Diminishing the American Military

A certain presidential candidate has often declared that we do not win any more. Whatever one thinks of said presidential candidate, the point has some merit. Forget for the minute about free trade. Under the Obama administration, we do not even want to win wars.

As we know, the Obamafied military, down to its combat units, will henceforth be co-ed. Apparently, the White House believes that in war you get extra credit for having co-ed platoons. Can the women in question do precisely the job that the men can do? Undoubtedly, they cannot.

One suspects that basic training and other physical conditioning requirements will be reduced in order to ensure that women can qualify.

Will the men in these units have full confidence in their female counterparts? I find it highly unlikely.

Will this co-edification of combat units cause morale problems and other difficulties? It already has.

Rich Lowry reports on those who support the co-ed military:

The US military doesn’t exist to satisfy the whims of the board of directors of the Ms. Foundation. Its job is to field a force that is most effective at winning the nation’s wars.

In an extensive study, the US Marine Corps concluded that mixed-gender units fail by that test, although no one is inclined to take note.

The Marine study compared all-male and mixed-gender units and concluded that women in mixed-gender units “were injured twice as often as men, less accurate with infantry weapons, and not as good at removing wounded troops from the battlefield.”

The physical capacity of the sexes is different, and top-end females tend to be only as capable of the lower-end males. The males in the Marine study averaged 178 pounds, with 20 percent body fat, whereas females were 142 pounds with 24 percent body fat.

The top 25 percent of females in anaerobic power overlapped with the bottom 25 percent of males; the top 10 percent of females in anaerobic capacity overlapped with the bottom 50 percent of males.

The physical disadvantage meant that women were more likely to be fatigued and suffer stress fractures. Women were six times more likely to be injured in entry-level training than males.

As for the most recent proposal to have all women sign up for the draft, Lowry notes with chagrin that Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush approved of the plan. Lowry does not mention that when Ted Cruz was asked his opinion after Saturday’s debate, he did not approve.

The point is: a military that wants to win does not make itself into a social experiment. A military that believes it can do what it pleases and still win is saying that it is so far superior to other military forces that it can win even with a handicap. Such arrogance invites aggression.

Now, the Obama administration has taken it one better. It has given the American military a higher purpose: fighting climate change.

The Washington Times has the story (via Pirate’s Cove and Maggie’s Farm):

The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies.

A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.”

It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.”

To four-star generals and admirals, among them the regional combatant commanders who plan and fight the nation’s wars, the directive tells them: “Incorporate climate change impacts into plans and operations and integrate DoD guidance and analysis in Combatant Command planning to address climate change-related risks and opportunities across the full range of military operations, including steady-state campaign planning and operations and contingency planning.”

The directive, “Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience,” is in line with President Obama’s view that global warming is the country’s foremost national security threat, or close to it. Mr. Obama says there is no debate on the existence of man-made global warming and its ensuing climate change. Supporters of this viewpoint label as “deniers” any scientists who disagree.

Beginning with the military, Obama has set out to weaken America, to punish it for its perfidies and its sins. As noted in the previous post, Obama’s mismanagement of the situation in Syria suggests that he wants America to stand aside when faced with difficult foreign challenges. He uses enough military force to shield himself from the charge that he is doing nothing.

As for climate change, one officer has cogently pointed out that military actions take place within very short periods of time while climate change—assuming that we know what causes it; and we do not—occurs over centuries and even millennia.

The Washington Times reports:

Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. Central Command planner, said the Pentagon is introducing climate change, right down to military tactics level….

“By equating tactical actions of immediate or short-term utility with large-scale, strategic-level issues of profound importance, the issue of climate change and its potential impact on national security interests is undermined,” he said. “People tend to dismiss the whole, what might be truly important, because of all the little silly distractions that are included along the way.”

He said climate change is typically measured in long stretches of time.

“The climate does change over great periods of time, typically measured in millennia, though sometimes in centuries,” he said. “But the document mentions accounting for such down to the level of changes in ‘tactics, techniques and procedures’ as if reviewing how a squad conducts a patrol should be accorded the same level of importance and attention as determining whether the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, might have to be relocated as sea levels rise over the next 100 years.”

The Obama doctrine is: let’s cripple the military so that America will never again be tempted to intervene anywhere on earth. How is it working out in Syria?