William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[AmericanPride]

Compost,

Your points were already addressed by an research paper I provided earlier in the thread and quoted extensively for carl.

So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

[former_0302]

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

If you aspire to lead people in combat, you don't quit. Period. And since the article didn't say anything about how she had to go to the emergency room to get care for heat stroke (which is something I've seen Marines push themselves to, even in training), I can only assume that she did, in fact, have something left in her tank when she quit.

Lost in her article is the fact that the men don't get any special preparation for IOC while at TBS either. The differing standards for men and women are, in fact, irrelevant in terms of the first event at IOC. The standards are actually exactly the same for all Marines at TBS in the stuff that matters as prep for IOC--the forced marches are the same and have the same requirement. All Marines have to do the double obstacle course and the E-course; I believe that the time standards for those are different between the sexes, but that's irrelevant; there's nothing stopping the women from trying to achieve a time on par with the men in those events. The PFT score differences are, as I previously stated, not a metric which really means anything in terms of IOC.

If you want to do well at IOC, you need to walk into the school mentally prepared to do without an awful lot that you'd really like to have for 13 weeks. Nobody gets prep for that at TBS. Most nights, you sleep in the equivalent of a dorm room, can eat and sleep quite a bit most of the time, and are generally not screwed around with too much.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

Edited to add: At least, that's what it was like when I went through the two schools several years ago. I doubt things have changed substantively, but they may have.

[AmericanPride]

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

Did she quit because she was a woman?

[carl]

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

No, I said among the reasons, and some I consider the most important are social. Even those reasons are matters of social construct that were created to deal with the fact that women in general are smaller and weaker than men.

Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school.

AP, if you can't follow the arguments I made just don't reply. Replies to arguments I didn't make are too tiresome to refute.

[former_0302]

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.

Haha. Well, she should accept that answer, because it's the truth. It is also why, IMO, you're much better off fighting your crusade in a younger demographic of women. Stipulating that the various research you've posted in this thread has any real merit at all (of which I'm somewhat dubious), the way to correct the problem is not when the women are already adults; it's too late by then. Their formative years have been spent in less competitive environments, so they haven't mentally and physically developed to be on an even playing field. If they had... I'd still argue that it would take generations to "fix," but they would certainly be in a better position to be on a level playing field by the time they were adults.

As for the 12 failures (I think it's actually 14), no, it's not indicative of that. However, it's not encouraging that it's a 100% failure rate on the first day of a 13 week-long school, in an event which is not among the five toughest events at said school.

Did she quit because she was a woman?

Since the only reason I can think of for you asking me this question, in context of what you quoted, is that you're trolling me, I'm going to bid you farewell AP. It's not all you; I've got a deadline for something coming up anyway.

Thanks all for the banter, it's been interesting...

[JMA]

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

In reading this article there are some key issues of interest IMHO:

I was one of four women in the group, bringing the number to 14 female officers who had attempted the course since it was opened to women in the fall of 2012. All the women so far had failed — all but one of them on the first day.

and

I reflected: Why did I fail?

and

Female lieutenants aren’t as prepared as male lieutenants for the Infantry Officer Course’s tests of strength and endurance because they’ve been encouraged to train to lesser standards.

and finally

I also would have liked to have had the opportunity to try the course again. The Marine leadership has said it doesn’t want female lieutenants taking the course multiple times, at least until combat positions are available to women, because it doesn’t want to delay the rest of their training. Yet many of the men who failed alongside me in January are back at Quantico, training to retake the course in April.

Firstly, where I come from if a soldier takes a service related problem to the media there would have been consequences. Secondly, whoever drafted the regulations with different rules for females in being allowed to take the course again should be fired (just like the incompetents who were unable to draft hair regulations for African-American females should have been drummed out of the service).

She knew that all but one of the females who had attempted the course before had failed on the first day yet she arrived in boots that gave her a bloodblister on day one. This is not a smart person we are dealing with here.

When she fails she looks elsewhere for blame thereby refusing to take personal responsibility for her actions. How did she get commissioned with this fatal character flaw? Is there some sort of quota system for females on the officers course?

Baseball is an American game. Make it three strikes and you are out. If she or any other male or female fails three times they get booted out of the service - and not 'dumped' elsewhere. Better still make it two strikes.

It is of interest to me that people get commissioned before their MoS or corps has been decided. The British have followed this crazy idea as well where you do your Platoon Commanders training after having been commissioned. The problem comes that you end up with a bunch of 2Lt running around looking for a job. If they don't make it in the Infantry they get 'dumped' somewhere else. In this case she wants to be a pilot. My question would be why would entry to pilot training be less arduous than for the Infantry?

Fire this whining failure, fix the regulations and move on.

[carl]

JMA:

The reason this type of thing happens is twofold. The progressives, liberals, chattering class elites, superzips or whatever you want to call them are very enthusiastic about using the military as a laboratory for social experimentation and engineering. Who can blame them for being so excited? They get into a position of political power and when they tell soldiers what to do, they have to obey them. "What a trip dude, we don't have to cajole them they just have to obey." Civilians are so bothersome in that respect, so many of them have opinions of their own and insist on thinking for themselves, but the military has to obey. The superzips don't concern themselves about the effect these things will have on US ability to fight and win wars because they believe wars won't happen again especially since wars are our nasty fault anyway and if we are nice enough they won't occur.

This is stupid but the 'zips are civilians too so they get to have dopey ideas. The real problem is the most important thing Lind mentioned, the moral rot at the heart of the American officer corps. That rot manifests itself in a general officer corps that will not provide a counterweight to the dangerous enthusiasms of the superzips. They will not because honest, principled opposition would be dangerous to their careers. And their careers are the most important thing because they do not view the military as thing that is there to defend the country by fighting when needed, they view the military as a vehicle to advance their careers. To them that is why the Army exists, the Navy exist, the USMC exists and the USAF exists; to provide opportunities for one stars to be two stars to be three stars and if the stars align properly and Gen. Massingale plays his cards right, to be four stars. These guys aren't stupid, just morally corrupt. They pose a mortal danger to the nation, one that when the next big war comes, the good officers of moral fibre, and there are a lot, who haven't been weeded out yet may not have time to overcome before defeat comes.

(Great point about the boots. I never thought of that.)

[JMA]

Carl we can look at this piece from 1926:

"We am make a catalogue of the moral qualities of the greatest captains but we cannot exhaust them. First there will be courage, not merely the physical kind which is happily not uncommon, but the rarer thing, the moral courage which Washington showed in the dark days at Valley Forge, and which we call fortitude — the power of enduring when hope is gone, the power of taking upon one's self a crushing responsibility and daring all, when weaker souls would play for safety. There must be the capacity for self-sacrifice, the willingness to let worldly interests and even reputation and honour perish, if only the task be accomplished. The man who is concerned with his own prestige will never move mountains. There must be patience, supreme patience under misunderstanding and set-backs, and the muddles and interferences of others, and the soldier of a democracy especially needs this. There must be resilience under defeat, a tough vitality and a manly optimism, which looks at the facts in all their bleakness and yet dares to be confident. There must be the sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause, so that failure and even death will not seem the end, and a man sees himself as only a part in a predestined purpose."
Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan 1926

I'm afraid most countries militaries have long since lost it so this is not a situation perculiar only to the US officer corps.

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Again here there are those who will maintain you can make a soldier out of anyone... I would ask then what is the definition of a soldier?

[wm]

Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan 1926

An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.

Buchan then enlisted in the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps, where he wrote speeches and communiqus for Sir Douglas Haig. Recognised for his abilities, Buchan was appointed as the Director of Information in 1917, under the Lord Beaverbrooka job that Buchan said was "the toughest job I ever took on" and also assisted Charles Masterman in publishing a monthly magazine that detailed the history of the war, the first edition appearing in February 1915 (and later published in 24 volumes as Nelson's History of the War).

and as Governor General of Canada,

Buchan's experiences during the First World War made him averse to conflict, he tried to help prevent another war in coordination with United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King.

But he apparently sold out and

authorised Canada's declaration of war against Germany in September, shortly after the British declaration of war and with the consent of King George; and, thereafter, issued orders of deployment for Canadian soldiers, airmen, and seamen as the titular commander-in-chief of the Canadian armed forces.

Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

[carl]

An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.

and as Governor General of Canada,
But he apparently sold out and

Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

Ok now we know what you think of the man. What do you think of his words as quoted? I thought they were pretty good.

[wm]

Ok now we know what you think of the man. What do you think of his words as quoted? I thought they were pretty good.

I agree that the words read well. I am not so sure of the need for patience, but then I am one of those impatient Americans. I also am not of a mind to support the "sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause.". That sort of attachment can lead us to excessive "missionary zeal" of the kind found in things like Hitler's 1000 year Reich, AQ efforts to restore the Caliphate, or the Spanish Inquisition.

The US Army used to teach the 4 C's: courage, candor, competence, and commitment, as military virtues (and I hope it still does). However, please remember Aristotle's definition of a virtue: the mean between two extremes of a passion. Courage, for example is not the absence of fear. Rather it is having the appropriate amount of fear. What that amount is will vary from person to person and situation to situation, which, by the way, is why one cannot exhaust the catalogue of moral qualities as Buchan noted in the quotation's opening sentence.

[JMA]

And all that from a quick Google search... I wonder if you are able to substantiate your indictment of the man?

An interesting choice of authority. Here are some career highlights for the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH, from Wikipedia.

and as Governor General of Canada,
But he apparently sold out and


Talk about your moral courage or fortitude . . .Seems like a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

[JMA]

And all that from a quick Google search... I wonder if you are able to substantiate your indictment of the man?

wm... I am waiting for a response to this.

Your cheap shot should not go unchallenged as you are not setting the example of the 'morality' of officers which you espouse.

[JMA]

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Carl,in support of this contention I borrow from Lord Moran in his Anatomy of Courage

It is a grey world these clever people live in; they see in human nature only its frailty. These little servants of routine, these poor spirits whose hearts are with their bankers, who sought safety in life and still seek it in the turmoil of a bloody strife, can they impart the secret of constancy in war? ‘All warlike people are a little idle and love danger better than travail.‘ That love of danger has the ring of another day, but it is still true that the pick of men, as we knew them in the trenches, were not always the chosen of more settled times. These clever people when it came to the choice between life and death called vainly to their gods, they helped them not at all. Success, which in their lives had meant selfishness, had come in war to mean unselfishness. If we once believe that the capacity to get on in life is not everything, we shall be in a fair way to employ in peace tests of character as searching as those which the trenches supplied in war.

I contend that fortitude in war has its roots in morality", that selection is a search for character, and that war itself is but one more test - the supreme and final test if you will - of character. Courage can be judged apart from danger only if the social significance and meaning of courage is known to us, namely that a man of character in peace becomes a man of courage in war. He cannot be selfish in peace and yet be unselfish in war.

Here I repeat my theme from my earlier posts in SWC that recruiting needs to be carefully targeted and certainly no reliance on the use of 'walk-in' recruiting offices - on Times Square for example - made to draw the 'right' candidates into the service.

I add this link: Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran to allow wm to provide a rapid character assessment of the author.

[wm]

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Again here there are those who will maintain you can make a soldier out of anyone... I would ask then what is the definition of a soldier?

A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others. Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans. However, that authorization comes at a price. Soldiers may also be killed. The right to kill is limited to other combatants, however, and we must still respect the human being that is wearing the uniform. The right to kill is granted to soldiers because they serve as defenders by proxy for all those others in the soldiers' countries who are not soldiers. This includes the civilians in your opponents' country as well. This last constraint requires that soldiers must expose themsves to additional risks to protect any and all non-combatants. Otherwise soldiers are not performing their primary duty of protecting non-combatants. Too often the focus shifts, wrongly, from protection to winning. The aim, then, of any military is to defend civilians. This is codified in the Preamble to the US Constitution with the phrase, "provide for the common defense."
I refer folks to Jaspers' The Question of German Guilt for a reasoned position on why a country's non-combatants are innocents.

[Fuchs]

A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others.

Much of the time, they themselves are the ones attacking. Your description fits better to policemen, bodyguards and bouncers than soldiers.

Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans.

No, this only applies to warfare - and many non-military combatants are then authorised to do the same.
A normal soldier is not authorised to kill anyone during almost his entire career.


You guys keep mistaking "war" for "military".


Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

[carl]

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

I don't know about any justifications or expectations but what is different is the airman can be ordered to leave the depot and go to the front and fight as an infantryman and he has to go or face penalty. The civilian doesn't.

[Steve Blair]

Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

This is actually a very good challenge/question. I've worked with military folks for a great percentage of my life, and this fairly recent attitude of exceptionalism is disturbing. I do think it's worth looking at and discussing without references to exceptional situations like Bataan and the like.

Folks seem to forget that for a great many years the Army in the United States was seen as alternately unnecessary, a mercenary force composed mainly of foreigners, or an instrument of Government oppression. Most popular acclaim was saved for state-based Volunteer units. Much of the glorification of the military gained momentum after the First Gulf War (for a variety of reasons, including some delayed guilt on the part of elites when it came to memories of their denouncement of the troops during Vietnam), and it's only gained steam ever since.

The military is in many ways an institution like any other large organization. You're going to have good folks, bad folks, and those who just do their job and go home. But the system's also set up to reward those who can "work the system" and doesn't reward or advance the sort of people they like to laud in hindsight (a Patton or an Olds wouldn't make it very far these days). And certain segments of the culture are seriously broken. To give one example, anyone who was surprised by the recent problems the Air Force's ICBM force is experiencing simply hasn't been paying attention to the culture.

I'll dismount the soapbox now, but I still think the original challenge/question is a good one. Having worked on a post during the late '90s, I saw a fair number of soldiers find ways to avoid deployments or other unfavorable assignments. They may not have a "check the box" option, but there are certainly ways to do it without significant penalty.

[JMA]

Challenge:

You guys claim soldiers are substantially different (or superior) to civilians in general. I write "in general" because you keep writing "soldiers" without much qualifiers (at war, in combat arms etc.) attached.

Show how this soldier is special:

An airman works in an air force depot, doing inventory and equipment checks on spare parts. The inventory starts again once it's done, week after week. He's working with a civilian there who does the exact same thing.

What's so substantially different about this soldier to justify any special attitude or expectations for rewards?

Badly worded, very badly worded.

First of all a 'soldier' is a fighting man. An army in the field requires logistic supply in the form of both lethal and non-lethal stores and equipment. In the old days the commissariat looked after the non-lethal stuff.

Perhaps the only reason to put the commissariat and other rear elements in uniform is sothat they can be subjected to military discipline. In other words if the troops in the field need stuff urgently you just instruct them to work through the night and over the weekend if necessary to dispatch the goods to the soldiers in need. If they don't comply they you jail them. If they were civilians they would say, "Well I'll have to speak to my union first". Get the point?

Is your example based on your military experience?

Same applies. That storeman would be in uniform only because of the need to subject him to military discipline. There is no comparison between this store man and a fighting man. There is no problem IMHO for fighting men to put these rear eschelon types in the picture - physically if necessary - to remind them of their position in the pecking order when necessary.

[JMA]

The convention is to cite the source of what you post. Just so I understand you, is this your personal opinion or where did you get this from?

A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others. Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans. However, that authorization comes at a price. Soldiers may also be killed. The right to kill is limited to other combatants, however, and we must still respect the human being that is wearing the uniform. The right to kill is granted to soldiers because they serve as defenders by proxy for all those others in the soldiers' countries who are not soldiers. This includes the civilians in your opponents' country as well. This last constraint requires that soldiers must expose themsves to additional risks to protect any and all non-combatants. Otherwise soldiers are not performing their primary duty of protecting non-combatants. Too often the focus shifts, wrongly, from protection to winning. The aim, then, of any military is to defend civilians. This is codified in the Preamble to the US Constitution with the phrase, "provide for the common defense."
I refer folks to Jaspers' The Question of German Guilt for a reasoned position on why a country's non-combatants are innocents.