thedrifter
06-18-04, 07:24 AM
06-16-2004
G.I. Jane in Neverland
By Ray Starmann
This headline from the Nashville Tennessean website caught my attention late last year: “Grandmother didn't hesitate when deployed to Kuwait.”
Apparently, a 59-year-old grandmother of four had been caught in the recent Army Reserve personnel sweep. While reading the article I shook my head in disbelief. After more research, I was shocked to learn that the Army has deployed enough grandmothers to create their own platoon: “The Fighting Grandmothers.”
This country has indeed reached the zenith of insanity. We are now deploying grandmothers to combat zones. Apparently, the kindly grandmother image of Norman Rockwell’s America has been vanquished and replaced by a superwoman façade, created entirely by the feminists who have turned today’s military into a PC arena of social engineering and touchy-feely cultural Marxism.
As an Army captain back in 1993, I witnessed a site that would have given Dick Winters and his “Band of Brothers” from World War II a severe case of IBS. Standing before me were two female soldiers who were wearing 101st Airborne Division “Screaming Eagles” patches on their maternity battle dress uniforms. Both were pregnant; one was pushing a toddler in a baby stroller. I paused for a moment, stared at them and thought of places like Normandy, Hell’s Highway, Bastogne and Hamburger Hill. I wondered how they would have survived on those distant battlefields?
As I walked back to my car, I knew it was time to resign my commission from the Lean Green Machine.
The beginning of the end for today’s Army began around the time I was out-processing in 1993. The Defense Department commenced a series of sweeping social engineering changes. These included allowing women to serve in combat support and combat service support units once labeled as male-only. The Defense Department’s “Risk Rule,” established in 1988, was repealed. The key element in these changes was the elimination of the phrase “substantial risk of capture” as a factor in determining where servicewomen would be assigned. As a result, women are serving at greater risk, even in support units.”
The Marxist-Feminist never-never land is a dream world of illogical equality that is quickly decimated once the first round moves downrange toward one of America’s young female warriors. Pfc. Jessica Lynch learned this the hard way last March near Nasiriyah. A pretty girl who should have been sitting in a sorority house, Lynch today is lucky to be alive. A veil of smoke and mirrors that only the Pentagon can create hid the utter incompetence of Lynch and her fellow combat service support soldiers during the engagement.
The Washington Post on Apr. 3, 2003 portrayed Lynch as a “woman-warrior” from West Virginia who “was shot, stabbed, and captured only after she had emptied her weapon killing Iraqis.” Although the story was based on an erroneous Iraqi radio report intercepted by U.S. intelligence and later discredited, both the news media and supporters of a feminized U.S. military seized on the story as proof that women warriors could distinguish themselves in combat.
As we now know, Lynch’s weapon – along with most of the M-16s in her platoon – failed to function (obviously she hadn’t cleaned it) and she was then knocked unconscious in a vehicle collision. She later became a victim of the Iraqis who raped her and the U.S. Army that used her as a propaganda tool.
The next disastrous decision after the 1993 “Risk Rule” change occurred in 1994 when then-Secretary of the Army Togo West ordered the service to implement coed basic training. The results have become devastating for the morale and effectiveness of the army. A 2002 TRADOC report came to the following conclusions about coed basic training:
* Less discipline, less unit cohesion, and more distraction from training programs;
* Voluntary and involuntary misconduct, due to an emotionally volatile environment for which leaders and recruits are unprepared;
* Higher physical injury and sick call rates that detract from primary training objectives;
* Diversion from essential training time due to interpersonal distractions and the need for an extra week of costly “sensitivity training”;
* Re-defined or lowered standards, gender-normed scores, and elimination of physically demanding exercises so that women will succeed;
* Additional stress on instructors who must deal with different physical abilities and psychological needs of male and female recruits.
Even with such clear facts, Army leaders continue to refuse to touch this political time bomb. Apparently, the demise of esprit de corps, the death of fighting spirit and rampant pregnancies mean nothing to many generals who are more concerned with securing their pensions and six-figure defense jobs once they retire.
In today’s Army, we often hear of the “hard-charging” female deploying to Iraq, after leaving her family back in the States. While Mrs. Sergeant Stryker battles the enemies of freedom; her domesticated husband is at home with the kids, the dog, the SUV and his favorite Betty Crocker Cookbook.
Who can blame these Sad Civilian Sacks? They’re victims of a society that is progressively neutering America’s male population. The media repeatedly bombards us with images of weak, dumb, fat, bumbling men who are constantly out-witted by strong, pretty, successful females. The Mean Girls of Abu Ghraib Prison have become the walking, talking Stepford Wives of the Army.
Congress must wake up and realize what has happened to the military as a result of this social engineering.
Since we are faced with the prospect of an indefinite war against terrorism, the Army must be transformed into an effective fighting force. That means it should remove women from positions where they might be exposed to combat. The service must begin to fill the ranks with men. If young men won’t join, it might be time to start drafting the emerging generation.
The Army’s mission is to destroy our enemies on the field of battle, to inflict so much death and destruction upon them that they never seek to fight us again. The mission of the Army is not to run a sociology lab experiment. It is not to provide daycare, handle pregnancies, and teach sensitivity training. Because the cultural Marxists and militant feminists refuse to comprehend the true mission of the Army, their arguments should be recognized as irrelevant.
The problems confronting the Army are mounting but the insanity continues. How much longer is the nation going to tolerate deployed grandmothers, raped female POW’s, pregnant soldiers running interrogations, and basic-training shenanigans?
As America’s enemies line up against us, time is running out for the Army to repair itself before a total disaster ensues.
In 1940, after delivering his first speech as Prime Minister to his countrymen, Winston Churchill stood in front of a window and stared at a blacked-out London. As his wife approached him, he muttered repeatedly in his famous Victorian style, “Pray … that we’re not too late.” His words resonate today.
“Pray … that we’re not too late.”
Ray Starmann is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at saber2bravo@earthlink.net. Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=531&rnd=990.3416788717443
Ellie
G.I. Jane in Neverland
By Ray Starmann
This headline from the Nashville Tennessean website caught my attention late last year: “Grandmother didn't hesitate when deployed to Kuwait.”
Apparently, a 59-year-old grandmother of four had been caught in the recent Army Reserve personnel sweep. While reading the article I shook my head in disbelief. After more research, I was shocked to learn that the Army has deployed enough grandmothers to create their own platoon: “The Fighting Grandmothers.”
This country has indeed reached the zenith of insanity. We are now deploying grandmothers to combat zones. Apparently, the kindly grandmother image of Norman Rockwell’s America has been vanquished and replaced by a superwoman façade, created entirely by the feminists who have turned today’s military into a PC arena of social engineering and touchy-feely cultural Marxism.
As an Army captain back in 1993, I witnessed a site that would have given Dick Winters and his “Band of Brothers” from World War II a severe case of IBS. Standing before me were two female soldiers who were wearing 101st Airborne Division “Screaming Eagles” patches on their maternity battle dress uniforms. Both were pregnant; one was pushing a toddler in a baby stroller. I paused for a moment, stared at them and thought of places like Normandy, Hell’s Highway, Bastogne and Hamburger Hill. I wondered how they would have survived on those distant battlefields?
As I walked back to my car, I knew it was time to resign my commission from the Lean Green Machine.
The beginning of the end for today’s Army began around the time I was out-processing in 1993. The Defense Department commenced a series of sweeping social engineering changes. These included allowing women to serve in combat support and combat service support units once labeled as male-only. The Defense Department’s “Risk Rule,” established in 1988, was repealed. The key element in these changes was the elimination of the phrase “substantial risk of capture” as a factor in determining where servicewomen would be assigned. As a result, women are serving at greater risk, even in support units.”
The Marxist-Feminist never-never land is a dream world of illogical equality that is quickly decimated once the first round moves downrange toward one of America’s young female warriors. Pfc. Jessica Lynch learned this the hard way last March near Nasiriyah. A pretty girl who should have been sitting in a sorority house, Lynch today is lucky to be alive. A veil of smoke and mirrors that only the Pentagon can create hid the utter incompetence of Lynch and her fellow combat service support soldiers during the engagement.
The Washington Post on Apr. 3, 2003 portrayed Lynch as a “woman-warrior” from West Virginia who “was shot, stabbed, and captured only after she had emptied her weapon killing Iraqis.” Although the story was based on an erroneous Iraqi radio report intercepted by U.S. intelligence and later discredited, both the news media and supporters of a feminized U.S. military seized on the story as proof that women warriors could distinguish themselves in combat.
As we now know, Lynch’s weapon – along with most of the M-16s in her platoon – failed to function (obviously she hadn’t cleaned it) and she was then knocked unconscious in a vehicle collision. She later became a victim of the Iraqis who raped her and the U.S. Army that used her as a propaganda tool.
The next disastrous decision after the 1993 “Risk Rule” change occurred in 1994 when then-Secretary of the Army Togo West ordered the service to implement coed basic training. The results have become devastating for the morale and effectiveness of the army. A 2002 TRADOC report came to the following conclusions about coed basic training:
* Less discipline, less unit cohesion, and more distraction from training programs;
* Voluntary and involuntary misconduct, due to an emotionally volatile environment for which leaders and recruits are unprepared;
* Higher physical injury and sick call rates that detract from primary training objectives;
* Diversion from essential training time due to interpersonal distractions and the need for an extra week of costly “sensitivity training”;
* Re-defined or lowered standards, gender-normed scores, and elimination of physically demanding exercises so that women will succeed;
* Additional stress on instructors who must deal with different physical abilities and psychological needs of male and female recruits.
Even with such clear facts, Army leaders continue to refuse to touch this political time bomb. Apparently, the demise of esprit de corps, the death of fighting spirit and rampant pregnancies mean nothing to many generals who are more concerned with securing their pensions and six-figure defense jobs once they retire.
In today’s Army, we often hear of the “hard-charging” female deploying to Iraq, after leaving her family back in the States. While Mrs. Sergeant Stryker battles the enemies of freedom; her domesticated husband is at home with the kids, the dog, the SUV and his favorite Betty Crocker Cookbook.
Who can blame these Sad Civilian Sacks? They’re victims of a society that is progressively neutering America’s male population. The media repeatedly bombards us with images of weak, dumb, fat, bumbling men who are constantly out-witted by strong, pretty, successful females. The Mean Girls of Abu Ghraib Prison have become the walking, talking Stepford Wives of the Army.
Congress must wake up and realize what has happened to the military as a result of this social engineering.
Since we are faced with the prospect of an indefinite war against terrorism, the Army must be transformed into an effective fighting force. That means it should remove women from positions where they might be exposed to combat. The service must begin to fill the ranks with men. If young men won’t join, it might be time to start drafting the emerging generation.
The Army’s mission is to destroy our enemies on the field of battle, to inflict so much death and destruction upon them that they never seek to fight us again. The mission of the Army is not to run a sociology lab experiment. It is not to provide daycare, handle pregnancies, and teach sensitivity training. Because the cultural Marxists and militant feminists refuse to comprehend the true mission of the Army, their arguments should be recognized as irrelevant.
The problems confronting the Army are mounting but the insanity continues. How much longer is the nation going to tolerate deployed grandmothers, raped female POW’s, pregnant soldiers running interrogations, and basic-training shenanigans?
As America’s enemies line up against us, time is running out for the Army to repair itself before a total disaster ensues.
In 1940, after delivering his first speech as Prime Minister to his countrymen, Winston Churchill stood in front of a window and stared at a blacked-out London. As his wife approached him, he muttered repeatedly in his famous Victorian style, “Pray … that we’re not too late.” His words resonate today.
“Pray … that we’re not too late.”
Ray Starmann is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at saber2bravo@earthlink.net. Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=531&rnd=990.3416788717443
Ellie