equal and exactly equally capable of all things?

Some of you, a few misguided souls, probably believe that there is an obvious physical reason for this discrepancy and that physical differences should excuse performance differences and be the justification for this abhorrent discrimination against men.  We know, however, that physical differences are not a reason for differences in performance.  How do we know this?  Because our senior military leadership has assured us that women are exactly equal to men even in jobs that require superior strength and stamina.  Men are not inherently stronger than women – women have just not been given the same opportunity to train to the required strength.  The pictures you’ve seen of troops marching while women have no packs and men carry their packs for them are not a sign of any inherent physical weakness on the part of women.  Instead, those pictures make clear the gender-malicious lack of training opportunity imposed on women and preventing them from easily carrying the same weight that a man can carry.

I had a little fun with that example but it demonstrates, to anyone stupid enough to require the demonstration, that men and women are not equal.  They have physical differences that manifest themselves as performance differences.

OB/GYN doctors are 75% female.  Why?  Who knows?  Women just seem to prefer that medical specialty and men do not.  Should we mandate 50% men and 50% women OB/GYN doctors?  That would be absurd.  Let men and women choose what they prefer and enjoy.  And yet, mandating choice is exactly what the military is engaging in. 

“The proposal, sent to Defense Secretary Ash Carter for approval, would require the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to consider minority candidates for key jobs such as aide-de-camp and military assistant to senior leaders. “

Well, what’s wrong with that?  Forcing the military to “consider” minorities can’t be a bad thing, can it?  Of course not.  However, it’s a very thin line between “considering” and a quota system premised on reverse discrimination.  In the civilian world, when dealing with race, society was unable to avoid mere removal of barriers and leapt enthusiastically into quotas which set the civil rights movement back significantly by making all minority hires suspect.  Did they get the job because they earned it or because they were part of a quota? 

The point is that the military, even more than the civilian world, must have the best in every position.  If that results in an all black, or all Asian, or all male, or all female, or all white officer corps (or SEAL Team or infantry unit or whatever), or any mix thereof, then so be it. 

Here’s some interesting data.

“Overall, the active duty force of more than 1 million troops is about 69% white, 17% black and 4% Asian, according to Pentagon figures.”

The article did not include data for Hispanics.

Compare that to the overall US racial demographics, according to Wiki, which has the US at 64% white, 16% Hispanic, 12% black, and 5% Asian.

Thus, the military is pretty close to the US societal makeup.  So, what problem are we solving?  But, I digress …

Our leadership is concerned.

“Carter believes that emphasizing diversity is essential for the military to attract and retain the troops it needs for the future, …”

Again, what problem are we solving?  Perhaps Carter is unaware of the actual data?  But, I digress …

To be fair and clear, the military appears more concerned with subsets in the military that don’t reflect society at large.  Thus, while the overall makeup is virtually identical to society, certain groups such as officers, SEALs, or whatever, may not be and this is what the military leadership apparently wants to address.

For example,

“The Pentagon’s most elite forces, including Navy SEALs, are virtually all-white. Last year, the paper reported that eight of 753 SEAL officers were black, or 1%.”

So, how does the military plan to address the imbalances?

“The plan before Carter would direct each of the services to establish goals for race, ethnicity and gender among the officers it commissions to “reflect the diverse population in the United States eligible to serve in our military. Undertaking the additional effort to identify and recruit a diverse candidate pool will help us build a stronger force and expose more Americans to the opportunity to serve in our military.”

“The proposal calls on the services to report to Carter by May 1 on how they will incorporate the policy into their diversity initiatives.”

We earlier mentioned the fine line between goals and quotas and this sounds like a hair’s breadth from being a quota.  We’ve seen that women will be placed in units on a quota basis, performance be damned, and now this.

Now, for the main point of this post which is that not everyone wants to be part of every subset in proportions exactly equal to society’s makeup.  We’ve seen that females constitute a greater than demographically expected portion of OB/Gyn doctors.  Why?  It’s just personal preferences.  Should we force doctors who don’t want to be OB/Gyns to become one in order to satisfy demographic equality while artificially excluding female doctors who do want to be OB/Gyns just because women are over represented in that field?  Most of us would probably think not – that personal preference is fine even if it leads to “imbalanced” demographics relative to society.

“Expanding the pool of minority candidates for combat leadership has proved challenging for the Pentagon. Young black men, for decades, have opted for other fields, including logistics.”

What about qualifications?  If not enough men are choosing OB/Gyn, should we grab people off the street and pronounce them OB/Gyn doctors?  Of course not – they’re not qualified.  Why, then, would we force service men and women into roles they don’t want or are not qualified for?

Of course, there’s a larger issue when we talk about qualifications and that is societal background.  A young white male may enter the military more qualified than a young black male due to their individual histories of education, family life, experience, etc.  That, however, is an issue largely outside the control of the military.  Addressing the issue by forcing people into quota spots is not the answer, as society has discovered.  Quotas will simply ensure that unqualified people are set up for failure and that bias, to the extent it exists, and resentment among those who are qualified but excluded due to quotas will only increase.

The result of social engineering in the military will, inevitably, be units that are poorly suited for their tasks.  During peacetime, we can get away with poor performance and combat inefficiencies.  When war comes, however, our enemies will quickly make clear the idiocy of our social engineering policies.  Combat does not care about demographics.  Combat is the ultimate form of blind justice.  The competent will survive and the unqualified will die.  At that point, and only then, will we begin to revise our policies and implement common sense measures.  Only a war can save us from ourselves.

Note: Before you jump in with a comment about what you think I wrote, go back and reread the post and be sure that I actually wrote what you think I wrote.  I will be merciless on comments that are not based on what was actually written.  You've been warned.

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(1)Military Times website, “Pentagon proposal on 'Rooney Rule' for minority officers raising internal concerns”, Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, April 14, 2016,

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2016/04/13/pentagon-proposal-rooney-rule-minority-officers-raising-internal-concerns/83004196/

Misandry Rears Its Ugly Head In The Military

Well, you knew this would happen.  The scared sheep of Navy/Marine leadership have opted to make the male portion of the nude photo sharing incident a criminal act under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and have done nothing about the female portion, the actual posing for nude photos (1).  This kind of man-hating misandry (meaning, strongly predjudiced against men;  the counterpart word to mysogeny) has been demonstrated by shallow minded, timid, PC-cowed Navy/Marine leaders before but this incident has raised the phenomenon to new levels.  The actual posing and generation of nude photos/pornography, no matter how reprehensible, is allowed because it is done by women but the sharing of the photos has been criminalized because it is done by men.

In the linked article, CNO Richardson wonders why men continue to disrespect women.  He is oblivious to the fact that, as we recently posted, you disrespect those for whom you have no respect and you have no respect for those who are not held accountable to the same standards.  Shame on you, women!  Where are the female voices rising in protest over the questionable judgment of their sisters?  Where are the female voices demanding equal treatment in the form of criminalizing the posing for nude photos?  The women appear to want respect without the effort of earning the respect.  That’s the definition of hypocrisy. 

Once again, men have been prejudicially singled out for one-sided punishment and ill-treatment.  We must eliminate this kind of misandry from the military.

Women, I have no respect for you.  Get out of my military until you’re willing to earn your way in and accept accountability for your own behavior.  Take your vile misandristic prejudices and go back to your unenlightened caves.

_________________________________

(1)Navy Times, “Sailors, Marines Have New Regulations on Sharing ‘Intimate’ Images Without Consent; Violators Could Face 2 Years in Prison”, Sam LaGrone, 19-Apr-2017,

https://news.usni.org/2017/04/19/sailors-marines-new-regulations-sharing-intimate-images-without-consent-violators-face-2-years-prison

It Has To Work Both Ways

You’ve all heard about the Marine Corps uproar over nude photos of female personnel.  That’s not the kind of subject I cover and that’s not the point of this post, at least not directly.  CNO Richardson recently issued a message to Navy commanders that the Navy shares the same root problems with regards to its treatment of women.  Here’s some of what he had to say (1).

"But we get reminders of it every day, when we disrespect women by crude jokes, wisecracks, sexual harassment, and in its worst manifestation, sexual assault -- a serious violent crime," he wrote in the message. "Despite a steady effort to get after this, we're not making progress."

He gets it.  Well, part of it.  We’ll get to the part he doesn’t get in just a bit.  He’s describing the tip-of-the-iceberg phenomenon.  The faulty behavior that we see – the photos – is just the tip of the iceberg.  As he notes, there are hundreds of other behaviors, less “serious”, that support and build towards the identified problem which is the photos.  These lesser problems are what grow the larger ones.

Now, here’s where CNO Richardson begins to reveal that he has no idea what the real root cause of the problem is.

“He called on rank-and-file sailors to "become intolerant" and openly denounce sexist and degrading behavior, and do what they could to put a stop to it when they observed it. Commanding officers and other leaders, he wrote, should challenge their command leaders at the small team level to discuss what respect for fellow troops means in every setting, including online.”

Did you pick up on the key phrase in the passage?  Here it is:

“…discuss what respect for fellow troops means in every setting …”

I’ll analyze that in a moment but let’s look a bit deeper.  Here’s additional statements from Richardson that show that he has absolutely no idea what the problem is.  He is totally ignorant and he’s a hypocrite.

"Make it clear that individuals who can't live up to our professional standards in competence and character are not welcome in our Navy," he wrote. "Make it clear that our standards call us to a higher commitment than the law -- we are better than that."

Did you pick up on the key phrase?  Here it is:

“… individuals who can't live up to our professional standards in competence … are not welcome in our Navy.”

Now, let’s pull this all together.

Women are being disparaged on a daily basis, according to Richardson.  No doubt there is an element of oversensitivity (feminization) at play, here, as well.  Good natured ribbing is a normal aspect of human interaction but when directed at a female is used as an example of disrespect.  On the other hand, there is, without doubt, genuine disrespect directed towards women on a daily basis.  I’m not here to debate the frequency.  I’m here to analyze the “why”. 

Why are women being disrespected?  The answer is blindingly obvious to all but Navy leadership and here is the answer:

You disrespect people you have no respect for.

Take a moment and absorb the utter simplicity and truth in that.  In fact, say it again.  You disrespect people you have no respect for.

Why don’t service personnel - Marine, Navy, or whoever - respect women?  Again, the answer is blindingly obvious.  It’s because they aren’t held to the same standard of performance.  No one respects another who is accorded preferential treatment.  No one respects another who is given benefits without earning them.  I’m not even going to bother to recite the entire litany of reduced standards that women are accorded but the men see it on a daily basis.  Whether it’s reduced physical training standards, preferential selection for assignments or promotions, retries at training that are not generally accorded men (Kara Hultgreen, for example, or ranger training), unofficial quotas that allow women preferential assignments, benefits that men can’t enjoy (pregnancy reduced duties and leave), or any of the hundreds of other daily biases that favor women, the net result of all that preferential treatment is what grows the resentment that leads to the disrespect the men display towards the women.

Every sensitivity training session just breeds more resentment.  Every time a male soldier is forced to carry a female’s pack it just breeds more resentment.  When a general stares at the instructors and announces that a woman WILL pass Ranger school, it just breeds resentment.  When the Marines conduct experiments proving that women, either as a group or in mixed groups, cannot perform as well as men and the results of the experiment are ignored, it just breeds resentment.  Every time a male Marine is doing pull ups while watching a female simply hang from the bar, it breeds resentment.  And the list goes on.

Now, let’s reexamine CNO Richardson’s comments.

“…discuss what respect for fellow troops means in every setting …”

He said, “respect for fellow troops IN EVERY SETTING”.  Those settings have to include training, physical performance testing, etc. or it’s just hypocritical and the men will see right through it.  You can’t demand respect for women unless you treat them exactly the same and hold them to the exact same standards.

“… individuals who can't live up to our professional standards in competence … are not welcome in our Navy.”

He said, “individuals who can't live up to our professional standards … are not welcome in our Navy”, and yet the women, who demonstrably cannot meet the same standards as men are not only still welcome in “our Navy” but are accorded preferential treatment!  That’s the height of hypocrisy.  No wonder the men have no respect for women.

It has to work both ways.  You can’t force respect for a group that is not earning respect.  If you want respect, earn it.  You also have to respect the men who have had to earn their way and meet higher standards.  You respect them by not disrespecting them by according women special privileges and benefits that the men don't get.  It has to work both ways.

Update:  Reader "DJF" made an absolutely astute observation that leads me to this addition. This is yet another example of the differing standards for men and women.  The military is fired up about the lack of respect and judgement shown by the men who post and view nude photos of women and will do everything they can to prosecute/persecute the guilty but no Marine/Navy leader has mentioned the incredible lack of judgement and self-respect demonstrated by the women involved.  If the women don't want nude photos spread around, they shouldn't take, or have taken, nude photos.  Who is holding the women to account for their part in this?  If the women want respect they have to earn it.  This does not earn it.

CNO Richardson is demonstrating utter ignorance on the subject and is merely parroting the political correctness line of propaganda.  He is demonstrating his complete absence of intelligence, integrity, and moral courage.

CNO Richardson, you are not living up to our professional standards and you are not welcome in our Navy.

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(1)“Military.com website, “Navy's Top Officer to Commanders: 'We Have a Problem'”, Hope Hodge Seck, 14-Mar-2017,

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/03/14/navys-top-officer-to-commanders-we-have-a-problem.html

The End Of The Marines

The Few.  The Proud.  The Marines.

An elite fighting force that only wants the toughest and best fighting men.  Their recruitment advertising basically said that they didn’t want you because you probably weren’t tough enough for them.  Their reputation was legendary and well earned.

And then they accepted women. 

And now they’re placing women in combat units. 

So much for the Marine Corps’ reputation.  You can’t claim to be the best, now, can you?  Even the Marines admit they’re just going to be average.

“The [gender equity] trainers often ask him [Lt. Col. Larry Coleman, integration branch head with Manpower Plans and Policies] why the service is opening all combat jobs to women if mixed-gender teams did not perform as well as their all-male counterparts during the service's Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force experiment.

“We tell them that, yes, the majority of the tasks they performed at a lower level; however, their performance was not unsatisfactory,” Coleman said. “Their performance and the attacks that they executed were not failures. They just were potentially slower, maybe it was less accurate – whatever the metric that was being used for that particular task.” (1)

Well, there you have it in a nutshell.  The Marines are now content to be “not failures” and “not unsatisfactory”.  Wow.  That’s a high bar to meet, huh?.  Not unsatisfactory.  Few people can rise to the level of not unsatisfactory.  Will medal citations now include the phrase “not unsatisfactory”?  Will our next generation of heroes be not unsatisfactory?

A proud fighting force brought down.  Not by the Chinese or Russians but by social engineering.  Someday I’ll tell my kids about things they’ve never seen and probably don’t believe ever existed like rotary dial phones, record players, floppy discs, and Devil Dogs. 

It’s getting harder and harder to see what the Marines bring to the table that the Army and Air Force don’t already have.  This is really sad.

The Commonplace.  The Not Unsatisfactory.  The Marines.

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(1)Marine Corps Times website, “All Marines to undergo 2-day training as women join combat units”, Jeff Schogol, June 16, 2016,

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2016/06/16/all-marines-undergo-2-day-training-women-join-combat-units/85982256/