DIANA writes:

William McRaven, the head of Special Ops, says that women can make great Navy SEALS.

I “googled” McRaven, and found that he is struggling with budget cuts. So let’s assume the powers that be are telling him: toe the line or your forces get chopped. Or YOU get chopped.

 I don’t care. It’s a shameful, dishonest and dishonorable thing for him to say.

— Comments —–

James P. writes:

The Admiral’s remarks in the article are absurdly dishonest:

“We’ve had women supporting direct Special Operations for quite some time,”

Supporting Special Operations is not the same as fighting in the front lines. Not even close! He knows this.

The necessity, he said, is ensuring that all special operators are in peak physical condition. “The one thing we want to make sure [we do is] we maintain our standards,” McRaven said.

Yet we know (and he knows), from vast experience gained with women in the military since the 1970s, that women cannot meet the physical standards. They cannot even meet the standards for “regular” military forces, let alone elite forces. Furthermore, those standards will be relaxed, as surely as night follows day, when the politicall required number of women fail to meet those standards.

Laura writes:

Just as we have seen with the National Forest Service and its elite firefighting forces, when women are permitted to enter positions that are difficult for even men in peak condition, people will lose their lives because of it.

MarkyMark writes:

I’ve watched documentaries on the Navy SEALS and their training. From them, I learned that the instructors are the gatekeepers, determining who will and will not become a SEAL. Why? Because, after their tour of instructor duty is up, they go back to serving on the front line; In other words, they’ll have to fight beside those they trained. Does it not stand to reason that they’d be very careful about whom they let join the SEAL fraternity? Furthermore, I wonder what the SEAL instructors will do when women trainees are forced on them. Will they buckle and give in? Or will they stand firm, and resign if necessary?

Laura writes:

Resign?

I doubt it. The military seems devoid of martyrs.

Buck writes:

I came across a video of an interview of Admiral McRaven (he says this is his first ever public interview) which took place in front of an audience at the Aspen Security forum in July 2012 .

It’s an interesting hour and a quarter. The Admiral begins by lauding the brillant command of President Obama, the all knowing decider who got Osama Bin Laden. It’s really sickening. It was Admiral McRaven’s operation. He commanded the Navy SEAL teams. Otherwise he seems like any other ambitious politician.

To Diana’s point; at 13:30 Admiral McRaven says that “we did very well in the President’s budget that was put forward.” We’re very thankful for that.”

At 14:40 he is asked how many women are currently serving.

McRaven: I don’t know the exact figure. A lot of the females serve in special operations. They do a fantastic job across the board. There is obviously some legislation where they can not operate in tactical ground units. But, having said that, great support to all of those units. We couldn’t do the job without them.

There is a short discussion of the high suicide rate, in which McRaven describes a long study that was completed just as he took command. He says: “The force was frayed; not crumbling, not destroyed, but we were clearly fraying a year ago. I think that fraying is getting a little worse.” He says that it’s not necessarily a result of what happens in hard combat. “It’s relationships -there’s always a bad relationship in there, alcohol and drugs, and some other things that contribute to it.”

It’s relationships.

 At 54:00 an unidentified women from the audience asks: What are your thoughts on increasing women’s role in combat, and eventually as Navy SEALS?

The women is Paula Broadwell. As usual, she is proudly showing off her “guns.” Most of the available pictures of her show her well muscled arms. For good reason. She is a working symbol for getting women into combat and “having it all.”

The McRaven interview took place in July 2012. The Petraeus Affair broke in November.

McRaven: Yep. Frankly what we’ve seen, at least in my time in the military, and certainly over the last ten years, is the phenominal job that women do everywhere we put them, in terms of a military job. I’m always careful to say that we don’t have women in combat. Because, I’ll tell you, when a culture support team female hops on a helicopter with her Ranger company that’s going out to an objective and flys from that forward operating base to an offset location, patrols six kilometers to the target, allows the Rangers to secure the target, comes and talks to the females on the target, patrols back to an offset location, gets back on a helicopter and flies back to a forward operating base, it’s hard to distinquish between what she did and what her male counterpart did. I think that everybody in todays environment recognizes that. Again, the law and the policy is not my lane. I’ll defer to those who look at that. All I can tell you is, the women who are serving with us now are doing an absolutely magnificent job and we couldn’t do the job without them, period.

Next question wasy about the effect of homosexuals. Blah, blah, blah,…just do the job. “I can tell you that as commander of SOCom, I have not had to deal with any of those issues. That’s not to say that they’re not out there, and that somebody else has not had to deal with them. But, for right now, nothing has been raised to my level.”

Terry Morris writes:

“Women will ‘phenomenal’ Navy SEALS.”

Why not? Demi Moore did it as Jordan O’Neil in G.I. Jane.

DIANA writes:

Mr. Morris writes:

“Women will ‘phenomenal’ Navy SEALS.”

Why not? Demi Moore did it as Jordan O’Neil in G.I. Jane.

Terry Morris’ words reminded me of something I saw about 10 years ago in a movie theater. I go to very few Hollywood movies now, but I was a reasonably regular movie-goer back then. During the previews, there was a recruitment advertisement for the Marines. It showed (I am not kidding) an animated series of crash-bang scenes of young men fighting…aliens. Yes, aliens. This was so disconcerting my companion turned to me and said, “So, we’re fighting aliens now?”

It’s ten years on, and we’ve become so brainwashed by the absolute nonsense dished out by Hollywood and the rest of the media, that I doubt he would say something like that to me now.

And after all, is fighting aliens any crazier than women whose upper body strength enables them to punch out men? These mythical women regularly get the better of men in any number of Hollywood fables.

A nitpicky note. In addition to the fact that everything McRaven said was an unadulterated lie, I didn’t like the way he began his answer to one question with the word “Yep.” I always get suspicious when someone uses that word, instead of “yes,” in a serious context. “Yep” is an acceptable word between friends, in a bantering context, but not in a press conference discussing the serious matters of life and death. To me, it is an indication that he knew he was fabricating lies for public consumption.

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