William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[carl]

JMA,

I have to say that the last comment blaming protections for minorities is revolting.

Is it true though?

[AmericanPride]

Is it true though?

No - it's not true. It's 100% false. I would even venture so far as to say that the attitude expressed in the comment is one of the barriers (a"cancer") to actually building an effective officer corps.

[carl]

American Pride:

You say it is not true. Mr Johnson said it is true. So far the two arguments cancel each other out. So it would be helpful if others joined in with their observations and experience.

You remonstrated against Mr. Johnson's attitude. I think it more proper to remonstrate against his dishonesty if he is, as you say, lying.

JMA:

I like this format you are using here. Good job.

[slapout9]

It is stuff like this that leads to the questions which Lind raises about Military leadership. Is this all the Army leadership has to do? Worry about Black females and their cornrows and dreadlocks and how by not allowing such nonsense they become racist.


http://sandrarose.com/2014/04/petiti...r-regulations/


This is why our country and the military is in such horrible shape they don't want to talk about critical issues they want conduct Marxist social experiments on our beloved Exceptional American Armed Forces. People are getting tired of this social justice stuff.

[AmericanPride]

Mr Johnson said it is true. So far the two arguments cancel each other out. So it would be helpful if others joined in with their observations and experience. You remonstrated against Mr. Johnson's attitude. I think it more proper to remonstrate against his dishonesty if he is, as you say, lying.

Carl, if you would like to defend a subtly racist position, be my guest.

It is stuff like this that leads to the questions which Lind raises about Military leadership. Is this all the Army leadership has to do? Worry about Black females and their cornrows and dreadlocks and how by not allowing such nonsense they become racist. This is why our country and the military is in such horrible shape they don't want to talk about critical issues they want conduct Marxist social experiments on our beloved Exceptional American Armed Forces. People are getting tired of this social justice stuff.

Slap, I generally admire your passion but your out of proportion outrage on what you call a "Marxist social experiment" to "worry about black females and.. not allowing such nonsense" is both (1) hilarious and (2) borders on racist. This is why the hairstyle policy is objectionable:

From the New York Times:

At the root of the concern about the Army regulations, many black women said, is a lack of understanding about black hair, coupled with a norm that uses the hair of white women as its baseline. While black hair comes in all textures, much of it is deeply curly, making it difficult, unless chemically straightened, to pull back into a bun or to hang loose off the face in a neat, uniform way.

My emphasis.

As with any array of policies such as voter identification or facial hair, if it disproportionately affects a minority group it is discriminatory towards that group. In the case of hairstyles, since it disproportionately affects black women, it is racist. Failure to comply with the policy can lead to adverse administrative action. This is why Sikhs can receive exemptions for their facial hair and why black women should receive exemptions to the hairstyle policy. You don't have to say "I hate black people" to be racist in conduct. So the other option is to pay for all black women in service to chemically straigthen their hair for the sake of uniformity. Or, we could go back to the old days of no black women in the military...

And in a note to carl, this is why EO policies are necessary in the military.

[slapout9]

Slap, I generally admire your passion but your out of proportion outrage on what you call a "Marxist social experiment" to "worry about black females and.. not allowing such nonsense" is both (1) hilarious and (2) borders on racist. This is why the hairstyle policy is objectionable:

From the New York Times:

My emphasis.

As with any array of policies such as voter identification or facial hair, if it disproportionately affects a minority group it is discriminatory towards that group. In the case of hairstyles, since it disproportionately affects black women, it is racist. Failure to comply with the policy can lead to adverse administrative action. This is why Sikhs can receive exemptions for their facial hair and why black women should receive exemptions to the hairstyle policy. You don't have to say "I hate black people" to be racist in conduct. So the other option is to pay for all black women in service to chemically straigthen their hair for the sake of uniformity. Or, we could go back to the old days of no black women in the military...

And in a note to carl, this is why EO policies are necessary in the military.

American Pride,
The Military is a special society with one mission...... to fight and win our Nations battles and wars. Not be worrying about hairstyles and facial hair. Can you imagine what the intelligence services in Russia and China are doing. As you know they read and monitor all communications and make continuous assessments of our Military morale and how to break it. They must be laughing their collective Commie a** off about how our main concern is some mamby pamby hairstyles.

IMO they should all wear short hair and wear OD Green uniforms , then be made to memeorize the words from a Race Relations class I took in the early 1970's that was taught by a very big and mean looking Black Platoon Seargent. "Everybody wears OD Green and Everybody is going to bleed red. So you need to learn to work together"

That is what the leadership should be concerned about nothing else.

[JMA]

AmericanPride, I'm sorry you see fit to create a race issue out of the comment made posted from another discussion group. I would really like to stay on the issues arising from Lind's article in relation to the US Officer Corps.

A reasonable person would conclude that the comment by one 'Rick Johnson' is neither 100% accurate nor 100% false - as you maintain but somewhere in-between. If you really want to take this matter further please start a new thread and discuss it there.

Carl, if you would like to defend a subtly racist position, be my guest.



Slap, I generally admire your passion but your out of proportion outrage on what you call a "Marxist social experiment" to "worry about black females and.. not allowing such nonsense" is both (1) hilarious and (2) borders on racist. This is why the hairstyle policy is objectionable:

From the New York Times:

My emphasis.

As with any array of policies such as voter identification or facial hair, if it disproportionately affects a minority group it is discriminatory towards that group. In the case of hairstyles, since it disproportionately affects black women, it is racist. Failure to comply with the policy can lead to adverse administrative action. This is why Sikhs can receive exemptions for their facial hair and why black women should receive exemptions to the hairstyle policy. You don't have to say "I hate black people" to be racist in conduct. So the other option is to pay for all black women in service to chemically straigthen their hair for the sake of uniformity. Or, we could go back to the old days of no black women in the military...

And in a note to carl, this is why EO policies are necessary in the military.

[AmericanPride]

JMA,

AmericanPride, I'm sorry you see fit to create a race issue out of the comment made posted from another discussion group. I would really like to stay on the issues arising from Lind's article in relation to the US Officer Corps.

My comments were in response to a statement you quoted that in turn was a response to Lind's article. So,(1) I'm on topic and (2) you created the 'race issue'. And given that race is one of the major defining social issues in the United States with an inverse proportional amount of attention actually dedicated to it, and as an Army officer myself, I think it's highly important to discuss in regards to the quality and capabilities of the officer corps. Clearly since some see it as necessary to target minorities or programs and/or policies affecting them as explanations for why the officer corps is failing, it is absolutely essential to address questions of race. Apparently racism IS one of the issues that needs addressing because there are still service-members out there (officers included) that do not have the intellectual or moral fortitude to eliminate racism from the ranks.

That is what the leadership should be concerned about nothing else.

That's nice in abstract. But that does nothing to address the issues raised in the New York Times article. If the only thing the leadership should be concerned about is "to fight and win our Nations battles and wars" then why bother having restrictions on hairstyle in the first place? I don't think a war was ever won by the size of someone's beard or the way in which they braided their hair. So to be ideologically consistent, your recommendation shouldn't be to condemn the soldiers who are advocating for a change in the hair policy but supporting them in abolishing it totally. That applies to the new tatoo policy as well - the only difference is that tatoos are optional. Your genetically-determined hair type is not.

[carl]

Carl, if you would like to defend a subtly racist position, be my guest.

Racist? Subtly racist? I don't know for that kind of thing. I'll leave it for others to judge.

But whatever, Mr. Johnson didn't comment upon racism. He commented upon what he saw as the ill effects of affirmative action and specifically upon how people can game the system to slant things their way. I asked if that was true. You said absolutely not. So as I said, your word cancels out his and his cancels out yours which leads to a need for others who would know to comment.

And in a note to carl, this is why EO policies are necessary in the military.

No I think not. As a civilian, I think there are other things that are rather more important that skin color or sex. Some of those things are pretty easy to measure. You can hump that weight twelve miles in the allotted time or you can't. You can hit the target at this range and that range in the allotted time or you can't. You can lead people cross country without getting lost often or you can't. Some of the things are more difficult to measure, do you have tactical acumen? Can you read the ground? Do you know when to give somebody a kick and when to give somebody a quiet word? Do the men trust you and do they want to follow you? These things are more difficult to measure but armies have been around a long time and they have come up with some more or less reliable ways to figure them out. Not one of the things I mentioned had anything to do with color or sex. Again as a civilian, I would prefer that the Army measure those things that have to do with the outcome of a fight and I don't see how sex or color figures into that.

[former_0302]

Racist? Subtly racist? I don't know for that kind of thing. I'll leave it for others to judge.

But whatever, Mr. Johnson didn't comment upon racism. He commented upon what he saw as the ill effects of affirmative action and specifically upon how people can game the system to slant things their way. I asked if that was true. You said absolutely not. So as I said, your word cancels out his and his cancels out yours which leads to a need for others who would know to comment.

I was a part of a large group of officers last year which was assembled to listen to the musings of a three-star general who happened to be in town. One of the tidbits he decided to pass on to us was that by 2030, the US demographic breakdown is expected to be about 50% Caucasian, 25% Hispanic, and 25% other. He then went on to say that the demographic breakdown of the military's officer corps needed to reflect those percentages. Though it was not expressly stated, one wonders if the fact that the nation is about 50% female will play into that as well...

[JMA]

Racist? Subtly racist? I don't know for that kind of thing. I'll leave it for others to judge.

But whatever, Mr. Johnson didn't comment upon racism. He commented upon what he saw as the ill effects of affirmative action and specifically upon how people can game the system to slant things their way. I asked if that was true. You said absolutely not. So as I said, your word cancels out his and his cancels out yours which leads to a need for others who would know to comment.

Good comment Carl.

I believe AmericanPride jumped in too quickly to shout racism.

If there are good officers out there who leave the military due to what Mr Johnson states then it is a morale problem and needs to be addressed as a 'structural' issue.

I agree that the system has the potential to be gamed exactly as he states given the fear of a similar response as with the Donald Stirling incident in the US and the Jeremy Clarkson one in the UK (still developing) which would/could terminate a career with lifelong associated stigma.

My personal belief is that the false accusation of rape should carry the same penalty as rape itself. This can be applied to allegations of sexism, homophobia or racism in the military. This whole situation seems to be too difficult for the current crop of senior military officers to deal with.

Their solution seems to be borrowed from H L Mencken's maxim that ‘for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat – and wrong.’

These are the same guys with stars on their shoulders who can't even produce a set of hair regulations for females in the military... yet have/will have the life and death command over a few million US troops in a war.

It is true that the US 'fish' is rotting from the head (Congress) down but this process is certainly being aided and abetted by the 'ass-kissing conformists' (according to Lind) who make up the general staff.

[AmericanPride]

As a civilian, I think there are other things that are rather more important that skin color or sex. Some of those things are pretty easy to measure. You can hump that weight twelve miles in the allotted time or you can't. You can hit the target at this range and that range in the allotted time or you can't. You can lead people cross country without getting lost often or you can't. Some of the things are more difficult to measure, do you have tactical acumen? Can you read the ground? Do you know when to give somebody a kick and when to give somebody a quiet word? Do the men trust you and do they want to follow you? These things are more difficult to measure but armies have been around a long time and they have come up with some more or less reliable ways to figure them out. Not one of the things I mentioned had anything to do with color or sex. Again as a civilian, I would prefer that the Army measure those things that have to do with the outcome of a fight and I don't see how sex or color figures into that.

That's easy to say in abstract and akin to saying that a corporation should be exclusively concerned with profits. And while the purpose of an organization, public or private, receive the highest attention, it does not in reality receive exclusive attention. There are many factors, some of them not obvious, bearing on an organization's operation whether it's business or war, and addressing them requires leaders armed with strong intellectual and moral character to act on them. In the military, with its high demands on physical ability and discipline, sex and race play important and subtle role in framing behavior, expectations, morale, and leadership. Alienating elements of the ranks on one basis or on another is detrimental to the higher purpose of winning America's wars.

[JMA]

There have been other discussions on Officer Corps here on SWC, like this one:

Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success

This thread had 50 responses and is worth a read through.


Then there is this one: Initial Officer Selection

Here we had 272 responses and again is worth sifting through.