I AM posting responses to the previous entry, “Don’t Join the Marines,” here.

David writes:

While I sympathize with your correspondents who advise against joining the Marines, I don’t agree with their advice. The military is continually being tinkered with by social engineers specifically because it remains one of the strong bastions of traditional values, under the surface, and we all benefit by its remaining so. Occasionally saluting the absurdities of political correctness is of course annoying and degrading, but official folly is nothing new in military culture either. Nor are useless buggers in command positions – metaphorical OR literal buggers. Indeed, by the late nineteenth century the British army effectively controlled the world’s largest empire despite a significant presence in the command structure of effete aristocrats whose uselessness or counterproductiveness sometimes approached that of the modern PC gelding or metrosexual.

When all is said and done, military culture will remain unattractive to most male homosexuals – and remain as attractive to many lesbians as it has been, all along. But an even longer-lived military constant, predating the enlistment of any servicewomen (and no offense to your distinguished correspondants) is the conviction that “the Corps isn’t what it was when I went through; these young whippernappers couldn’t hack the hardships we used to have, and God help them if they have to fight for real”. The Marines of the War of 1812 doubtless heard this from the men who fought in the Revolution. The Union Marine vets doubtless said that was why the Filipinos were giving their successors such trouble in the early 20th century.

It is true that the young man determined to test himself properly needs to go beyond Basic Training (even USMC Basic Training, perhaps) and seek out a more rigorous environment – and it’s true that’s a terrible waste of his time and taxpayer money, when Basic itself should have been much more strenuous than a co-ed environment permitted it to be. Yet we still need to be directing our young men to military service, for their own sakes and for ours – so that our military services, at least, remain predominantly patriotic, and so that large criminal gangs are not actually the most organized and combat-ready forces on our continent.

I’ll go one better on the pugil stick challenge, though: I would love to see honest military force-on-force trials rating the efficiency, in fair competition, of a coed regiment versus an all-male one; of a co-ed squadron versus an all-male one; and of a co-ed warship versus an all-male one. The PC military absolutely cannot permit such a thing to come to pass – which is a huge difference between the race-integration of the military (which had the gallant and sometimes effective service of segregated regiments to point to) and the “gender” integration (which had instead the historic failures of similar experiments elsewhere, to cover up).

Randy Browning writes:

I want to first state it was my full intent to join the Marines at 17 right after I graduated from high school. My Father would not sign, so I did not go. Six months after turning 18, a cross-country move, and having grown tired of recapping tires and serving fast food, I journeyed back to the Marine Corps recruiter. I walked in, said I wanted to join, and was told by the recruiter to sit right there, as he had an appointment and would be back in a couple of hours. As soon as the door closing created that air-conditioned vacuum, the beautiful female SSGT from the Air Force walked over and asked, you really want to be field artillery because that’s all they have to offer? So off to Lackland I went. 

Since 1995, I have operated the West Coast Special Forces internet site (a proximity thing, no longer exclusive to the West Coast), a password-only membership site for prior service, active duty, and the families thereof. During those 16 years, I have conversed with many Marines, and it is amazing to me, not only the change in tone of the conversations, but the composition of the enlistees. I look at pictures of groups in the desert over the years which have transitioned from largely white, with a large minority of blacks, to that of largely Latin American, with a large minority of blacks, and a smaller minority of whites. 

The unsettlingly large Latin American population is most likely due to the tsunami of illegal immigration originally sanctioned by Ronald Regan, and further condoned or ignored by every President since. The 25-40 million illegals (12 million was a lie when it was promoted 20 years ago) that are here working full time to destroy the country, culture, religion and language they infiltrated. Think about that for a minute; America has been infiltrated by a warring people who publically promote the killing and subjugation of whites (Coalition of Hispanic (sic) Organizations, La Reconquista, La Raza, Nation of Islam – heavily invested in Mexico, and more), we allow them to join our military, and further allow them to speak out publicly in favor of the overthrow of our government. We are paying for, training, and arming a people who want nothing more than the destruction of Judeo-Christian whites, in addition to the law of the land. 

On top of this already over the top corrosive behavior, the Marine Corps is conducting special recruiting sessions with homosexual clubs at university, and in close proximity to known gay bars in larger city centers. 

For me, all of this finds its origins in the feminization of the planet. Not only are men considered second-class citizens by most feminist groups, many families have reversed roles at home, where the woman has all but taken over the household due to the engrained passive nature of the modern male. Once it happened at home it was bound to corrupt outside of the home, of which the educational system was first, but rapidly followed by the military. I have one daughter who is currently serving, and another who intends to get her commission and fly. I believe women have a place in the military, but that place should be one of traditional values. Women do not belong in combat (period), and they do not belong in major command roles. Medical, administration, linguistic, and intelligence are a few of a very small subset of careers I believe are well suited to female enlistees and officers, but they should never be front line medics, or operational field intel. 

If the Senate has its way it will overturn the UCMJ and its prohibitions against sodomy and bestiality. I don’t want to know what the next generation of Marine will look or act like, and I hold onto that love of the Marine Corps I once knew, revered, and respected. 

I still promote military service to my children, not only as payment in advance for freedoms previously earned, but to instill respect for structure, order, command, procedures, and a commitment to discipline. I am not certain that five years from now I would even talk about the military with any measure of respect. Currently, I have zero respect for the current Commander-in-Chief, or much of the major command. 

God bless and protect our military serviceman and woman.

Howard Sutherland writes:

As a former Marine officer, I read with interest – and dismay – Wheeler McPherson’s advice to the evidently somewhat confused KB not to join the Marine Corps.  Reluctantly, as I long believed the Marine Corps had a worthy mission in the nation’s defense, I must second McPherson’s advice.  Being a Marine did me a lot of good, but I no longer think that – as currently constituted and employed – the Marine Corps is carrying out a worthy mission in the nation’s defense.
 
If KB is thinking of enlisting to prove to himself either his manhood or his American-ness, neither is a good reason to join.  Join if you believe the Marine Corps is an honorable service with worthwhile missions to which you would have something to contribute – and you are willing to subject yourself to the discipline of the Marine Corps – if it still exists – in performing those missions.  It shouldn’t be all about you.  KB’s stated reasons remind me uncomfortably of how Barack Hussein Obama describes himself in Dreams from my Father: a young man confused about who he is and where he fits in, trying to create a solid persona for himself – in Obama’s case by making himself black enough; in KB’s, presumably by making himself manly enough or American enough.  I shudder to think just how the federal government – which includes the Marine Corps – actually defines being “American” today.  I suspect my definition, and those the Marines I served with might offer, would be rather different.
 
The U.S. armed forces have been jettisoning the very things that make military services strong and winning fighting forces for decades now.  One hardly knows where to begin, but here’s a quick list, one that doesn’t even take into account all the standards relaxed on a racial basis and harm done during the McNamara/Vietnam years of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.  My selections are biased, I’m sure, by my being a military pilot:
 
• 1970s and onward:  Training women as military aviators, when there was no operational need to do so.  This was an early form of affirmative action; it has of course been followed by more conventional affirmative action in flying training, where non-white and women students are given far more opportunities to overcome failures in training than a white man would get before being washed out.  The inevitable consequence is a far larger percentage of sub-standard pilots on the line and in the fleet.  That is not merely non-operational, it is anti-operational.  For examples, review the attempts to make fighter pilots of Kara Hultgreen in the Navy (she paid for the experiment with her life) and Jackie Parker in the Air Force (the Air National Guard fighter wing on which she was imposed paid for the experiment with the almost total destruction of its esprit de corps and unit cohesion);  [Thank you, Richard Nixon]
 
• 1976:  Admitting women to the service academies, when there was no need whatever to do so, and which could only be done by setting lower physical standards for the women, and then compounding the harm by lying – at academies with presumably no-exception honor codes – about the fact that standards were being lowered to accommodate women cadets and midshipmen;  [Thank you, Gerald Ford]
 
• 1980s and onward:  Insinuating women into combat service support and combat support assignments, when there was no operational need to do so, as a wedge to push the argument that women should be given combat assignments;  [Thank you, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush]
 
• 1980s and onward:  Permitting women officers to lobby, openly and in uniform, for the repeal of the combat exclusion – against the clearly stated positions of their services, in ways that would have earned male officers relief from their posts and probably General Courts-Martial;  [Thank you again, Reagan and Bush, and you too, Bill Clinton]
 
• 1993:  Destroying the armed forces’ practical proscription of homosexuality in the service, to please a vocal minority – very few of whose members (male ones, anyway) have any interest in serving in the armed forces;  [Thank you again, Clinton]
 
• 1994 and onward:  Throwing open combat assignments in aviation, at sea and in other areas to women, with all of the time-wasting and expensive training and field accommodations (read lowering-of-standards) required and the inevitable damage to the fighting spirit of what are supposed to be fighting units, not simply way-stations on an ambitious woman’s (or man’s, for that matter) career path;  [Thank you once more, Clinton, and you too, George W. Bush]
 
• 2011:  Removing any restrictions whatever on open homosexuality in the armed forces, even to the point of pressuring military chaplains to perform homosexual “weddings.”  [Thank you, Barack Hussein Obama]

The litany is not Marine-specific.  It applies to all the services, and it shows not a single commander-in-chief since President Eisenhower has done a one meaningful thing to resist these unnecessary and destructive changes.  Until the most recent surrender to homosexualism, I thought the Marine Corps was doing better at standing fast than the three big services – which aren’t standing fast at all.  I shuddered in 2009 when I read that the Army’s Chief of Staff, General George Casey, actually said, in the wake of Nidal Malik Hasan’s mass-murders at Fort Hood, that “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”  The inmates really were running the asylum, and bowing frequently to Mecca while doing it.
 
I consoled myself, however, that the Commandant of the Marine Corps would never say anything that inane and insane, and one wouldn’t find a Nidal Malik Hasan in the Marine Corps in the first place.  I fear I was naive…  Earlier this year, when General James Amos, a fighter pilot, became the Marine Corps’ first aviator Commandant – fighter pilot that I am – I was very pleased and thought Amos would bring a fighter pilot’s attitude to bear in resisting the PC inroads.  Now I know I was naive…  A problem that arises from the Marine Corps’ unyielding determination to be the most zealous service in executing any mission assigned is that Marines go the extra mile in bad causes, as well as good.  General Amos’s reaction to the “repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell” is a textbook example.  Even though Amos had opposed the repeal, he immediately ordered Marines to go all out not only fully to expedite the new relaxations, but also to seize the lead in recruiting outreach to homosexuals.
 
Reading the Marine Corps Times article about the repeal, I realized the termites have been eating the Marine Corps’ moral foundations for some time now, presumably with the knowledge and acquiescence of the brass.  This quote jumped out at me (emphasis added); I think it speaks for itself:  

Marines’ strong opposition to repeal could be fueled by a culture built on a rigid “warrior ethos,” said Tammy Schultz, a professor at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. She is co-editing a forthcoming collection of essays written by gay and straight service members titled “The End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: The Impact in Personal Essays & Studies” and published by the Marine Corps University Press. Schultz, who is gay, also wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in November 2010, questioning why the Corps, at that time, was still backing “don’t ask.”

“Marines have almost an uber-warrior mindset,” she told Marine Corps Times. “The commandant has even spoke (sic) of this. They recruit based on that warrior ethos. … There’s the perception, in many cases wrongly, that homosexuals may display more effeminate qualities that may run counter to that warrior ethos.” 

Why is a “Tammy Schultz,” whatever her sexual itches, a professor at the Marine Corps War College in the first place?  (Aside: When I was in the active Marine Corps, our war college was the Naval War College alongside our sea service brethren of the Navy; sounds like letting the Leathernecks have their own may have been a mistake!)  How does being propagandized by a lesbian civilian who fears and disdains a “warrior ethos” make Marine colonels stronger and more effective warriors?  Perhaps making them that is no longer the point. 

With great regret I urge you, KB: Listen to Wheeler McPherson!  Seek another path to find your inner man and inner American.  Maybe you should learn to play football or lacrosse.  On the other hand, if you favor the homosexual life, the new “Marines” may be right up your alley.   

Buck writes:

A reader writes:

An insightful booklet for anyone thinking of joining the military is “War Is a Racket,” written in 1935 by retired Major General Smedley Butler of the Marine Corps. It is summarized on Wikipedia and it looks like it is online on this link.

Dan writes:

I spent a mostly miserable six years enlistment in the navy. While joining the navy was never a test of will and endurance that the Marines was, I think I have something to add to the discussion. The last two years of my enlistment were the worst years of my life, even though I barely had to do any real work at all during that time. The Navy is at least a decade ahead of the Marines when it comes to infiltration of leftism. The most successful sailors I ever knew were women who never actually did any of the work necessary to keep a ship operational and ready but somehow excelled at managing the bureaucracy and keeping their uniforms clean when they weren’t sleeping around. On the other hand I’ve seen very dedicated male sailors (Some very senior) who took pride in their job and equipment have their careers destroyed and spit out of the Navy with a bad discharge because they couldn’t navigate the female dominated environment. Some because of just one incident in entire career involving sex or alcohol or both.

I still would say that its a good idea for a young man with a strong will and mind but no direction in life to join for one enlistment. I say this because I don’t regret my enlistment all. I’ve learned a lot about people and what an endless bureaucracy does to their souls. All my beliefs about politics, race and the evil of leftism were formed in the those six long years and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. I look back and see it as the ultimate test of character, because I know that a lot of my peers are still there now teaching Power Point classes to junior sailors about sexual harassment, and I imagine these days they must be teaching gay tolerance classes too. And these are the same people I went to boot camp with who would have laughed if they saw someone else say those things at the time. They lost their souls and are too scared of the outside world now to ever get out willingly.

Please follow and like us: