In response to the Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus saying the Marine Corps should've chosen better females for the infantry integration experiment, Sergeant Major Justin LeHew stated:UPDATE: The post he wrote has been taken down, but here's an article on it.
"...This was as stacked as a unit could get with the best Marines to give it a 100 percent success rate as we possibly could. End result? The best women in the GCEITF as a group in regard to infantry operations were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group in this test study.
They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations. SECNAV has stated that he has made his mind up even before the release of these results and that the USMC test unit will not change his mind on anything.
Listen up folks. Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to pursue whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security. The infantry is not Ranger School. That is just a school like any other school and is not a feeder specifically to the infantry.
Anyone can go to that school that meets the prereqs, just like airborne school. Kudos to the two women who graduated. They are badasses in their own right. In regards to the infantry... There is no trophy for second place. You perform or die.
Make no mistake. In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy's ability to counter what you are throwing at them and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man.
There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is. You will never see a female Quarterback in the NFL, there will never be a female center on any NHL team and you will never see a female batting in the number 4 spot for the New York Yankees. It is what it is. As a country we preach equality.
But to place these mandates on the military before this country has even considered making females register, just like males, for the selective service is in all aspects out of touch with reality. Equality and equal opportunity start before you raise your right hand and swear and oath to this country.
Yes, we are an all volunteer force at the moment. Should this country however need to mobilize rapidly again to face the threats of the world like our grandfathers did, it will once again look to the military age males of this country to fill the ranks because last I checked, we did not require women to register for the selective service.
Until that happens, we should not even be wasting our time even thinking about opening up the infantry to women..."
Now he's under fire for posting this on Facebook and has since removed it. I'm sure the PC leaders will do everything they can to burn him.
USMC Top Sergeant Throws Away Rank for Honesty
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Equality. Some more opiate for the masses and makes livestock easier to farm and harvest.
Someone needs to start a retirement fund for him on Gofundme or some such. He won't be in the Marines much longer, I figure. I certainly commend him for his courage to step up and say what needs saying from someone of some authority. Would only his flag level 'superiors' take heed. I will concede that Odierno's exit speech was a pretty good step in that direction, and the intelligence community's uprising is pretty significant too.
Oh for Pete's sake. I started to comment on this yesterday, but waived off. How about a little perspective?
This guy is at year 27 of his career. He is already GUARANTEED a retirement BY LAW. And he's already at the top rank he can attain - he's not going to go all Mustang on us any time soon.
And we're talking about a *Facebook* comment, of all things.
As a civilian, if I took to Facebook to criticize my bosses' decisions, I would expect them to fire my rosy little pink a$$, pronto. This guy (and I happen to agree with him, by the way) will almost certainly NOT be fired. At the 27 year mark, he had almost nothing to lose from doing this, so it's hardly a profile in personal courage.
As much as I happen to agree with him, he chose a particularly unprofessional way to make his point. I'm pretty sure the Constitution says precisely nothing about the sacred right to badmouth your bosses on social media. Mabus is a jackwagon of the first order, so is Dempsey, but there have been jackwagons in high office since Adam got kicked out of Eden.
He could have written an op-ed in which he confined himself to a factual defense of the entire process and avoided directly criticizing senior leadership. That would have informed the debate and made his point clearly and in a way that would be very difficult to argue with. Don't have time to look up the regs, but somehow I doubt this is kosher. Good article about the UCMJ and speech limits for active duty personnel:
http://archive.armytimes.com/article/20070827/BENEFITS08/708270305/Watch-what-you-say-Speech-limits-under-UCMJ
If you decide that the right to criticize bosses on Facebook is some kind of fundamental human right that must be defended, remember that such criticisms come from all sides. Will you defend criticism you don't agree with so ardently?
Oh, and happy Friday :p
I didn't say he had a right to do it without consequence. I was impressed that he would do it given the likely consequences. You don't seem to believe there are many, and maybe not any, which would make the act less impressive. I suspect there will be some -- this is a very vindictive administration that has so far not shown a great deal of willingness to accept criticism from anyone.
What is the likely consequence here? That he would be asked to take it down?
That he would be fired?
That he would be prosecuted under the UCMJ.
How likely is it that the administration will choose to go after a decorate war hero over a Facebook post? I'm almost tempted to hope they do - that would be the mother of all unforced errors, and in the end they'd have to back down.
As I already said, a well written article defending the integrity of the process and refraining (except by obvious implication) to criticize military leadership would have impressed me, and would have been a great service to the public.
That would have been a great example of fighting smarter.
Which do you think will reach more people, ultimately, an NYT editorial written in editorial-speak with some vagaries to maintain decorum, or a facebook post that probably made it around the facebook pages of a great many young servicemen wondering if their superiors will stand for them within hours?
This administration forced 'proper' out of the playbook some time ago. That's why 50 intelligence personnel felt they had to 'revolt' to be heard. That's why we're seeing unorthodox responses like this, or for that matter, Ray Odierno's exit speech. This is serious, not some piddling little complaint that didn't require more attention.
It was not his place to speak for his superiors - their actions, and not his Facebook rant - are what matters.
No one said this didn't deserve more attention, and your argument is exactly the one used by the anti-war left to trot out dissenters within the ranks during the height of the fighting in Iraq. Oh! Look! Another brave, truth-to-powered speaking out against the administration!
"Well, but *our* law breaking was needed because the administration is breaking the law."
Two wrongs make a right, and it's always lifeboat rules for our team but not for the other team. Except it really isn't a lifeboat situation - that's just a cover to justify retroactively something you know is wrong.
The one thing that has distinguished the military (and the Marine Corps in particular) has been adherence to their OWN rules. I guess we've lost that, too. It's a race to the bottom.
You go, Joe:
WASHINGTON — The commandant of the Marine Corps has recommended that women be excluded from competing for certain front-line combat jobs, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Corps distanced itself from the other military services that are expected to allow women to serve in battlefield posts.
Officials said Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford submitted his recommendation to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Thursday. Mabus has made it clear he opposes the proposal from and recommended that women be allowed to compete for any Navy or Marine Corps combat jobs.
Being part of "government", undoubtedly he would never have had the courage, but for a Facebook post.
/sarcasm
I think our difference of opinion here is partially a difference about what we expect to happen to this Marine, but also partially tempermental. We're both unified in admiring Gen. Dunford, but divided on the Sergeant Major, because the General is doing his job, but the Sergeant Major is violating some regs. Probably that has something to do with my tempermental feeling that authority is always dangerous, and should be defied as soon as it overreaches proper limits.
I've always felt that authority, like respect, has to be earned and ought to be lost as soon as there is just cause. I regret that we have a system that so often enshrines people in authority -- Secretary Mabus but also Lois Lerner, for example -- long after they have proven that they really ought not to have any power over any other American. I get the sense that your respect for authority runs into my native rebelliousness sometimes, causing us to have an apparent dispute even where (as here) we actually agree completely on policy.
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