Political Inconsistency?

Does anyone else feel like politics are disconcertingly inconsistent?

Perhaps that the whole thing has come unmoored?

I was anti-war back in the early 00s, when the Left was anti-war. I marched in protest against the Iraq War. “Hey hey, ho ho, this racist war has got to go,” we chanted.

There was a lot of talk back then about how the US spends too much on the military and is over-involved in military expeditions abroad.

Of course, I was not an expert in international affairs, nor America’s military needs abroad. I might have been wrong. So might most of the other leftists who held similar opinions in those days. But “America is spending too much on the military, which is harming both brown people abroad and also Americans, who die in wars and have to pay for them. We would be better off spending that money on things that actually benefit Americans, like highspeed rail lines, education, health care, or just leaving it in people’s pockets and letting them use it however they want,” was absolutely a mainstream leftist position.

Today, Trump says something like he wouldn’t want to die in a war for Montenegro, and the Left responds that it is very important that Americans be willing to die for Montenegro.

Let’s step back and be rational for a second: No one wants to die for a foreign country. I don’t want to die for Australia, for Russia, for India, Japan, Montenegro, or Chad, and no one from those countries wants to die for America. Certainly there is a logic of “strength in numbers,” in which we are all safer because we create a credible, united front, but there is also logic in avoiding”entangling alliances,” which were blamed for creating the death machine known as WWI.

The question of whether Americans should die in defense of Montenegro (something we have been committed to without ever being asked,) ultimately depends on whether alliance with Montenegro makes us more or less secure here at home–a matter I haven’t seen any discussion about on Left or Right.

The only relevant argument I’ve seen is that various alliance-members have died “for us” in “our” wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, therefore we should be equally willing to die for them in their wars. The logic seems to be, “The government sent you to die in a stupid, racist war that destroyed the American economy and was a terrible idea all around, therefore you’re morally obligated to go die in Montenegro, too.”

Perhaps we should be asking whether dying in Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea for anyone, not just taking it as some kind of obscene sunk cost that obligates everyone else to go die in random conflicts from here on out.

It seems like all of the talk about how “the military is too big” and “bombing countries like Iraq and Afghanistan is racist” was dropped as soon as people realized that massively cutting the military budget would mean… scaling back military obligations abroad.

I find a Left that suddenly pro-military spending and antagonistic toward Russia awfully disconcerting.

There are a variety of issues on the Right that I find it difficult to believe people *truly* care that much about–for example, I don’t think anyone actually believed that national policy should be determined by whether or not Bill Clinton had sex with an intern. “Bill had sex” is really just an excuse to try to force him out on technical grounds because they already didn’t like him. Similarly on the Left, I don’t believe any of the outraged commentators actually care whether the US flag touched the North Korean flag at the US/NK summit–the Left has never cared about proper flag etiquette.

These issues are transparently not things politicians, commentators, or other elites actually care about.

Was “America spends too much on the military/fights too many wars abroad” similarly nothing but a dumb rallying cry for the Left, something the upper muckety-mucks never actually believed? And what happened to all of the people who were once quite opposed to US “imperialism”?

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Should Transgender People be in the Military? An overview of relevant studies

On July 27 (2017,) President Trump tweeted his intention to ban transgender people from serving in the military, a move which would reverse President Obama’s decision to allow them to serve. (Prior to Obama, trans people were not allowed to serve.) As of the writing of this post, Trump’s tweet has not become official law or policy, but it has set off a firestorm of internet debate, with everyone picking sides primarily based on whether they like trans people or not, rather than what’s actually best for the military.

So I decided to review whatever studies I could find on the subject:

CLAS (Community Alliance for Cultural and Linguistically Appropriate Services) finds:

On September 20, 2011, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) went into effect in the U.S. military. The repeal marked the end of discriminatory practices in the military based on sexual orientation, but it did not end the prohibition on transgender military service. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) found that transgender Americans serve in the military at a high rate; 20 percent of NTDS respondents had served in the armed forces as compared to 10 percent of the U.S. general population.

According to 538, about 7.3% of the US population has served in the military (0.4% are active personnel; the rest are veterans.) The majority of those are male: 13.4% of men have served in the military, compared to 1.4% of women. Given the slight discrepancy in the data, I thought I’d check the NTDS numbers as well, but the PDF isn’t opening, but the Williams Institute has an article, Transgender Military Service in the US, which helpfully discusses the NTDS data in depth.

Overall, trans people are less than 1% of the population, and according to the Williams article, 60% MtF (male to female) and 40% FtM. According to 70 U.S. Veterans with Gender Identity Disturbances: A Descriptive Study, 91% of trans vets are MtF:

Retrospective descriptive data were obtained from chart reviews of 70 U.S. veterans who were evaluated by the second author for gender disturbances over a 20-year period (1987 to 2007). The modal veteran with gender identity disturbance was a natal male (91%) identifying as female, >40 years old, Caucasian, employed, with more than 12 years of education. Fifty-seven percent were parents with a history of sexual involvement with opposite sex individuals. Histories of autogynephilia were not elicited in vets interviewed since 1997. Classic “flight into hypermasculinity” was described by a majority of the natal male vets as a retrospective understanding of why they joined the military.

If we break the trans population down by gender, NTDS estimates that 30% of MtFs have served in the military and 5.5% of FtMs. (Williams cites a couple of other studies which found similarly high numbers.)

According to CNN, (which probably got its data from NTDS,) there are about 15,000 active trans troops; NTDS estimates a further 134,000 veterans. Given 1.4 million total people in the armed forces and 22 million vets, that gives us an estimate of a bit over 1% of the military and 0.6% of vets are trans. The discrepancy between current and historical numbers of trans people could be a side effect of younger people being more likely to identify as trans or of volunteer forces being more heavily trans than drafted ones. (Here is an interesting article about a trans WWII veteran; CNN has a couple about active troops.)

According to a RAND Corp study commissioned by the DoD, Assessing the Implications of Allowing Transgender Personnel to Serve Openly:

1. There Are an Estimated 1,320–6,630 Transgender Service Members in the Active Component
2. A further 1,510 in the Selected Reserve
3. Not all will seek gender transition–related treatment (some have already had it and some don’t want it.)
4. Estimates derived from survey data and private health insurance claims data indicate that, each year, between 29 and 129 service members in the active component will seek transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy.
5. Even upper-bound estimates indicate that less than 0.1 percent of the total force would seek transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy.
6. Using private health insurance claims data to estimate the cost of extending gender transition–related health care coverage to transgender personnel indicated that active-component health care costs would increase by between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually, representing a 0.04- to 0.13-percent increase in active-component health care expenditures.

They further claim that:

1. The limited research on the effects of foreign military policies indicates little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness.
2. Policy changes to open more roles to women and to allow gay and lesbian personnel to serve openly in the U.S. military have similarly had no significant effect on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness.

Note that RAND’s estimates of the number of trans military personnel is much lower than NTDS’s, which is kind of odd, given how easy the NTDS data is to find. Forgive me a bit of cynicism, but RAND seems to be trying to minimize projected costs by excluding the very large body of trans veterans who might also qualify for treatment and failing to include non-physical psychological expenses (see discussion below.)

Washington Free Beacon has a much higher estimate of physical costs, but I must warn that their website nearly crashed my computer. Quoting:

The 2014 Williams Institute study found there were 15,500 transgender individuals actively serving, or 0.7 percent of the military population. …

Thirty percent will likely seek surgeries, or 4,473 transgender troops. The average cost per surgery is $132,000, which is a combination of the average cost of male to female ($140,450) and female to male ($124,400) surgeries.

In other words, RAND estimates a small % of a small # will seek surgery–between 29 and 129 people. The Free Beacon study estimates a much higher % of a higher #, for an estimate of 4,473 people. RAND is also calculating about $80,000 per surgery, vs. Free Beacon’s $132,000.

The cost to taxpayers for these surgeries would be $590 million, and $770 million with a 3 percent inflation rate by 2027.

If the first set of numbers they cite are correct, then $590 million is an under-estimate, because it uses the average cost of male and female surgeries, but the majority of trans people in the military are MtF and so want the more expensive surgery.

There are 178,000 new military members per year, and assuming 0.7 percent are transgender, 1,246 new transgender service members each year. Assuming 30 percent get surgeries, there would be an additional 374 surgical transitions per year, or 3,740 over 10 years. Those surgeries would cost $493 million, and with 3 percent inflation a total of $579 million by 2027.

The costs of active duty transgender surgeries and those of new recruits over a 10-year period total $1.349 billion.

And this is still not considering veterans.

What about expenses besides surgical transition? According to Mental Health and Medical Health Disparities in 5135 Transgender Veterans Receiving Healthcare in the Veterans Health Administration: A Case–Control Study:

Statistically significant disparities were present in the TG cohort for all 10 mental health conditions examined, including depression, suicidality, serious mental illnesses, and post-traumatic stress disorder. TG Veterans were more likely to have been homeless, to have reported sexual trauma while on active duty, and to have been incarcerated. Significant disparities in the prevalence of medical diagnoses for TG veterans were also detected for 16/17 diagnoses examined, with HIV disease representing the largest disparity between groups.

Trans people have really high rates of depression (62% for MtFs and 55% for FtMs,) suicide attempts (32%,) and HIV infection (35% for MtFs but only 2% of FtMs.)

I found two other potentially relevant studies, one from the Journal of Homosexuality and one from HEIN Online, but both are paywalled so I can’t read them.

So. Tentative conclusions/discussion:

The military is not a charity, nor is it a means of dealing with pre-existing health issues. The military’s primary–some would say only–purpose is to defeat America’s enemies. The military does not take people with health problems like diabetes or Asperger’s, even though there are many diabetic or aspie people who would be GREAT soldiers. There are jobs in the military that you can’t get if you wear glasses.

Some of these rules may be wrong. Maybe we should let people with high-functioning autism/Asperger’s in the military if they can hack it. The Israeli military has a special division where autists put their skills to good use monitoring surveillance footage; it also allows transgender soldiers. But Israel is a small country surrounded by hostile enemies, so it may feel it cannot afford to turn down any willing soldiers.

I propose that the military may serve a secondary purpose: allowing citizens to feel like productive, contributing members of society. Service in the IDF, for example, may have a beneficial effect on Israeli society as a whole beyond merely insuring its safety. If military service is not appropriate for a group of people, perhaps some other form of service to society is.

Trans folk are a very small percent of the military, but a surprisingly large percent of trans folk are current or former military, especially if we only look at MtFs. It seems that the military is more important to trans folks than they are to it.

It makes sense that a larger percent of FtMs than cis-women would join the military, as they would naturally be drawn to more typically “male” occupations. The MtF preference for military work is harder to explain. One study attributes it to overcompensation–that is, covering up their desire to be female by trying to be as masculine as possible. I propose a second possibility: the military pays, and trans people are disproportionately poor.

I would like to draw here on an anecdotal case study of a single individual I knew in childhood:

This fiend has a rare genetic condition (Klinefelter) in which instead of having a normal set of sex chromosomes (XX for female, XY for male,) they’re XXY. Biologically, “male” and “female” are defined by gamete size–females produce large gametes (eggs) and males produce small gametes (sperm.) XXY people basically look male but don’t develop normal testicles and are often infertile, so I don’t think they really count as “male” in the biological sense.

The current vogue for asserting that “gender is a social construct” is pure nonsense, and IMO, will ultimately be harmful to trans people like my childhood friend, who has a true intersex condition. Even chimpanzees show gender roles similar to humans. There are many observed statistical differences between male and female brains, from better mental rotation (men) to lower rates of retardation (women.) These mental differences are caused by the different amounts of male and female hormones the fetal brain is exposed to at different points in its development, which trigger different aspects of brain development. There are whole books on the subject of fetal brain development if you want to know more.

Exposing a fetal brain to incorrect hormone levels–say, by taking a formerly popular anti-miscarriage medication that contains high levels of artificial estrogens–could trigger the development of a more “female” brain in a male body (or with the right hormones, the opposite.) In my friend’s case, an extra X chromosome rather than medication is to blame.

My friend identifies as “female” despite looking male. Why remains a mystery to me, as their life would be much easier if they identified as male and injected testosterone than identifying as female and injecting estrogen, but I certainly can’t naysay their sense that they “aren’t a proper male.”

But in a perhaps not odd twist, my friend is (or was) absolutely obsessed with everything military, from battleships to rifles to historical re-enactments. (Friend also has a very good memory, rendering them a walking military encyclopedia.)

Look, I acknowledge that “obsessed with the military” and “insists they are female and wants surgery in that direction” is a weird combination and I don’t understand it. Trans identity and stereotypically-male spheres overlap in a few other dimensions. People have lately been discussing an overlap between trans and autism, (which researchers often characterize as extreme male brain,) and of course Kaitlyn Jenner was, pre-transition, an Olympic Athlete. But all of that is getting a bit off topic.

“Transgender” is a vaguely defined term, and I don’t see why, even if trans people were allowed to serve in the military, the military would be required to cover the cost of transitioning. Why not declare that the military doesn’t cover it, that members aren’t allowed to put themselves out of commission by getting surgery, and that people using hormones/medications are ineligible for service (just as diabetics are ineligible,) but allow someone who transitioned decades ago and requires no medication or surgery?

However, the psychological co-morbidities, especially depression, are much more concerning. A group with high levels of depression, suicide, HIV, etc., sounds like a bad match for the military.

None of the studies I found really went into much detail (at least in the parts I could access) about trans soldiers’ ability to cope psychologically with the rigors of war nor their effects on group cohesion or effectiveness.

Allow me to express a bit of doubt: if people think the folks running the study want a particular outcome, they may be reluctant to complain about a fellow squad member. What I really want is a study of squad performance comparing squads with and without trans members, similar to the one highlighted in “The US Marines Tested Mixed-Gender Squads Against all Male ones, and the Results are Pretty Bleak” (which I wrote about here and followed up on here):

All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty.)

The report also says that female Marines had higher rates of injury throughout the experiment.

People often argue that men and women ought to have an equal chance to try to be in the military, but what if even women who meet the military’s standards are more likely to get injured (putting their whole squad at risk) than men? Such vulnerability would call for a blanket exclusion of women from certain parts of the military (though there are many support roles, like military doctors, where they perform admirably.)

I have a gut dislike of sweeping “policies;” they tend to lack flexibility. I tend to think it would be better to let individual officers of appropriate rank decide if the particular trans people serving under them are doing a good job than have a sweeping rule that automatically kicks everyone out or demands that everyone be let in.

And before I say anything sweeping, I want a study of squad cohesion and effectiveness. I’ll let you know if I find one.

 

Final note: I am not a military expert and don’t normally write about the military, so forgive me if I’ve mixed up some of the terms.

Species of Exit: Israel

Israel is–as far as I can tell–one of the sanest, least self-destructive states in the entire West. (Note: this is not to say that I love everything about Israel; this is actually a pretty low bar, given what’s happening everywhere else.) Their people are literate and healthy, they have a per capita GDP of 36.5k, (33rd in the world,) and they’re 18th globally on the Human Development Index. They don’t throw people off of buildings or have public floggings, and despite the fact that they have birth control and the state actually pays for abortions, the Jewish population still has a positive fertility rate:

The fertility rates of Jewish and Arab women were identical for the first time in Israeli history in 2015, according to figures released by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday….Jewish and Arab women had given birth to an average of 3.13 children as of last year.

According to Newsweek:

This high fertility rate is not simply an artifact of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox or Haredi population; the non-Haredi fertility rate is 2.6. (This is, by the way, a far higher fertility rate than that of American Jews, which is 1.9; the replacement rate is 2.3.)

And they’ve managed to resist getting conquered by their aggressive and numerically superior neighbors several times in the past century.

Not bad for a country that didn’t exist 100 years ago, had to be built from the sand up, and is filled with people whom conventional wisdom holds ought to have been rendered completely useless by multi-generational epigenetic trauma.

Now, yes, Israel does get a lot of support from the US, and who knows what it would look like (or if it would exist at all,) in an alternative timeline where the US ignores it. Israel probably isn’t perfect, just interesting.

Harking back to my Measures of Meaning post, I propose that Israel has 4 things going for it:

Ethiopian Jewish member of the IDF

1. Israelis have meaningful work. Their work has been, literally, to build and secure their nation. Israelis have had to build almost the entire infrastructure of their country over the past hundred years, from irrigation systems to roads to cities. Today, Tel Aviv is a city with a population of 430,000 people. In 1900, Tel Aviv didn’t exist.

Unlike the US, Israel has a draft: every Israeli citizen, male and female, has to serve in the Israeli army. (Obviously exceptions exist.) This is not seen as state-run slavery but part of making sure the entire society continues to exist, because Israel faces some pretty real threats to its borders.

The IDF even has a special division for autists:

Many autistic soldiers who would otherwise be exempt from military service have found a place in Unit 9900, a selective intelligence squad where their heightened perceptual skills are an asset. …

The relationship is a mutually beneficial one. For these young people, the unit is an opportunity to participate in a part of Israeli life that might otherwise be closed to them. And for the military, it’s an opportunity to harness the unique skill sets that often come with autism: extraordinary capacities for visual thinking and attention to detail, both of which lend themselves well to the highly specialized task of aerial analysis.

I suspect–based on personal conversations–that there is something similar in the US military, but have no proof.

My anthropological work suggests that one of the reasons people enter the military is to find meaning in their lives, (though this doesn’t work nearly as well when your country does things like invade completely irrelevant countries you don’t actually care about like Vietnam.)

2. Like I said, Israelis have above-replacement total fertility–meaning that many Israelis hail from large families, with lots of children, siblings, and cousins. Israelis appear to have managed to achieve this in part by subsidizing births (which probably will have some long-term negative effects for them,*) and in part by explicitly advocating high birth rates in order to prevent themselves from being out-bred by the Palestinians and to show that Hitler what for.

*ETA: See the comments for a discussion of dysgenic fertility on Israel.

3. Religion is so obviously a unifying force in Israeli life that I don’t think I need to detail it.

What about that fourth thing? Oh yes: Many of the Jews who don’t like the idea of “nations” and “ethno states” and “religion” probably moved to the US instead of Israel. The US got the SJW Jews and Israel got the nationalist Jews.

4. A sense of themselves as a distinct nation. As I’ve discussed before, this is not exactly genetic, due to different Jewish groups having absorbed about 50% of their DNA from the folks around them during the diaspora years, and of course a big part of the country is Arab/Palestinians, but there is still much genetically in common.

There is probably a lot I’m missing.

Of course there are religious Jews in the US (and their numbers are growing relative to the secular Jewish population.) While Jews as a whole voted 70% for Hillary, only 56% of the Orthodox supported her. (I’ve seen different numbers elsewhere, but these are the ones I’ve been able to find a source for.)

(I suspect that America’s high-IQ secular Jews suffer from being in America instead of Israel. They don’t have religion to guide them, children to focus them, nor (in many cases) meaningful work. Without something positive to work towards, they turn to politics/ideology to provide meaning in their lives, while simultaneously suffering the psychological stress of knowing that the Holocaust was directed at people like them.)

But that’s irrelevant to Israeli Jews.

Long-term, I’m not bullish on Israel, given its precarious location, surrounded by nations that aren’t very fond of it–and I am not offering any opinions about the Israeli/Palestinian situation–but as first world nations go, it at least desires to keep existing.

Slate Star Codex finds Aristocracy, doesn’t notice

In his recent post, “Contra Simler on Prestige,” Scott Alexander attempts to interrogate why prestigious people are high status. He first distinguishes between dominant and prestigious people, where dominant people are high-status because they can force you to do things. Prestigious people, by contrast, are high-status because they do something that makes you want to obey them, like sing really well. (Here he gives the example of Justin Bieber. Well, maybe you wouldn’t do something just because Justin Bieber asked you to, but there are a lot of girls who would.)

Alexander then quotes a long passage from Kevin Simler’s Social Status: Down The Rabbit Hole–which I am forced to quote in turn because it’s necessary–about a bird called the Arabian babbler:

The Arabian babbler … spends most of its life in small groups of three to 20 members. These groups lay their eggs in a communal nest and defend a small territory of trees and shrubs that provide much-needed safety from predators.

When it’s living as part of a group, a babbler does fairly well for itself. But babblers who get kicked out of a group have much bleaker prospects. These “non-territorials” are typically badgered away from other territories and forced out into the open, where they often fall prey to hawks, falcons, and other raptors. So it really pays to be part of a group. …

Within a group, babblers assort themselves into a linear and fairly rigid dominance hierarchy, i.e., a pecking order. When push comes to shove, adult males always dominate adult females — but mostly males compete with males and females with females. Very occasionally, an intense “all-out” fight will erupt between two babblers of adjacent rank, typically the two highest-ranked males or the two highest-ranked females. …

Most of the time, however, babblers get along pretty well with each other. In fact, they spend a lot of effort actively helping one another and taking risks for the benefit of the group. They’ll often donate food to other group members, for example, or to the communal nestlings. They’ll also attack foreign babblers and predators who have intruded on the group’s territory, assuming personal risk in an effort to keep others safe. One particularly helpful activity is “guard duty,” in which one babbler stands sentinel at the top of a tree, watching for predators while the rest of the group scrounges for food. The babbler on guard duty not only foregoes food, but also assumes a greater risk of being preyed upon, e.g., by a hawk or falcon. …

Unlike chickens, who compete to secure more food and better roosting sites for themselves, babblers compete to give food away and to take the worst roosting sites. Each tries to be more helpful than the next. And because it’s a competition, higher-ranked (more dominant) babblers typically win, i.e., by using their dominance to interfere with the helpful activities of lower-ranked babblers. This competition is fiercest between babblers of adjacent rank. So the alpha male, for example, is especially eager to be more helpful than the beta male, but doesn’t compete nearly as much with the gamma male. Similar dynamics occur within the female ranks.

Alexander then tries to analogize this back to Justin Bieber and the Koch brothers, and finds that it doesn’t really work, but it reminds me of something rather different. From Jim’s Blog, “A Lost Military Technology“:

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, wealthy private individuals substantially supported the military, with a particular wealthy men buying stuff for a particular regiment or particular fort.

Noblemen paid high prices for military commands, and these posts were no sinecure.  You got the obligation to substantially supply the logistics for your men, the duty to obey stupid orders that would very likely lead to your death, the duty to lead your men from in front while wearing a costume designed to make you particularly conspicuous, and the duty to engage in honorable personal combat, man to man, with your opposite number who was also leading his troops from in front.

A vestige of this tradition remains in that every English prince has been sent to war and has placed himself very much in harm’s way.

It seems obvious to me that a soldier being led by a member of the ruling class who is soaking up the bullets from in front is a lot more likely to be loyal and brave than a soldier sent into battle by distant rulers safely in Washington who despise him as a sexist homophobic racist murderer, that a soldier who sees his commander, a member of the ruling classes, fighting right in front of him, is reflexively likely to fight.

Human social networks are based on reciprocity–you give me a chunk of meat, and when I kill an antelope, I’ll give you a chunk of meat. Indeed, all morality works within the context of reciprocity. The powerful establish the relationship with their vassals via the exchange of gifts, in return for which they receive taxes and service on their estates. The vassal receives military protection in return. The top bird puts his life on the line for his community, in return for which he receives food from the other birds and more opportunities to mate.

This is is different from–though not entirely–being highly skilled in some non-war related way. Skilled people are valued because they contribute to society, they just don’t put their lives on the line leading troops into battle. Justin Bieber is a glorified court minstrel, but without any real princes or kings in our society, we may have to make do.

George Washington, who lead troops in battle, was–and remains–our most popular president. #2 Abraham Lincoln did not lead troops, but has a kind of battle aura due to having “lead the nation” during wartime. Teddy Roosevelt, formerly one of our top 4, also lead troops in battle.

This is called “leadership.”

Today, it seems like we are moving increasingly away from this model.

Higher-ups argue about the Marine Study on Women in Combat

Just in case you’ve been following this, here are a few articles I’ve run into on the subject.

Congressman calls for Navy secretary to resign as Marines’ women-in-combat feud escalates

“Congressman Duncan Hunter, left, a California Republican and Marine Corps combat veteran, is calling for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to resign after Mabus criticized the Marine Corps’ gender integration research. …

“The military is on the cusp of historic change, with a mandate to open all combat roles to women by January. Each of the services has until Oct. 1 to request any exemptions to that policy.

Mabus has made his intentions clear, saying he won’t allow either the Navy or the Marine Corps to keep any specialties closed to women. …

Days later, Mabus went a step further, telling NPR that the Marine Corps’ study was flawed. He reiterated his position again this week during a speaking engagement in Ohio. …

“Mabus also has suggested the study’s results were predetermined.

“It started out with a fairly large component of the men thinking ‘this is not a good idea,’ and ‘women will never be able to do this,’ ” Mabus told NPR in an interview broadcast on Sept. 11. “When you start out with that mindset, you’re almost presupposing the outcome.””

In response, Sergent Major Justin LeHew probably stated:

“Ok, been silent long enough on this. I have been a part of this process from the beginning and I am just going to put it out there. The Secretary of the Navy is way off base on this and to say the things he is saying is is flat out counter to the interests of national security and is unfair to the women who participated in this study.We selected our best women for this test unit, selected our most mature female leaders as well. The men (me included) were the most progressive and open minded that you could get. The commander of this unit was a seasoned and successful infantryman. The XO of this unit was as good as they get, so good the USMC made her the CO of the Officer candidate school.

This was as stacked as a unit could get with the best Marines to give it a 100 percent success rate as we possibly could. End result? The best women in the GCEITF as a group in regard to infantry operations were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group in this test study.
I just selected the SgtMaj of the unit to head up our senior enlisted academy at Camp Lejeune, NC. No one went in to this with the mentality that we did not want this to succeed. No Marine, regardless of gender would do that. With our limited manpower we cannot afford to not train eveyone to the best of their abilities.

They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations. SECNAV has stated that he has made his mind up even before the release of these results and that the USMC test unit will not change his mind on anything.

Listen up folks. Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to pursue whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security. The infantry is not Ranger School. That is just a school like any other school and is not a feeder specifically to the infantry.

Anyone can go to that school that meets the prereqs, just like airborne school. Kudos to the two women who graduated. They are badasses in their own right. In regards to the infantry… There is no trophy for second place. You perform or die.

Make no mistake. In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to counter what you are throwing at them and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man.

There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is. You will never see a female Quarterback in the NFL, there will never be a female center on any NHL team and you will never see a female batting in the number 4 spot for the New York Yankees. It is what it is. As a country we preach equality.

But to place these mandates on the military before this country has even considered making females register, just like males, for the selective service is in all aspects out of touch with reality. Equality and equal opportunity start before you raise your right hand and swear and oath to this country.

Yes, we are an all volunteer force at the moment. Should this country however need to mobilize rapidly again to face the threats of the world like our grandfathers did, it will once again look to the military age males of this country to fill the ranks because last I checked, we did not require women to register for the selective service.

Until that happens, we should not even be wasting our time even thinking about opening up the infantry to women.

To my female Marine friends out there, I love you to death, you are the best of the best and you have my continued admiration for what you do and to the Marines of the GCEITF….you are tops in my book for taking up the challenge…regardless what the SECNAV says about you not being the best that we could have put in that unit because you were….on all accounts.”

This was posted on FB communities for the Marines and Infantry, rather than an “official” source like a news article, so I can’t claim 100% certainty that someone didn’t just make it up. However, if you want the full United States Marine Corps Assessment of Women in Service Assignments, this looks about as legit as it gets. Since it’s all images, I’m not going to quote, but one of the things it does note is that the vast, vast majority of jobs in the military are already open to women; only a few of the very front-line, combat jobs are under discussion.

These are jobs where raw strength matters a lot, and the average person–male or female–probably isn’t cut out for such work, but females are far less likely than males to qualify.

 

My own opinion is that, in an ideal world, we would allow everyone into all jobs and just determine whether they are qualified or not via a test. But if many of the women who’ve been through boot camp and training and are genuinely trying still can’t do the job, how many qualified women are we even talking about? I’ve seen people trying to argue that nowadays weightlifting is getting more popular with women, so more women will be strong enough to qualify, but what these folks miss is that the men who qualify are already doing strength training; it’s not like anyone can just naturally lift 200 pounds. Mere strength training is not enough; these women would have to do far more strength training than the male recruits. We are running up, here, against human limits. Yes, there are some women who are both qualified for the job and actually have an interest in it, but how many? And when we find these few women, will the military actually gain strength from them, or will the logistics of integrating them into otherwise all-male units outweigh the benefits? I hate to be crass, but we women menstruate; supply chains would need to take this into account.

Frankly, if the draft returns, the last place I’d like to be is combat (and I guarantee you don’t want me there, either.)