Ray Mabus chooses politics over troops’ welfare
Chief Tango sends us a link from Stars & Stripes which reports that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus completely disregarded the recommendations of his generals when he submitted his preference to the Defense Secretary in regards to the women in combat arms issue. You might remember that the Marines recently conducted a 9-month experiment which evaluated gender-integrated units. The study said that, on the average, women Marines didn’t shoot as well as thier male counterparts and they got injured more often.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus submitted his recommendations to Carter on behalf of the Navy and Marine Corps, and he did not request any exemptions, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The Army and Air Force secretaries also submitted their recommendations, but declined to say whether they asked to keep any positions closed to women.
The Marine Corps reportedly asked Mabus to keep some front-line units, likely the infantry and reconnaissance, all-male. But Mabus was emphatic that gender restrictions had to go, since even the Navy SEALs are ready to accept women into their grueling BUD/S program training the elite commandos.
Yes, this is not my shocked face that Mabus would choose the side of the social justice warriors instead of common sense. I hope the generals see how much confidence their civilian leader has in their opinions. According to the article, the Marines have one last chance to get their way – the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Joseph Dunford, who get a vote in the final decision.
Category: Politics
Anyone surprised?
Mabus is a self-serving, narcissistic shitbag.
More like “Dyed-in-the-wool taint-ogling, Brownnosing 0bamite”!
Mabus is doing exactly what he was specifically hired to do.
I am not anticipating a female BUDS grad anytime soon. However, I predict we will see a fake female BUDS grad within the next 6 months…
Already out there…sorta.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=54783
Oh yeah…I remember that fat thing now…but I call foul…he only wants to be a woman. There are real women out there who could go further towards completion than it could ever dream of.
I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw many moons ago. Enemy fighters were looking over a bunch of dead US servicemen and women…the aftermath of a battle. One enemy fighter says to the other “Well they were well diversified, they just couldn’t fight for sh!t.”
I look forward to retirement.
I am soooo glad I retired in 2005. I can’t imagine having to deal with the bullshit you guys have to now.
I retried in 2013 and it was getting bad
Title of this article:
“Ray Mabus chooses politics over troops’ survival”
There ya go, Jonn; fixed it for ya.
Change the institution, whatever it may be. Been saying it for years now. You change the institution and you have change that cannot be undone by the next pres or the next or the next. I marvel at the seemingly impossible changes oBaMa and his fellow progressive commie bastards have effected in such a short time. Radically transform America? Many scoffed, dismissed it as hyperbole, even fear mongering and racism. “After all, you really don’t like him because he’s Black, right?” Well, it wasn’t any of those things. It was a prediction, if not a promise, and it has happened. One thing he has left to do is get another justice or two on the Sup Ct. That will seal the deal and he can go off, play golf, and pull who knows how much in speaking fees.
So Ray Mabus refuses to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. What’s new? He’s a politician’s politician. This is no surprise any more.
It could have been allowed to evolve naturally, but it was not, and the results are not what this dipstick wants to hear.
Like someone else used to say, ‘There you go again.’
Someday I would like to see Service Secretaries (incl SECDEF) that remember their #1 purpose is to support their Service and its personnel. Everything else is #2 or lower.
Sorry MSG, that will never happen. It is a political appointee position. It suck’s troops suffer. I worked under this ass hole and the Navy started to change big time.
I know Chief, but I can dream a little dream.
What’s sad is how badly we talk about Iraq and Afghanistan politicians not doing their job. It seems like they got the playbook from our elected officials and ran with it. We taught them to be more like us than we realized.
MSG,
I’m with you, all the good thing’s we did to help has all gone to shit. The US Military did accomplish it’s mission no matter what. I saw it in the end in Iraq just suck’s politics got involved. We did good brother that’s that, you can only do so much.
Fuckin’ A Chief. Ditto.
What if a woman can meet the standard? i mean, totally and in every respect? Should she be allowed to join the infantry?
Here’s why I ask: If you read the Marine report carefully (you can actually find the full report online, not just the summary), you will learn that in order to do the study fairly they had to put women through the infantry course. 113 completed the 0300 SOI (the Marine enlisted infantry course) to standard.
36% of the women that tried the course succeeded, and there was a higher percentage (in the 80% range) for Artillery and Armor courses. If they were men, they would have been awarded the MOS.
So t that make it difficult for the Marines to say that women can’t do the job?
It will be really tough for the Maribes
Meant to say: won’t that make it difficult for the Marines to state definitively that women can’t do the job?
Were you Infantry?
I was infantry and in the infantry as a support guy at the company and battalion level long enough to know that OSUT doesn’t begin to touch what it’s like being on the line.
However, OSUT is how we award the MOS, just like SOI for the Marines. Assuming a woman passes the course and continues to meet all standards, should she be able to serve in the infantry?
You write the way a congressional staffer would. Fine, a chick makes infantry. She serves a few years and then is 100 pct disabled at the VA. Seriously guy, there is way more to service than just pushups and marching. Unit cohesion matters.
Oh, I know that. Unit cohesion absolutely matters.
Why would cohesion be degraded by a woman that can perform her job to standard?
I ask because the Marine report doesn’t really say anything definitive or negative about unit cohesion.
Great point about injury rates, though. What I read in the study suggests that propensity for injury isn’t so much a gender issue as it is an issue of lean muscle mass and conditioning. How do we screen men for that?
I am not a Congressional staffer, but I appreciate the complement. Those guys tend to be pretty sharp.
You make good points. It shouldn’t matter how many or what percentage made it. If any, even just one, can do it let them. In my opinion, these experiments had more to do with fishing for concrete reasons to say no rather then proving with simple odds would have told us anyway; that some women can\could\will hold their own.
*what simple odds
My question remains: Why?
Do they bring some capability or capacity to the infantry that the Marine Corps has been lacking for the past 240 years?
Is this anything beyond the Orwellian “Diversity is Strength” mantra? Or is it simply Equal Opportunity?
I don’t remember Equal Opportunity being one of the infantry missions that was taught at ITB. Or NCO school. Or Squad Leader School.
And spare me the line about the effectiveness of the Female Engagement Teams. If the infantry needs FETs for a specific mission, they can be attached just like any other.
Opening combat arms to women has absolutely zero to do with improving combat effectiveness and everything to do with furthering the goals of an interest group.
And yes, I was infantry for 13 years and have the blown out knees, ankles, and lower back to prove it
“My question remains: Why?
Do they bring some capability or capacity to the infantry that the Marine Corps has been lacking for the past 240 years?”
Exactly. We should ask this question about every single recruit.
How do we apply this now? We assume all men will bring a capacity or capability but no women can.
However, the Marine study established that some women can contribute- they completed the SOI and other combat arms courses, and served to standard on a sustained exercise.
Well it’s worked pretty well for 240 years. The onus for change is on those who wish to change it.
Prove that the change will be an improvement beyond diversity and opportunity.
The Marine Corps has a record of success from Tripoli to Fallajuh using male only infantry.
Ray Mabus and his cheering section need to offer quantifiable reasons for fucking with a successful program.
It seems like we agree on one major point: Everyone that comes in should be judged against the criterion of the duty position and whether or not they can do the job to standard.
Where we differ is that you want to apply the test to large groups based on gender, I think we should apply it to individuals because I know, and I suspect so do you, that there are men that shouldn’t be in the infantry and there are some women who would meet the standard.
Mabus is just the name you see in the press recently. Panetta rescinded the DoD policy banning women from infantry (and other jobs) in 2013. He did a it because he was being sued over the policy, and would probably have lost based on Federal law regarding military accessions.
The National Defense Authorization Act for FY1994 and 2015 direct the services to evaluate at the individual levels based on gender neutral operational requirements and banned any quotas. The operational requirements have to be based on actual, regular, recurring duties.
In other words, Mabus is right in saying that the Marines can’t ban all women based on the average performance of women vs men. You can exclude individuals based on failure to meet standards.
The Army is already looking at a physical test recruits will have to pass in order to go Combat Arms- kind of like a physical ASVAB. I bet the Marines try to do the same thing.
Thank you red devil. Typically responses to this topic evolve into petty name calling and poo flinging, but you remained calm and eloquently stated your opinion. For what it’s worth, I believe the marines have a combat pt test already. I would a agree that an objective standard like that would benefit the army in selecting for combat arms.
Since the study showed that the top 5% of the women were equal to the bottom 5% of the men, should we just swap one set of low performers based on gender?
Women make up about 14% of the Marine Corps (~26000) the top 5% would meet the bare minimum of performance standards. So about 1400 would meet the bare minimum. Would all 1400 volunteer or even want to volunteer?
So what’s the point of opening the 03 field and is it worth the cost?
I served as a tanker for 4 years then reenlisted into an engineering MOS that was open to women they were assigned to units. I also served as an Army recruiter with women. So I have seen both sides of the argument.
We had some kick ass women, some wimps etc. Same with the men… some kick ass, some wimps, etc.
I have three daughters, all beautiful, intelligent and phsically fit. They have different interests and careers, all civilian.
I do not support women in the combat arms. If my daughters wanted to go CA (and I was unable to convince them not to) I would have to support them and pray that the come home safely.
That said, there are several reasons why I don’t support women in combat arms:
* stop using the military as testing gounds for social experiments
* the obvious, logistics, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, call it what you want -when you mix the sexes there will be issues among the ranks, more so in combat arms in my opinion than other MOSs
* Women are not required to register for the draft (another argument I know, but we are talking about “fairness”)
* Women will be able to “choose” combat arms when the go to the MEPS, men are often given no choice but combat arms – “Go infantry or go home”
* Flunked out of that high tech MOS school? What’s the chance of a woman being involuntarily reclassed to 11 Bang Bang? ZERO!
Just a few things to consider…