Today's Gender Diverse Navy

Naturally, the progressive left is up in arms against the Trump administration. After all, the Trump administration is undoing many Obama administration mistakes … and we can’t have that. A progressive left that could not rouse itself from its mental torpor even to name the enemy as Islamic terrorism is now at war against American men, for being sexual predators.

The Obama administration happily pushed feminist proposals for gender integration of the military. It even accepted counsel from Sheryl Sandberg, a noted expert in military matters.

Now, Bob McManus offers a picture of what happened when the Navy sacrificed combat readiness and effectiveness in favor of gender diversity.

It begins with a scene from up north, in Canada, where a Navy warship is stuck in the ice and will remain stuck for another month or so. As it happens, people have always known that the St. Lawrence River freezes in the winter. Except the modern gender diverse Navy did not heed the obvious facts. Or else, it might have believed that global warming would free the ship. 

McManus describes the current situation:

But the U.S. Navy sent one of its newest warships, the USS Little Rock, to Montreal in December—where it now sits trapped in thick ice, probably until mid-March, marking an inauspicious beginning of a new year for a sea service coming off a horrendous 2017.

And let’s not forget the two disasters in Asia, collisions of Navy ships with cargo ships:

Indeed, news of the Little Rock’s humiliation arrived with word that the Navy has referred the commanding officers of two destroyers involved in fatal high-seas collisions last summer for prosecution on charges including criminal negligence.

That nimble ships like the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain could be run down at sea by lumbering cargo vessels three times their size—the McCain in broad daylight—is outrageous. Seventeen sailors died in these collisions, which occurred within weeks of one another and followed other, nonfatal accidents involving warships homeported at Yokosuka, Japan. The Navy subsequently termed the Fitzgerald and McCain incidents as “avoidable”—a substantial understatement, given the circumstances—and began a disciplinary process that turned the Seventh Fleet’s command structure on its head. Dozens of officers and senior enlisted personnel have been relieved of their duties. Most recently, the admiral in charge of the sea service’s entire surface operation was fired.

Such is the Navy that the Trump administration inherited. But, at least it was diverse. McManus connects the dots:

Defense Secretary James Mattis seems to have embarked on a clean sweep-down of the Navy, a fighting force capable of great things but institutionally underfunded, operationally overextended and—during the Obama administration—fixated on policies that stressed gender integration and other progressive goals at the expense of basic seamanship.

The man responsible was the man in charge, Obama administration Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus:

Obama administration Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s efforts to bend 240 years of naval tradition to contemporary social-justice goals were enormously disruptive to an institution heavily dependent on cultural continuity. His insistence that women be integrated into Marine Corps infantry units augurs tragic consequences (unless the Trump administration reverses the policy). Mabus’s obsessions distracted from the business at hand: tending to America’s maritime security needs by dealing directly with the debilitating effects of more than a decade of low-intensity but costly warfare, budget sequestrations, and a resultant decline in preparedness and operational efficiency.

Of course, the budget sequestration deprived the armed forces of needed funds. Yet, Mabus and the Obama defense department did not seem to care as much about combat readiness as it did about pursuing progressive policy objectives. And, what about the Navy's effort to integrate the transgendered. How is that one working out?

While we are at it we can ask how many male commanding officers were relieved of duty for fraternizing with female subordinates. How many members of the officer corps were removed from their commands because of sexual harassment complaints? And, how has this effected readiness. Perhaps someone will have better knowledge than I do about such matters.