Sending women into combat, like the end of the ban on official homosexuality, has been met with worried remarks about its impact on the "warrior culture". But the new military that the left has been building for some time now is not interested in warriors; it wants peacekeepers.
The old army fought for a nation. The new one fights for vague concepts
such as human rights or international law. Its goals are as intangible
as those of the ideology it serves. It doesn't fight actual enemies, but
concepts and social problems. It fights against climate change, poverty and
obesity. It fights for education, tolerance and the right of everyone to
the gender of their choice. It isn't really the army, it's the hall
monitors of the United Nations, the State Department, NATO and every liberal group
on the planet.
Their ideal new soldier is not a warrior; he speaks three languages, appears non-threatening and can direct refugees, hand out aid to them and quickly pick up the local culture and religion. He is uncritical when witnessing child molestation, human sacrifice or any other quaint local custom. He is willing to die, not for his country, but to win the hearts and minds of the locals. He will not fire in self-defense if there is a single unarmed man, woman or child within twenty miles.
American soldiers have played the role of peacekeepers before, but in the new military that is their only role. They are the Peace Corps, riding in under a U.N. flag when the video game boys back across the ocean have used remote drones to take out that portion of the enemy force that didn't manage to find a human shield in time. Their mission is to set up generators, dig wells, patrol roads and smile a lot, unless smiling is not approved of by the local culture.
A warrior culture is supplementary to peacekeeping requirements. Warriors try to kill things. They want to win wars, instead of accepting that conflicts can only be resolved through negotiations and that their presence is a negotiating tactic, not a fight for survival.
The new soldier is a policeman of the world, watching crimes that he isn't allowed to stop. He is a diplomat with a gun. He isn't there to shoot anyone, except as an absolute last resort. Rather he is there to represent the United States on that great mission that is the only task of worth in a fatherless country, to be a role model. He is there, smiling and handing out candy, to convince the locals that even though we bombed their country, frightened their sheep and wiped out a lot of their smuggling income, that they should not hate the United States of America.
The old army projected the hard power of killing the people who wanted to fight us until they were either dead or willing to switch to competing with us by making transistor radios and electric shavers. The new army projects the soft power of winning over the locals so that they don't want to fight us anymore. It's not about winning wars, it's about preventing the need for wars; even when already in the middle of a war.
To do all this our military has to become less American and more European, less imperial and more multilateral, an international consensus building exercise with bullets that aren't meant to be fired. It has to become more tolerant and accepting. It has to lose the "warrior culture" and swap it in for the urban liberal culture that values consensus over performance and ideological conformity over all else.
The left is not comfortable with an army that is out of step with its values. A large standing army is a dangerous thing. Neutering it will take generations, but the left just won another four years in which it can have its way with national defense. And its way is to hollow out every institution, religion, workplace and family until they exist for no other reason than to pass on and implement its ideas.
The only way that liberals will ever accept the military is through the liberalization of the military into a force that projects their social values and fights to promote them abroad through human rights peacekeeping operations, rather than national defense. And when the peacekeeping force arrives in Timbuktu, Aleppo or Ramallah, it has to carry with it the liberal standard and convey to all the natives that the United States is wonderful because it represents gay rights, girl power and the wars on obesity, poverty and cholera.
The natives will not be impressed, nor will the men and women who will have to do far more shooting and dying than the plan called for, but Washington D.C. will be gratified, and the worst of the bunch, the ones who eagerly take to the party line and do none of the fighting but all of the talking will move up the promotion ladder, those who do not will be tried for war crimes in a new army that reflects the liberal belief that war is the ultimate crime.
Much of this has already happened. The United States no longer fights wars, it engages in military reconstruction projects. The aftermath of World War II has become the template for every war with the conflict as a prelude to the nation-building exercise. Occupation becomes the purpose of war and also the bloodiest part of the war. And the wars can hardly even be called wars because they are never truly fought.
The "Shock and Awe" punch is always pulled as the jets fly overhead but never hit hard enough in the new soft power age. The war is taken to the enemy just enough to cost a lot of lives, but not enough to defeat him. Instead of a definite trajectory, there is only an endless twilight, a holding action being fought by a new generation of men realizing that like their fathers, they are no longer in it to win it. The real war is being waged by politicians using troop deployments as counters for cobbling together coalitions of the people they are fighting into a working government.
Yesterday's insurgent is tomorrow's ally arriving to be armed and trained as a police officer or soldier and the day after tomorrow's enemy, unexpectedly turning his weapon on the men who trained him. There is no sense in such wars, and less honor and fulfillment in fighting them. These are not the wars of a warrior culture, but of the police patrols in the more dangerous parts of Detroit, Miami or Chicago. Long senseless conflicts in which victory is not even a relevant concept, and the only hope for going home lies in following the rules of community policing when breaking bread and working out truces with the local gangs and their drug dealing warlords long enough for them to throw together a sham government that will allow Washington D.C. to declare another humanitarian mission accomplished.
The new general has all the problems of an empire, without any of the power and freedom of action of an empire. The new colonel is looking to write a book about the lessons he learned from meeting other cultures in the hopes of getting the attention of the boys upstairs who are always concerned with finding new ways of winning the hearts and minds of the people sending soldiers home in body bags. The new captain is growing a beard and learning Urdu. The new lieutenant is making sure that all the transsexual servicethings are comfortable and serving in a friendly welcoming environment. And the new soldier is there to represent a country that he no longer recognizes in a country where everyone is trying to kill him.
Warrior culture is still necessary, even mandatory, but it's also outlawed. Like the urban police force, the ethos must be smuggled in under a disguise of community policing and midnight basketball. It's there because without it nothing will happen except a tripling of the murder rate. It's there despite the social reformers and social workers, the progressive policymakers and the visionaries in ivory towers. It's there because when things get bad enough, the politicians who demonize guns and shame the little boys who still want to play cowboys and aliens during recess need them to save the day. And that's the new army too.
The new soldier is expected to be a psychological cripple or a social worker with nothing in between because there is no longer any room for the warrior, only the worrier, the neurotic who knows that he is moral because he is always questioning everything except his own intelligence and his premises. He knows that he will more likely be honored for cowardice under fire, than courage under fire, and that the greatest honors will go not those who dare, but to those who exemplify a political quota. And yet among the ranks of the new soldiers, the old soldiers still predominate, doing the hard thankless work of keeping a national defense establishment that does not care for them from falling apart.
Their ideal new soldier is not a warrior; he speaks three languages, appears non-threatening and can direct refugees, hand out aid to them and quickly pick up the local culture and religion. He is uncritical when witnessing child molestation, human sacrifice or any other quaint local custom. He is willing to die, not for his country, but to win the hearts and minds of the locals. He will not fire in self-defense if there is a single unarmed man, woman or child within twenty miles.
American soldiers have played the role of peacekeepers before, but in the new military that is their only role. They are the Peace Corps, riding in under a U.N. flag when the video game boys back across the ocean have used remote drones to take out that portion of the enemy force that didn't manage to find a human shield in time. Their mission is to set up generators, dig wells, patrol roads and smile a lot, unless smiling is not approved of by the local culture.
A warrior culture is supplementary to peacekeeping requirements. Warriors try to kill things. They want to win wars, instead of accepting that conflicts can only be resolved through negotiations and that their presence is a negotiating tactic, not a fight for survival.
The new soldier is a policeman of the world, watching crimes that he isn't allowed to stop. He is a diplomat with a gun. He isn't there to shoot anyone, except as an absolute last resort. Rather he is there to represent the United States on that great mission that is the only task of worth in a fatherless country, to be a role model. He is there, smiling and handing out candy, to convince the locals that even though we bombed their country, frightened their sheep and wiped out a lot of their smuggling income, that they should not hate the United States of America.
The old army projected the hard power of killing the people who wanted to fight us until they were either dead or willing to switch to competing with us by making transistor radios and electric shavers. The new army projects the soft power of winning over the locals so that they don't want to fight us anymore. It's not about winning wars, it's about preventing the need for wars; even when already in the middle of a war.
To do all this our military has to become less American and more European, less imperial and more multilateral, an international consensus building exercise with bullets that aren't meant to be fired. It has to become more tolerant and accepting. It has to lose the "warrior culture" and swap it in for the urban liberal culture that values consensus over performance and ideological conformity over all else.
The left is not comfortable with an army that is out of step with its values. A large standing army is a dangerous thing. Neutering it will take generations, but the left just won another four years in which it can have its way with national defense. And its way is to hollow out every institution, religion, workplace and family until they exist for no other reason than to pass on and implement its ideas.The only way that liberals will ever accept the military is through the liberalization of the military into a force that projects their social values and fights to promote them abroad through human rights peacekeeping operations, rather than national defense. And when the peacekeeping force arrives in Timbuktu, Aleppo or Ramallah, it has to carry with it the liberal standard and convey to all the natives that the United States is wonderful because it represents gay rights, girl power and the wars on obesity, poverty and cholera.
The natives will not be impressed, nor will the men and women who will have to do far more shooting and dying than the plan called for, but Washington D.C. will be gratified, and the worst of the bunch, the ones who eagerly take to the party line and do none of the fighting but all of the talking will move up the promotion ladder, those who do not will be tried for war crimes in a new army that reflects the liberal belief that war is the ultimate crime.
Much of this has already happened. The United States no longer fights wars, it engages in military reconstruction projects. The aftermath of World War II has become the template for every war with the conflict as a prelude to the nation-building exercise. Occupation becomes the purpose of war and also the bloodiest part of the war. And the wars can hardly even be called wars because they are never truly fought.
The "Shock and Awe" punch is always pulled as the jets fly overhead but never hit hard enough in the new soft power age. The war is taken to the enemy just enough to cost a lot of lives, but not enough to defeat him. Instead of a definite trajectory, there is only an endless twilight, a holding action being fought by a new generation of men realizing that like their fathers, they are no longer in it to win it. The real war is being waged by politicians using troop deployments as counters for cobbling together coalitions of the people they are fighting into a working government.
Yesterday's insurgent is tomorrow's ally arriving to be armed and trained as a police officer or soldier and the day after tomorrow's enemy, unexpectedly turning his weapon on the men who trained him. There is no sense in such wars, and less honor and fulfillment in fighting them. These are not the wars of a warrior culture, but of the police patrols in the more dangerous parts of Detroit, Miami or Chicago. Long senseless conflicts in which victory is not even a relevant concept, and the only hope for going home lies in following the rules of community policing when breaking bread and working out truces with the local gangs and their drug dealing warlords long enough for them to throw together a sham government that will allow Washington D.C. to declare another humanitarian mission accomplished.
The new general has all the problems of an empire, without any of the power and freedom of action of an empire. The new colonel is looking to write a book about the lessons he learned from meeting other cultures in the hopes of getting the attention of the boys upstairs who are always concerned with finding new ways of winning the hearts and minds of the people sending soldiers home in body bags. The new captain is growing a beard and learning Urdu. The new lieutenant is making sure that all the transsexual servicethings are comfortable and serving in a friendly welcoming environment. And the new soldier is there to represent a country that he no longer recognizes in a country where everyone is trying to kill him.
The new soldier is expected to be a psychological cripple or a social worker with nothing in between because there is no longer any room for the warrior, only the worrier, the neurotic who knows that he is moral because he is always questioning everything except his own intelligence and his premises. He knows that he will more likely be honored for cowardice under fire, than courage under fire, and that the greatest honors will go not those who dare, but to those who exemplify a political quota. And yet among the ranks of the new soldiers, the old soldiers still predominate, doing the hard thankless work of keeping a national defense establishment that does not care for them from falling apart.
Comments
You are mistaken here. The purpose of having women and homosexuals in the military is that they are much more ruthless in killing. They are more emotional, and they can more easily be whipped into a frenzy to kill those whom they have been trained to hate. Their emotions overcome any sense of moral restraint they may have. Women and homosexual combatants are necessary if Obama is going to use the military to kill conservative white males in America.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can be easily whipped up to kill those they hate. Soldiers can easily be whipped to kill even those they don't hate. History offers plenty of examples of that.
ReplyDeleteDamn good article like usual.
ReplyDeleteThat picture of soldiers consulting the locals sums up the current and previous decade of futility in the new-age concept of war very well. The Allies didn't consult with Nazi's try to win their hearts and minds, only to hand the country back to them after they killed our soldiers, and blew up infrastructure that we built for them.
No.
We fought WWII the only way one can fight a war, and ironically, much more humanely. We crushed and crippled their military might, chased them from the lands they occupied and killed as many of them as possible. End result: A free Germany (well, at least the West, since the East was under the Left's mentor's control).
Point being that turning war into a game of social engineering experiments only prolongs the suffering. It's like tearing off a Band-Aid. Quick and violent hurts less than prolonged and meek.
Okay, here goes. This probably won't pass the PC filter but I want to sound off anyway.
ReplyDeleteI am a 20+ year retired veteran. I will state, unequivocally, that some of the best pilots I know and have flown with are wowen. Fact, they have motor skills and finess that men lack.
What I doubt, though is the ability of women to endure the hard scrabble world of the infantry. I know many women, hell I'm married to one, and I don't think they're up to digging a hole and dealing with being cold, hungry, tired and scared. Plus, the FUSA in which we live is not prepared for dead females in body bags.
There, you have my opinion. It stinks as much as any other. If you disagree, fire at will.
A big fuck you to the PTB.
Out.
Good article. As a Marine Nam veteran, I have to say I would not make it in the military today. Marines have always existed to kill anything put in front of them that is a threat. Pacification doesn't work with enemies, and women will not be able to hack the daily life of a grunt. Of course, everyone has computers and cell phones now so the military is different and failing fast.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent article which touched on a subject few discuss. That is the ruthless punished handed out to our true warriors who do just what they are supposed to do.Which is kill the enemy. Our prisons are being filled with heroes whose crime was failure to follow the destructive and idiotic rules of engagement.
ReplyDeleteFor a very long time – decades – the feminists have been campaigning hard to take the "feminine" out of women. This campaign of course comports perfectly with political correctness and egalitarianism, which has corroded everything in Western culture, from language to social graces to personal relationships to the job market (the police, firefighters, construction work). Because the politically correct and egalitarians wish to see women treated as the equals of men in every realm, reality must conform with their wishes, even though it won’t, so the "reality" must be faked. In a Front Page article Daniel reported on just how unequal women are especially in the arduous requirements of ground fighting and measuring up to the physical demands. They wish to erase the physical and psychological differences between the sexes. (Recall Feinstein's hissy fit during a Senate hearing when she objected to be called "Ma'am" by a soldier she was grilling.)
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that the PC brigade inside and outside the military still must use men as the benchmark, although I can see the day coming, as our military continues to deteriorate, when there will be no benchmarks at all. Women will have been "butched" (think of Ellen DeGeneres or Rosie O'Donnell), and men feminized (or neutered), while the "transgender" types oscillate between what they are and what they aren’t but still demand their "rights" to go into combat. And, I have lost count of the number of stories about women in close proximity to men in combat (or on Navy ships or submarines or simply on duty bases) having inevitable affairs and then kids which taxpayers must foot the bill to support. Panetta's decision to allow women in combat is simply another phase of Obama's agenda to "transform" America into a failing European knock-off of a state-run society.
It is very sad to observe U.S. Army female soldiers wearing headscarves instead of helmets, as if headscarves somehow better protect their heads from bullets and stones. Yes, respect to the natives' culture and all that ... but at cost of showing disrespect to your own military culture, really? ... it looks more like lessons in dhimmitude.
ReplyDeleteI guess it does not take much for interested parties to persuade many foreign natives that America is inherently evil - any Hollywood zombie flesh eating movie would suffice, not to mention some other genres, presenting certain unhealthy and unnatural things as their shining opposites.
ReplyDeleteThe same transformation of our military that is going on now, the transformation into a castrated social services community organization, was accomplished long ago with our police departments. When you experience the sensitivity the police exhibit towards the poor, discriminated against, underprivileged criminal, and the hostility that the police exhibit towards the "white racist" crime victim you'll finally understand what's been going on in our society for a long time.
ReplyDeleteBuilding blocks of reality (Pilgrims, Founders, their spiritual descendants, traditional America):
ReplyDeleteEverything is illuminated.
Building blocks of unreality (socualist-liberal-progressives and like-minded, brave-new-world America):
Everything is contaminated.
That some women are up to front-line service was shown when Egyptian infiltrators into Israel where actually stopped by a determined female border patrol soldier. An other woman in that same patrol froze from fear, but I do think that can happen to men as well. The small percentage women with enough physical strength who want to serve as combat troops should have the opportunity to do so but the standard demands for such a post should not be lowered to accomodate more women.
ReplyDeleteEdward,
ReplyDeleteModern feminism eschewed Natural Law when it excommunicated Naturalist Feminists from its new departments, committees and reading lists.
This convenienced the academic Left in many ways. It excused their deliberate ignorance of the 'nettlesome' Western empirical sciences like cell-biology, organic chemistry, comparative primate behavioral studies and established Anthropology. These disciplines exercise students' Latin cognition, trains them to assess their own biases in front of peers, and hones their ability to gauge Time's surreal effects in the affairs of Men.
All are antidotes to the televised crisis-campaigns and "nudgings" that media project day-in and day-out at Americans today. So, the Sarah Palin wing of an entire gender had to go under the bus!
-steveaz
Conservatives have a history of playing defense - and compromising their way to culture-war defeat and tyranny. Liberals will come to the bargaining table demanding some change and conservatives, being reasonable, will give the liberals a percentage of what they want. The problem? The liberals will come back again and again, demanding more and more, and the conservatives will continually yield more ground. And, ultimately, after enough time, the whole loaf will have been relinquished. ~source: The Great Gun Debate: Selwyn Duke vs. Brett Joshpe, AT
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the gender-neutral combat advocates subscribe, at least in part, to the fantasies dramatized in TV programs and comic books that feature distaff inventions such as "Wonder Woman" and "Cagney and Lacey" and "Charlie's Angels." In "Wonder Woman" and "Charlie's Angels," the characters were viewed qua feminine women, and not as sexless juggernaut killing machines. I imagine it was many a man's fantasy to be wrestled to the ground by Wonder Woman or Farrah Fawcett and hope it would go from there to man-woman intimacy. (There's a term for that kind of man, but I won't use it here, Daniel and others might object.) But in reality, there is something psychologically wrong with women who want to be "grunts."
ReplyDeleteFurther, I've never encountered a female police officer who was in the least feminine. They've all had to assume a "butch" (pseudo-male) attitude to command "respect." Of course, now they're armed (at least they are in the U.S.) and can shoot you or tazer you just as efficiently as a male police officer. And most of the female police officers I've seen are grossly overweight and hardly in any condition to run down a suspect or grapple with any criminal. I've known women who entered the military solely for the benefits (room and board, college subsidies, special medical care for them and their family, etc.), and not out of any desire to "serve their country." Also, I think there's something psychologically warped about women who want to go into combat, especially infantry-type combat. Learning to protect oneself from a mugger or rapist is one thing (in civilian life); wanting to make a career of physical combat is too abnormal for words. Ever seen those female body-builders and weight-lifters? Not at all feminine or attractive; just the opposite, repulsive, unsightly, and you want to avert your eyes; in the long run those women will need to stay in that condition for the rest of their lives, because abandoning the regimen will result in flab and fat that won’t go away, ever. (I also question the psychology of men who make a career of body-building, and they're locked into the same fate.) In the coed U.S. military (and I've seen reports from Australia, as well), rape charges are fairly common as well as pregnancies.
I agree with you Dennis.
ReplyDeleteOT but I remember watching news coverage of the Vietnam War as a little girl and the footage was brutal. I also remember thinking that term for the enemy, guerilla, meant they were actual animals.
Can you imagine the media of today calling insurgents a name reserved for animals?
Keliata
Maybe I'm old-fashioned in wanting to protect women from the nastiness of combat, but....
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall that the Israelis did all of this decades ago. Then, when reality bit hard on the two-way rifle range, they changed the doctrine. Lots of IDF women serve in logistics and support roles; assault troops - not so much.
Part of the problem is the quite intense protective bonding that occurs in stressful environments. It is bad enough for a soldier to witness his male comrades being shredded by bombs and bullets, but the psychological effect on a normally wired male, of seeing a woman similarly smashed up, is in another realm.
The Soviets employed female snipers of varying grades of marksmanship but great propaganda value. The VC used a lot of women for infiltration and logistics / "courier" duties. They were known to plant the odd bomb or three, as well.
Some of the very best military signals operators, truck drivers and technicians I have known were women. Very few of them would have been up to month-long reconnaissance patrols combined with close-quarter combat. Hell, a lot of men aren't up to it, either.
Sending intelligent, skilled and tough-minded females out to be killed and maimed is a good way to drain the deep end of the gene pool very quickly. I can see what the enemy are driving at.
The Finns also used female snipers to good effect, but again a country uses these tactics out of desperation. Women can survive a good deal, but a society that sends women out to die without the survival of the society on the line has abdicated its entire reason for existence.
ReplyDeletePost a Comment