CAVEAT ALERT: To many if not most in these days of political-correctness with its warm fuzzies and hugs all around, the following will be hyper-chauvinistic, so let the chips fall where they may, with no apologies! Recently, two U.S. army commissioned officers, female graduates of West Point, were given inordinate media coverage because they had passed the army's grueling Ranger School. Not usually mentioned is the fact that they had failed the program twice and so made it on the third try, making one wonder, especially when remembering that Osama's noisy assassination took place in the same location as Pakistan's military academy (less than a mile away) and other military bases without a shot being fired by any Pakistan military during the noisy 40-minute raid that included a firefight with Osama's body guards and a helicopter crash.
This in no way denigrates what the Navy Seals did since the whole shebang could have imploded upon them with significant loss of life but it's obvious that this government had made an arrangement with the Pakistan government that Osama's compound could be invaded with impunity; however, there's been little if any ballyhoo to that effect. This was an important qualifier for that mission, so one wonders about a qualifier for the Ranger School achievement. Subterfuge has been a hallmark of the entire Obama administration.
One of the women is a helicopter pilot, the other in the Military Police, neither job requiring Ranger capability. The president—father of two daughters—has okayed women in combat, an incredible decision, but they have not yet been assigned to the Rangers. Obama will see to this, messing up military combat readiness even more than he already has. He hasn't discovered even at this stage of his “evolving” that there are differences between men and women that totally negate political-correctness in favor of both readiness and common sense. By his own account, he “evolved” into understanding that men may marry men, meaning that a man is also a woman, so it's just a leap to throwing women into IED territory or foreign prisons, there to be treated with Muslim jihad favor—gang-rape, lopped off limbs, stonings and other types of humane treatment known as torture.
The Ranger School is tough and lasts 61 days. The TV clips showed the women crawling through mud just like the men and carrying heavy packs on their backs. In the women's class there were 364 GIs at the outset, with 94 men passing (26%) and two (one-half of one percent) women claimed as passing on their third try. Will the president—commander-in-chief—now decide that the god diversity calls for half of all Rangers to be women since they make up more than half the population and are actually men anyway?
Earlier this year, David Martin (CBS – Sixty Minutes) was allowed to see just some – actually very little – of what aspiring Marine lieutenants have to endure in order to be qualified as Infantry Lieutenants. In the group of Marine lieutenants beginning the ordeal were five women, one of whom allowed herself to be interviewed and filmed during part of the first day, which involves a grueling combination of exercises featuring everything from actual bare-knuckled fights among the aspirants themselves to an obstacle course to a grueling 16-mile hike carrying extremely heavy equipment. The first day is designed to make or break as far as effort is concerned, while others may fall out along the way. None of the five women made it past the first day.
By day 70, there were 59 Marines left out of the 85 that began the three months of torture designed to tax to the limit both the physical and mental capacities of the aspirants. On this day, the aspirants began cliff-climbing and -descending in the Mojave Desert...temperature 110 degrees. The packs they carried weighed 115 lbs, and there were no paths or directions. It was every man for himself and it was not a one-day affair. The general in charge of the training mentioned that the packs in some situations weigh up to 130 lbs.
Martin interviewed the candidate who was at the top of the class at that point, asking his weight. The young man, who stood 6-2, weighed 170 lbs. and had begun the course at a weight of 200 lbs. Losing 30 pounds in 70 days has much to say about what's involved in becoming a Marine infantry officer, and he still had two weeks to go. The general explained that in fighting conditions the enlisted men had to have faith in their leader, thus the rigorous training and weeding out of less worthy men, not on the basis of desire or mentality but on the basis of leadership skills and strength honed by the most demanding training possible.
There is also an infantry course for enlisted personnel, though nowhere near as demanding as that of the officers. One-third of the women who try make it through this course. Martin interviewed one of the women who passed this course but her remarks were surprising. She said, even though she completed the training, that the infantry was not the place for women. Two of her reasons were that the weight that had to be carried was too heavy (women might have been allowed the rope-climb without packs but I'm not certain) and that women's hips were not built for that strenuous requirement, translated as the idea of unisex being loony-tunes.
The Navy Seal training is even more comprehensive and demanding than that of the infantry officers not least because much of it is in and below water and involves precision parachuting over all kinds of seas, terrain or time, day or night. No mention was made of these things vis-a-vis the Marine Infantry Officer training, done on the land. The president has said that the SEALS must get their act ready for women. He has never even been through boot camp, is militarily totally clueless, yet makes decisions that are so off the wall as to be embarrassing, to say nothing of the jeopardy into which he plunges the nation.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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