Anyone who has spent significant time around the American subculture called the “defense industry” knows that military commanders don’t air their dirty laundry as a rule. In fact, they can be quite tight lipped about what it is they know, dirty secrets of the armed services and all that.
(Some of the secrets I’ve heard over the years are pretty dirty, too. But then, I know more pilots than any other sort of service member. Test pilots at that.)
In that light, it is quite extraordinary that a number of retired command level, and heavily decorated veterans are openly discussing the Obama administration’s manipulation of the various U.S. Armed Services branches, let alone with palpable disdain, disgust and alarm that the litany of grievances in this morning’s WND piece by F. Michael Maloof displays:
In an email to WND, John outlined what he termed “a very few of the most egregious” aspects of Obama’s “attack” on the military over the past five years.He referred specifically to the Rules of Engagement in combat that were put in place after Obama took office, asserting that the changes resulted in very high casualty rates in Afghanistan, including the loss of 17 members of SEAL Team 6 in one incident.“The Rules of Engagement precluded the use of suppression fire at a landing zone,” John said.Echoing what other high-ranking officers have told WND, he said the Pentagon policy of repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” resulted in the first openly “gay” “major military force in the world.” The development has brought about “massive” sexual assaults on “thousands of straight military male personnel that have been covered up,” he said.He also cited military chaplains’ being prohibited from reading letters in the pulpit from their cardinals during Sunday services as a restriction of freedom of religion.These and other “social experiments,” he said, have constituted “a massive assault to restructure the military mindset, destroyed unit cohesion, unit morale and is negatively affecting combat effectiveness.”John also referred to major cuts in the military budget that resulted in, for one example, restricting as many as seven aircraft carriers to port, “leaving them open to another Pearl Harbor-type of attack.”Physical fitness qualifications for “tip of the spear units” such as the Rangers, SEALs, Green Berets and combat infantry are being downgraded, he said, so “women can be placed into those units.” Likewise, he added, “women have been assigned to submarines and ships resulting in relationships at sea that have broken up military families.”Some senior enlisted personnel and commanding officers in the midst of six-month deployments, he said, have been removed because they got involved with the opposite sex, which degrades the ships’ battle readiness.
I don’t know about anybody else, but that list is not reassuring that our military can land in any country anywhere anytime and plain and simply conquer as we are accustomed. It also means that bailing out our allies when they get into trouble is out of the question. Too much more of this and we won’t have the capability. And seriously, didn’t EVERY country with a navy learn a lesson with Pearl Harbor?
Europe and the rest of the world wanted Obama. Hmmm….
To be blatant about it, the United States would not have the standing in the world she has enjoyed for decades without her Armed Forces and the discipline that made them the most feared fighting force on the planet. In order to destroy that standing, reason would say that the military would need to be seriously degraded. With executive orders to the country’s only segment that can be controlled from the top down and relieving non-yes men from command, Obama is working toward that goal.
Say what we will about George W. Bush and his father, but neither of them EVER put us in harm’s way in this manner.
Mr. Maloof’s piece linked above highlights the exodus of officers,both forced and voluntary, of the best and brightest from the ranks of men, specifically, in service. It will come as no surprise that women are replacing them, or that morale throughout the ranks is at dangerously low levels.
Yeah, no, that doesn’t make me feel any more safe. Sorry.
What is most bothersome, though, is the idea that the U.S. military structure itself with multi-generational families of fighting men is not simply being undermined, but outright destroyed. Once any quality entity that takes time and patience to build is destroyed, be it an orchestra, farm system, corporate team, military – name it – rebuilding becomes twice as difficult. Losing the knowledge base that builds the system and maintains its effectiveness is lost sometimes for good. Getting the best and the brightest back takes more than cash and a promise once trust is betrayed. And moving the players around until the right mix is in place takes trial, error and years. This is what the
Pentagon is facing with the purge of commanding officers.
Even if the rest of the country survives Obama with just wounds and not outright devastation, the condition of the military at barely ready levels is an outright disgrace.
Americans who have been paying attention will see the “purge surge” of a few more good men from the armed services as yet more evidence that the Obama Administration seeks to turn us into a banana republic and destroy us. Maybe so. But Obama, Rasputin in a skirt and the minions forget one vital thing: in releasing the people who actually know what they are doing when it comes to warfare from being under their thumbs and having a fighting force that’s basically incohesive, the US military is not likely to be able to suppress any sort of popular uprising led by these folks, if it comes to that.
(US Civil War Part Deux would look a lot like part one: the better battlefield generals were with the rebels. And THIS time, getting to functional equipment would not be a matter of geography.)
With all luck, given that the former military men quoted in the WND piece have a PAC working to get veterans elected to office, the worst of the damage can be undone in short order under the next president. Complete repair will take time, but the bleeding at least can be put to a stop.
Until then, Americans cross your fingers that none of the despots get organized enough to cause too much trouble. Otherwise, we are in deep weeds.
For further reading on CL’s opinions of women in combat and the purge of career officials who know what they are doing:
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