Tucker Carlson got dumped on by the military brass because he told unpleasant truths about our feminized, and politicized, military. Israeli military historian Dr. Martin van Creveld was saying the same thing in 2013:
In 1968, the U.S. Armed Forces numbered 3,500,000 troops. Of those, just over one percent were female. Back in 1948 Congress, by passing Public Law No. 625, had capped the number of military women at two percent of that total. Those who did wear uniforms were limited to a very small number of Military Occupation Specialties. No military woman could be deployed abroad against her will. The highest rank any woman could attain was that of colonel. However, change was in the air. As the War in Vietnam peaked, the Johnson administration feared, with very good reason, that trying to call up more men might meet with massive resistance. It might even lead to civil war. Casting about for a solution to the problem, one measure the military took was to try and attract more women. That was how the latter got their feet in the door.
The decision to admit more women proved to be the opening shot in the gender wars in the military. Supported by the courts, which consistently insisted on “equal rights,” throughout the 1970s and 1980s female service personnel demanded, and were granted, greater and greater rights. The more time passed, the less inclined the forces to resist their triumphant march and the more they tended to roll over at the first sign of a feminist demand. To note a few landmark decisions only, in 1976 the Service Academies were opened to women. In the same year, women retained the right to remain in the services even when they were pregnant and, as a consequence, unable to perform some of the jobs to which they were assigned. The 1991 Tailhook debacle represented the worst defeat of the U.S. Navy since Pearl Harbor. In the next year, President Bush’s Commission for Women in Combat solemnly recommended that they not be allowed to participate in it. However, no sooner did President Clinton assume office than the decision was reversed. Women were allowed to fly combat aircraft, crew warships, and participate in ground operations down to the brigade level.
Even as the forces were feminized, they also became progressively smaller. By the time the Cold War ended, the number or troops was down to 2,050,000. Of those, about 8.5 percent were female. Later, the number of troops was cut even further, to 1,400,000. As part of the process, the share of women rose to between 16 and 17 percent. It was with this force that the U.S. went to war first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Now that incoming Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel wants to carry out further drastic cuts, the last barriers to women’s participation in every kind of unit and activity are about to be demolished. Meanwhile, though the ratio of population to uniformed soldiers has gone down from 55:1 to 227:1, so unattractive has military service become that the forces have been reduced to recruiting tens of thousands of non-citizens. In many cases so low is their quality that, once they have been recruited, the first thing they must learn is how to read.
Looking back, clearly what we see is two long-term processes running in parallel. The first is the decline of U.S. armed forces (as well as all other Western ones, but that is not our topic here). The second is their growing feminization. Critics will object that, even as they were being downsized, the forces went through one qualitative improvement after another. In particular, the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs” is supposed to have increased their fighting power many times over. That, however, is an illusion. To realize this, all one has to do is look at Afghanistan. Over there, “illiterate” tribesmen—not, take note, tribeswomen—are right now about to force the U.S. to withdraw its troops after a decade of effort in which they achieved hardly anything.
Go here to read the rest. We haven’t fought an all out war with a major power since 1945. With our current bad joke of a military we are cruising for a major defeat if China decides this is an opportune time to conquer Taiwan. Well, at least our defeated forces will be diverse.
The late General Robert H. Barrow, 27th Commandant of the Marine Corps, a combat veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, nailed it in his testimony in 1991:
If the Equality Bill passes the Senate, will girls be required to sign the draft registration card like my son will next month when he turns 18? There is already a check box for “female” on the card.
.
Hmmm, do trans-women need to sign currently?
The Air Force ran a computerized war game against the Chinese and we got our clock cleaned in less than a month. And the Military is worried about Tucker?
Below is an interesting interview that illustrates the principles that General Barrows explains. The below interview is about a special operations mission that when bad and required extreme strength and resolve to recover an injured team member then survive.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tY2zv8CqLhY
Below is the link that I previously attempted to post. The previous is interesting but not the same level of detail
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CXwP2qr4Qwo
Despite the current attempt to depict female military members as equal (translation: same) as males, there is a quiet concerted policy to keep them from close proximity to active combat. The politicos fully understand that the whole equality thing will collapse when women come home in body bags at the same rate as men.
Despite the current attempt to depict female military members as equal (translation: same) as males, there is a quiet concerted policy to keep them from close proximity to active combat. The politicos fully understand that the whole equality thing will collapse when women come home in body bags at the same rate as men.
Getting women drafted, and dead at the same rate as males, has been an explicit goal of various left-wing factions for decades now.
The idea is that it will stop all war.
I am a U.S. Navy veteran (1987 – 1991). As an enlisted man aboard a Fast Frigate (USS Ainsworth – FF 1090), I served with exclusively with men and have no experience with fighting women of the U.S. military. I don’t claim to have competence to assess the overall impact of women in the military.
I note though that the weirdness of being cannon fodder is ever stranger to me as I get older. See, my little ship carried Anti-Submarine Rockets (ASROCs), the purpose of which was to go up, splash down, and make a really, really big hole in the sea. As the hole closed up, our ship would tumble into it and the collapse of the sea back into that hole would obliterate any submarines hunting ships that mattered, securing precious time for them to offload their ordinance on the enemy.
We had no illusions about this. We understood we faced death, a sort of noble suicide in case of The Big One and it all, somehow made sense to me at 17. I like to think it would make sense to me now but I don’t know.
I tell this story because I imagine that collective sense of “of course we may all have to die. That is right and good and appropriate” might not be as easy to sell in the Navy these days. There’s a bravado among young men that I don’t see in the young women, in either my daughters or my children’s friends.
I know many who have served in combat and we’ve talked about this sense of acceptible sacrafice and the dark humor and fatalism that walks arm-in-arm with it. My Navy experience doesn’t seem to be at all strange to my friends in other services.
How, exactly, does a military function without it and how can survive the daily stress of it without some latitude to be politically incorrect, to be all “by the book” on one side and decidedly irreverant and damned rebellious on the other?
If the loss of this is what we mean by feminizing the military, we are indeed in trouble.
If the heterosexual predators of Tailhook were all heterosexual men, as they were, doesn’t it stand to reason that if anyone were to be banned it should have been heterosexual men rather than women? And with ever changing, more commonly automated weapons of war becoming the norm, what difference does the gender of the persons in the control room make? The military is becoming automated far more than feminized. Perhaps in Neanderthal warfare brute force and cocky attitudes mattered. In modern warfare, technical skill and tactical reasoning reign supreme.
If the heterosexual predators of Tailhook were all heterosexual men, as they were, doesn’t it stand to reason that if anyone were to be banned it should have been heterosexual men rather than women?
First, many of the women involved were willing participants. Indeed more than a few had participated in prior Tailhooks. It was drunken aviators blowing off steam, and any woman out of her teens would have had to have been a complete idiot not to understand what to expect at such a rowdy gathering.
Second, your bizarre comment about contemporary warfare, ask the Marines of Falujah how important physical strength and endurance are in combat, illustrates how little concern Leftists have for the basic function of any military: to win the wars it fights.
From what I heard from women associated with the Tailhook mess– there were definitely female predators involved, and a lot of innocent victims of both sexes from the “solution,” and it was used as an excuse to do what someone wanted to do anyways.
But it’s so much easier to be a nasty gossip and genuflect to the popular rumors, isn’t it, John? Especially when you can use it to make nonsensical declarations.
Heaven forbid anybody talk to the folks they anoint themselves to “help”. Might hear something that conflicts with what you want to do.
there were definitely female predators involved, and a lot of innocent victims of both sexes
Quite right. Most of the participants did not take part in the party animal portion of Tailhook, a fairly common occurrence in such military gatherings where the wilder social aspects occur after hours and late at night.
John’s either trolling, or he’s a shill for an organization that can’t pay very well. Or he could be taking part of the leftist ritual of saying the dumbest, most “woke” thing you can think of on a conservative site, then running back and posting to your friends about how you “bravely owned” the conservatives even though no one was moved or even angered. His remarks about combat are too bizarrely removed from reality and his other remarks too goading for them to be offered as any type of persuasion.