“Well, I’m sorry if you heard “Disneyland,” but I distinctly said, “military school.” – The Simpsons
Which historical period has the nicest shirts? The Iron Age.
The primary factor in the success of any military organization is the quality of the people who run it and lead it. Over the course of only five years, the level of trust in the United States military has dropped from 70% to less than half. If the military was composed entirely women, I guess they could get divorced again and get the other half.
Why?
There are multiple reasons. The first is that the Right has generally been more supportive of the military. This was because the commies hated the military in the 1960s because it was stopping the worldwide spread of communism. This resulted in a visceral and continual hate of the Left for all things .mil. And, not everyone hates all of the Leftists. Heck, I haven’t met all of them yet.
With an all-volunteer force after the draft ended, the sorting primarily drew two types of people – those that wanted to serve with honor and those that didn’t have any other place to go. The sorting made a military that was strongly but not uniformly on the Right – 36% of post 9/11 vets are on the Right per a 2012 Pew® survey, and just 21% on the Left.
What did the Roman say when his ex was eaten by a lion? Gladiator.
That leaves a big chunk in the middle, but is considerably more Right than society as a whole – at that time 34% of the general public described themselves as Democrats and 23% Republican. The military has been (at least in America) a place where the service was apolitical, but the sense was on the Right.
In 2018 the numbers had gotten even larger, according to the Military Times® 45% of troops supported Republicans, and 28% supported Democrats. In a 2015 survey from the Washington Post©, the Marines and the Air Force were apparently significantly more on the Right (at that time) than the Army or Navy.
I’m thinking all that is changing, and rapidly. Weirdly, the more competent a person is, the more they tend to have Right-leaning views. The fewer mental illnesses? Again, the more Right-leaning. And you’d have to be both crazy and incompetent to join the military in 2023.
Let me explain . . . .
I recall a quote from the late actor Ron Silver when he was at the Clinton inauguration back in 1992. He saw the jets flying over and his visceral reaction was anger. He hated the military. But, he said, “I realized that those were our jets now.”
Ron used to live a hand-to-mouth existence. Then someone told him about silverware.
When the Left says “Our Democracy” they mean just that, “Ours” as in it belongs to the Left. Any outcome that doesn’t favor Leftists isn’t democracy by their definition.
I took The Boy on a tour of several colleges, including one of the academies. I think he had the chops to get in and succeed. He looked around and decided to go to Midwestia State. The scholarship was pretty good, but he was vaguely concerned about the academy. He didn’t explain why.
After the aftermath of COVID where students were being kicked out of the academies if they didn’t have the proper vaccination, well, I could see he made the right choice. I’ve also seen briefing papers, PowerPoints®, and pictures that make it clear that .mil is now becoming thoroughly woke.
When the Right is in charge, the military is what it is meant for: a tool to be used in war to kill people and break things, or help in extraordinary crisis like a hurricane or tsunami. To the Right, the military not meant to be a social conditioning program to spout propaganda to the American people or the soldiers themselves. Why do you think the Obama administration made it a point to purge hundreds of senior officers? Because it was a fashion show?
Well, to be fair he’s also probably a Vice Admiral.
But the primary purpose of the military to the Left is the same as the purpose of anything to the Left. Just like “Our” Democracy has nothing to do with you or me, the major mission of any FedGov body is to follow the ideology of the Left, secure power for the Left, and indoctrinate for the Left.
We’ve seen that with the absurdity of the gymnastics the FBI® and the DOJ™ have been doing to keep Hunter Biden out of the slammer for things that would put mere mortals like us into a Federal penitentiary for years, their working to control what ideas you can see, and their unswerving desire to disarm the public that they’re supposed to be serving.
But back to the military. Recruiting is down, only 75% of recruits can make it out of a basic training and the various services have started “pre-basic” to take marginal candidates and help them do things like get in moderately decent shape or pass the ASVAB. It’s the second part that’s scary – the last time FedGov lowered mental standards in the 1960s, they found that McNamara’s Morons they died at triple the rate of qualified soldiers, and took many of their fellow soldiers with them.
Forrest Gump wasn’t entirely fictional, but in reality he was the one who generally got Lt. Dan blown up.
I hear his password is 1Forrest1.
80% of people who sign up for the armed forces are from families that have members who served in the armed forces. Those same relatives are now telling the kids to not sign up. They’re not. Despite more than doubling the pool of recruits by resetting the moral, mental, physical, and virtue requirements for admission to “breathing” because the numbers are collapsing.
It will get worse from here.
The systems and wonder weapons that the United States has collectively bet on are complicated. They require tough, strong, motivated troops to use them properly and they have to work together – it’s not a game of Call of Warcraft™ or Grand Theft Duty©.
As our Navy ships run into each other and kill sailors because, seriously, the female officer wasn’t on speaking terms with another female aboard the urine and trash-bottle filled command center. I’m not making this up (LINK).
“Well she needs to apologize first.”
Thankfully, we’ll never need a functioning military and can just get by with an indoctrination and jobs program.
Wait, did someone in Rome say that, too?
Barry heard all that chatter about at least we have the military.
The DEI society is meant to fail and fundamentally transform into a prison camp to be guarded by the “our democracy” true believers.
Muh democracy is up there with the Branch Covidian Jonestown sickness when it is really nothing more than mob rule while the elites plunder everything that isn’t nailed down.
Ivan doesn’t have a problem of social engineering everything is fair and equal, Heather has two mommies in his military, they smash things and kill the enemy by any means necessary.
The internationalists in the district of cesspool don’t care if we get humiliated in a war or if the military is a worldwide fighting clowns laughing stock, that is a feature to them.
Forest was not a smart man but he knew better than to put on women’s clothes and prattle on about equity or glue his hands to the road.
Wait until the elites really start plundering themselves. We’ll need popcorn for that.
So, the Neocons want to send troops to fight the Roosskies? We’d suffer the same fate as the Ukies currently are.
Maybe worse.
With the folks in charge of .mil today, not sure they could find Russia.
IMHO they don’t want the old recruits, bill is pending to give anyone citizenship that signs up. That sounds Roman too. Then the commies have an army that can work domestic.
And we all know how that turned out, and so do the Romans (after Rome was sacked).
“Oh hear us when we cry to Thee for those in peril on the sea.”
Amen.
Amen.
Some bad group has decided to disseminate the US “armed forces” into an ineffective
group willing to wear lipstick and heeled shoes and be the epitome of politically correct
sex change seeking morons. Military higher ups must be in on it because they promote
that line ceaselessly. Well, in fairness, US military has run it’s course anyway. Last, I
am against the hundreds of illegal/brutal/destructive actions taken by the military to support
empire. One defends their country when attacked…but the military is useless now, especially
when it comes to our open borders. The jabs they were forced to take? Those added insult
to injury.
Three Trends
1) When I was in the Rangers we had 2 battalions of 3 companies or roughly 1,200 soldiers. Now there are 3 battalions of 4 companies (plus special troops) for roughly 3,600 soldiers. You can’t triple the number of the elite without lowering the standards. Not dissing the current guys or bragging about “back in the day” – just drawing a simple conclusion. If you lower the standards for your tier one units you are deceiving yourself about your capabilities.
2) One of my college professors was Dr. Zawodny, who fought in the rising of Warsaw commanding mixed gender guerilla groups. His takeaway based on practical experience was that these groups took disproportionate casualties. If a woman was wounded 3-4 men would try to pull her from the line of fire – and take casualties themselves. When men were wounded some women would attempt to do the same. Their lack of upper body strength exposed them longer to enemy fire and they again took disproportionate casualties. The physiological differences complicated the unit’s distribution of weapons/ammunition – men’s loads increased to offset women’s lowered carrying capacity. Finally guard duty rotation was “complicated.” As we attempt to boost total numbers by recruiting more women into the service we can anticipate similar challenges in near peer combat.
3) Last week President Biden activated the Individual Ready Reserve. Interestingly, according to current law, he can activate up to 1,000,000 troops under an executive order providing that the US is under a state of emergency. We have technically been under a state of emergency since 14 November 1979. Carter declared it during the Iran contretemps and each subsequent president has quietly rolled it over. “Fortunately”(?) we have less than 200,000 discharged servicemen/women in the IRR. While it appears intimidating to activate our reserves – the reality is that the cupboard is actually pretty bare. And historically, when the IRR was previously activated during the GWOT a significant fraction of those recalled couldn’t serve due to physical disabilities.
Bottom line – the quality and thus capability of the armed forces has deteriorated. Note that I haven’t touched on their political reliability. Have to leave something for the other commentators to dissect.
I have read that in Israels war right after being formed, 1948, I think, that they had mixed sex units, and that those broke under contact with the enemy. They learned their lesson and, although all women do a stretch they are in more traditional female rolls.
I wrote a short substack essay with some thoughts on war.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/some-disjointed-thoughts-on-war
The Soviets fielded several all-female units in WWII. The Germans treated these units as holes in the Soviet lines.
General agreement, but there were exceptions. My favorite is what the Germans called the “die Nachthexen” (“The Night Witches”). They flew obsolete Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes at night and would idle their engines (!) on their bombing runs, so that the first sign a lot of Germans had was the sound of the bombs in the air. The small bomb load that the little planes could carry meant that some of the pilots were making several sorties in one night.
According to Wikipedia, only 261 served in the unit during the war, though they accounted for over 23,000 sorties, with one pilot–Irina Sebrova–flying over 1,000 herself.
I first read of them in one of Harry Turtledove’s alternate history books. It seemed so impossible that I was surprised to learn that the unit was real!
Respectfully,
Bob
Number one WW2 Soviet sniper for kills was a woman.
@ David
The Israelis were, early on, openly socialist in their policies. That’s how they experimented with men and women in the same units in the first place. The Haganah, which was a paramilitary sort of ground force, permitted men and women alike into its ranks.
The practice was discontinued when it was discovered that the Arabs they were fighting grew all the more enraged because of the fact that they were facing women as well as men, and fought that much harder to win. Worst of all, when the Arabs captured female personnel, they mercilessly beat, raped and tortured them before killing them, and often mutilated the corpses. Naturally, there was a public outcry against the policy, and it is at that time the then-young nation of Israel discontinued the idea of putting women into combat units.
Subscribed!
A female IDF member invented the ULA loader.
We are ill prepared, and I’m concerned we’re still trying to fight the Desert Storm in a drone war.
“… ineffective group willing to wear lipstick and heeled shoes and be the epitome of politically correct…”
Adding injury to insult. Literally.
The DOD spent an extended time yesterday arguing that abortion was required for military preparation. Moloch would be proud.
The Navy as I knew it is no more. Look at the disastrous fire aboard the USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6). It happened at dockside, yet they were unable to put out the fire on the 2-year-old ship for FOUR DAYS(!), and it had to be decommissioned and scrapped because the damage was so extensive. Fire fighting and other damage control skills used to be the bread-and-butter of everyone in the Navy, just as ”Every Marine is a rifleman.”
Another thing to consider is that the Navy has fewer ships than it needs to accomplish its overall mission, and the situation is not getting better. The class of “tin can” I served on–the Oliver Hazard Perry frigates–is no more. There is no replacement. The Arleigh Burke destroyers are more like cruisers of old. The recent ones displace more than double what the Perry-class frigates displaced, and the Littoral Combat Ship experiment has spectacularly failed. Small (around 4,000 tons), capable combatant ships, like the Knox frigates, and the Adams class destroyers, are the backbone of a navy, doing a lot of the many missions, like search-and-rescue, piracy interdiction, anti-sub warfare, supporting troops in amphibious operations, escort of larger combatants, convoy protection, etc., that need to be done, no matter how many ships the US Navy has. This is a type of ship that the Navy has seemingly abandoned.
At its present size — and with its low level of readiness — the US Navy is in deep, deep trouble. It may be the weakest of the four major branches of the US military, in terms of accomplishing its mission.
@ Bob
Re: “The Navy as I knew it is no more. Look at the disastrous fire aboard the USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6). It happened at dockside, yet they were unable to put out the fire on the 2-year-old ship for FOUR DAYS(!)”
A lot of civilians and many military pros who ought to know better think that life in the navy or coast guard is physically a piece of cake, and that “anyone” can do it since so much is mechanized, automated and done with the assistance of machines and/or computers. There is a grain of truth in that – it can be argued that shipboard life is less-strenuous than it once was, but the other side of the coin is that things remain easy only when everything is working properly and functioning smoothly. Which is the antithesis of naval combat.
If you were a professional, you know that damage control aboard a seriously-damaged vessel is one of the most-hazardous and difficult tasks not only in the navy, but in any branch of service at anytime. Anyone who doubts that, ask them to read about the hellish inferno that was the U.S.S. Franklin (CV-13) after being hit by two bombs from a Japanese dive-bomber and set ablaze on 19 March, 1945.
Later known as the “ship that wouldn’t die,” the Franklin sustained the most-serious battle damage suffered by any WW2-era fleet carrier while remaining afloat. Eight-hundred seven (807) crew members perished, and four-hundred eighty-seven (487) were wounded. Every man on that vessel was well-trained, experienced and battle-hardened, yet the vessel come very close to sinking.
Reality is that which – even you ignore it – does not go away. I hope that our nation and armed forces do not have to learn that lesson the hard way. But as you may know, hope makes a good breakfast but a poor dinner.
The damage done to the navy by the politically-correct commissars of woke, uniformed and civilian alike, cannot be overestimated. Those costs will be paid in blood, suffering and lost battles and wars when the navy can’t do what it is supposed to do when the chips are down.
Excellent example with the Franklin. A more recent one is the USS STARK (FFG-31). She took TWO Exocets on the port side, in the area around the forward port corner of the “shoebox” superstructure. I was on active duty at the time and had a lot of time onboard Perry-class frigates. STARK’s crew suffered some 37 killed and 21 wounded–over 25% of the crew–but they kept the ship afloat. The damage was very close to the missle magazine–a huge drum that sits below the forecastle.
The word around the campfire at the time was that no one would have expected a Perry-class frigate to survive such an attack. They were lucky, in that the missile mag wasn’t hit directly, only one Exocet detonated, and the shots were taken from far enough away that the missiles weren’t full of fuel when they hit (as happened to the British Navy’s SHEFFIELD). Still, STARK’s crew were fire-fightin’ mellow farmers, or that ship would have burned. I doubt that a similar crew in today’s Navy could perform as well. I hope I’m wrong.
Several pictures I’ve seen of Navy ships show rusty decks and mismatched uniforms at official ceremonies.
“Ex-military” used to be quite a selling point for those seeking employment as security, bodyguards, LEO or really any situation that assumes a degree of trust, discretion and mental and physical fortitude. At my place of employment (defense contractor) we hired nothing but ex-military on our security teams for decades. Those aging buzz-cutted ex-marines manning the guard towers on campus gave off an aura of authority and quiet menace that could not be matched by contemporary soft soibois fresh out of their teens with nothing but an impressive collection of hair nets and name tags to show for their (brief) employment histories.
Nowadays, I think we will have to specify the era served to separate the wheat from the chaff, e.g. “Ex-servicemen, pre-Milley preferred” to stand in for the potentially objectionable “No poofters”. No need to check under the hood for the expected original factory equipment, and the further removed from the days of Biden and Obama as Commander in Chief (*Hack, ptooey!*) the better.
We have ceased to be a serious nation. There will be impacts.
Again, men, especially White ones, shouldn’t sacrifice life and limb for a country and culture that openly hates them.
The new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has certainly said they don’t need many white guys as officers.
In the spirit of fairness, two of our last three Republican “Right-wing” Presidents, Bush Sr and Bush Jr., used the military for less than noble purposes too. We haven’t used the military to actually defend America since the Pacific theater of World War II.
True, but, the servicemen themselves, were still legacy, patriotic Americans, despite the phuqued up neocon leadership.
I think the deterrent effect during the Cold War should certainly count . . .
And I’m one of those advising kids not to join up.
I’m proud of my time in the Corps, but fidelity, loyalty, honor and integrity are supposed to run down the chain of command as well as up. The people in charge now are some of the worst scum in recorded history, and they have the personal principles of hungry piranha.
To quote one our most P.O.S. politicians, “But at this point what difference does it make”.
To her, NONE at all.
There was a saying back when, that is even more applicable now. “We the unwilling, doing the un-necessary, lead by the incompetent, for the ungrateful”.
yeah, we used to say that too all the time. and I also tell kids today to find something else besides the military.
anything but the military. 20 years of worthless wars in a sandbox is proof that it not worth it.
the one thing that does it for most of them is the fact that after you raise you right hand, they OWN you.
that does get them to thinking about something else.
Old Jarhead…”doing the impossible.” You’re probably an Old Jarhead and forgot.
An old zoomie (Chair Force ’69-’73).
The senior leadership in .mil are political. At some point there will be a reckoning on the battlefield for that. Might make Cannae look like a Girl Scout Campout.
Dad and grandma officers during war, brother and I served, both USAF ’71. It was a man’s military then. I got along just fine as it suits my nature.
Uncle captured by Japs early on, when he got back there wasn’t much of him left. So I will be remembering that.
Got a buddy who’s a reserve officer now, a black dood, he despises the feminism and woke that rule the branches now. Just wants to get married and live a normal life, but knows he can’t.
Would forbid my son from joining New Amerika’s military or LE, likewise going to college is out. Would not permit him to attend any of it, kindergarten on.
I’m writing about the marriage culture tomorrow. It’s bad there, too.
1Forrest1 ,Well done sir
Well, that’s all I have to say about that.
#1 Son is currently serving in the Army. He absolutely detests the service, his entire leadership, and most of the other soldiers. It’s politically correct lies, sycophancy, and incompetence all the way up, all the way down.
I expect Commissars soon enough.
My Family has served this country through many wars.
My Grandfather served in the Pacific in WWII
My Father served in Korea during the hot part of the Korean War
My Brother served during the Cold War
I did a lifetime of service from Cold War, through Desert One, Two and 911 then finished in Afghanistan.
I always looked forward to the time when my Son could serve,
But then Obama and the Corruption of our Military and Country began.
Pedo Joe completed this Destruction.
And my Son will Never serve in a military that is currently a rusting, festering Cancer upon this land.
On a happier note did you happen to catch the statement from the Sec of the Army that completely agrees with what the American people now know?
“Biden’s Army Secretary Doesn’t Want 2nd Gen Military Recruits for Fear of a “Warrior Caste””
https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-army-secretary-doesnt-want-2nd-gen-military-recruits-for-fear-of-a-warrior-caste/
Note: All Americans should start to prepare,
Because it is going to get Worse.
Our current military is NOT going to stop the Bad Guys,
They can’t.
MSG Grumpy
80% of his recruits will evaporate. Is that a draft I feel in the room?
Agreed on assessments.
‘Fear of a warrior caste’. Very telling.
And I agree, all that the Woke-Fem Politburo fears at this point is male-organization outside their control. That’s why the endless White Supremacists! propaganda, why dissidents are called ‘insurrectionists’, why veterans are considered a ‘dangerous’ population in New Amerika, etc.
The Politburo consists of empowered women and weak, cowardly men. So all that threatens them is organization of strong men. This is also why the ‘manosphere’ is the #1 enemy in the Politburo’s sights. It’s the only place where strong, non-controlled men gather and exchange info. Gatherings in Meat Space immediately draw the Feds.