All the armed forces have manpower issues. Adding people with their own issues is not the solution.
Now, an army is a team – it lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap.
General George S Patton Jr. (portrayed by George C. Scott)
Patton, 1970
While reading my usual websites I found this piece. The headline was intriguing. I didn’t know men were leaving the service in droves like the author implies. Nor that we needed transsexuals and gays to fill the gaps.
Opinion: Women, gays, transgender and queer Americans serve in the military because men won’t
Jos Joseph
When I worked on the 1st Marine Division’s staff back from 2004-2007, I was part of a team that had to “find” officers and senior enlisted Marines to send to Iraq. Later, I was part of a team that had to determine if a battalion truly was at full readiness to deploy.
The problem was people. Iraq was not going well. Marines were getting out of the service and refusing to reenlist. At the same time, recruiters were struggling to convince American men to join the War on Terror.
My team had the unenviable task of deciding who to send back to war. Transfer orders were cancelled, stop-loss and recalls became a thing, and the Marines were offering cash incentives to reenlist or extend contracts.
At the same time, this was happening one section over from mine, something peculiar was happening. The administration separations section was still processing discharges from the military for people they deemed to be unfit — mamely gay and transgender Marines. It was baffling to me.
We needed people to fight and were begging people who didn’t want to serve while kicking out those that did. What dawned on me then is something that Peter Hegseth will learn if he becomes secretary of Defense; that a lot of red-blooded, alpha-male, patriotic American men are actually too scared to join the military. And a lot of women and gay and transgender and queer Americans aren’t.
Strange, I wonder if Mr. Joseph is engaged in self loathing. Having served in Marines I would assume he is a “red-blooded, alpha-male, patriotic American (male), ” to steal his quote. Or maybe time at Haaaavard university has indoctrinated him into leftist hatred of America and its institutions, like the armed forces.
The author goes into several unsupported statements, the first being the title. Men make up over 80% of the armed forces in general, and it has been that way it’s been for decades. Women generally number 15-20% of the services (the USMC is the lowest number at 9% (which means the USMC is 91% male), AF and Navy 19%), with men approximately 84%). Now of both sexes there are a percentage homosexual, but that’s going to be a relatively small group (2-3%).
The stats on recruiting don’t match with the available data. With the exception of the Army in 2005, all armed forces met or exceeded recruiting goals in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Yes, there were a lot of Reservists/National Guard deployed to support the OPTEMPO, and limited stop-loss orders, but overall we made deployment. Towards the end of the Bush administration, he requested Congress reactivate two Army combat brigades, which the Democrats did not approve.
Then another non sequitur is an unsupported claim of failure in the all-volunteer post-Vietnam military. We did need to “sweeten the pot” of benefits to be competitive with the civilian market. Also women were allowed into more specialties. But a major issue in recruiting (officer and enlisted) was not the lack of recruiting of gays and transexuals, but the malaise of the 1970s.
The armed forces were suffering from coming out of Vietnam with major issues, legitimate racial problems, crime, and narcotics. A budget too small to handle the OPTEMPO, antiquated equipment, a rising threat from the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact, and the general malaise of the Carter years. No one trusted the man before Desert One, it got worse after that. The nation’s turnabout began on January 20, 1981.
But back to the premise of this article, we need to openly embrace homosexuals and transsexuals in the service. I served for 23 years with soldiers I was certain were gay, and it didn’t bother me. They simply handled their jobs and we had an unofficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Transexuals are a different issue all together.
From the Mayo Clinic,
Gender dysphoria is a feeling of distress that can happen when a person’s gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth…
Gender dysphoria can affect many parts of life, including daily activities…
…If gender dysphoria makes school or work very hard, the result may be dropping out of school or not being able to find a job. Gender dysphoria can pose problems within relationships. Anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, substance misuse and other mental health concerns can happen too…
So the author appears to want us to embrace more transexual openly into the service. That would be disastrous.
One, the disruption of the order required for the military. For instance, having female service members conducting bodily functions in front of a male “identifying” as a female. In the service (or gym or school) you learn we all have the same parts, it’s not an issue if men shower next to men, or women next to women. If you have a man claiming to “female”, women will be very uncomfortable with this soldier next to them in the shower. I would be very uncomfortable with a “female” with a penis naked next to my daughter.
The transition (male to female) includes beginning to wear women’s clothing, changing your pronouns, hormone blockers, and surgery. This costs tens of thousands of dollars and makes the “soldier” non-deployable for up to two years. Then there are lifetime cost of continues hormone treatments, etc.
By some reports, transexuals have a 4 times greater rate of suicide as the general population. That’s in general population, not in the more intense area of deployed to a combat zone. Being a service member is high stress enough. Add to this transformation that will make you more likely to consider suicide is not acceptable.
In his famous speech to the 1960 USMA Corps of Cadets, General Douglas MacArthur defined the mission of the Army (the armed forces in general actually) better than anyone has ever done do, “To win our wars.” When I brought up the preceding issues with transexuals with a former member of my unit, he was not impressed. “Well, that’s your issue, we need to be more accepting of these people…” No, the Army is not here to be accepting. It is to train a force able to defeat our enemies through the entire spectrum of armed conflict. If you have issues that degrade that goal, we cannot use you.
If you have a chronic illness (e.g., a heart condition, asthma, Hemophilia) that makes you non-deployable, you cannot serve in uniform (as opposed to a contractor or government civilian). If you have “gender dysphoria” that will likely make you non-deployable. However, if you insist on transition (especially surgery), that does. Then a decision must be made.
If you believe you are a woman in a man’s body, fine. Begin your transition, on your own time, and your own dime. We have enough legitimate expenses to fund, elective surgery is not one of these things. More to the point, it brings disorder where order is a critical feature. And that is a large enough hinderance during peace time. Wartime it would be catastrophic.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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