image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/06/military_helicopters.jpg
An expert on military preparedness says the United States armed forces could topple like a Jenga block tower if President Obama’s social agenda is allowed to continue.
“If the Obama administration continues to remove resources from the Jenga block tower’s base, while loading burdens of social engineering on the top, the structure will become increasingly unstable and eventually fall,” contends a new report from the
Center for Military Readiness, referring to the block-stacking game.
CMR is run by Elaine Donnelly, who was appointed by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. Later, President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces.
She also the author of “Constructing the Co-Ed Military” and wrote a chapter called “Defending the Culture of the Military,” published by the Air Force University Press in 2010 in the book “Attitudes Are Not Free – Thinking Deeply About Diversity in the U.S. Armed Forces.”
She has written often about the problems in the military resulting from Obama’s promotion of homosexual and transgender rights, and other social issues, including women in front-line combat operations.
She compares the social engineering to a Jenga block game, in which wooden blocks are piled up and lower blocks removed one at a time until the tower falls.
Obama’s social agenda is the top blocks, but troop strength and support are the foundation blocks that are being removed, she has argued.
“Our military is the best in the world, but its strength and integrity cannot be taken for granted,” she said in the CMR report. “It will be the responsibility of the next commander-in-chief to maintain and strengthen our military by restoring necessary resources and removing heavy burdens caused by social experiments.”
Her report notes the issue is assuming greater importance in light of a recent Washington Times article that highlights the consequences of budget cuts in Special Operations Forces.
The article points out that Special Forces are not ready to integrate women into tip-of-spear fighting units, as the White House has insisted.
CMR has been collecting responses from presidential candidates on their position regarding the military, the social agenda Obama has been pursuing, troop readiness and other issues.
“CMR does not endorse candidates, but we will continue to seek responses from Republicans who have not answered yet: Donald J. Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Dr. Ben Carson,” the report said.
“Questions and concerns about military/social issues matter because a relentless combination of budget cuts and burdens of political correctness are eroding the strength of the all-volunteer force,” the report said.
The report listed a variety of opinions regarding the issues, including from a writer in the New York Post who chastised Republicans for failing to “scream at the lunacy of drafting women.”
Among Republicans, the report noted that only Sen. Rick Santorum had responded right away. He said he would exempt women from direct ground combat and believes the military is no place for “social experimentation” by LGBT activists.
“No place should the right to free exercise of religion be more welcomed and encouraged than in our nation’s military. Attempts to infringe or discriminate against faith-based beliefs cannot be tolerated,” he said.
But he’s since dropped out of the race.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s response followed, and he said would review Obama’s social engineering policies, continue to exempt women from the draft and direct combat front lines, keep LGBT activism out of the ranks and support religious liberty.
“The Marine Corps request [for exemption to mandatory women-in-combat roles] must be reconsidered.” Cruz said. “As long as the requirements are fair and universally applied, the military must always place the best person for the job at hand, whether male or female, but we cannot let political correctness compel the military to lower its standards.”
Others candidates have made unsatisfactory public statements on the issue, said Donnelly.
“Presidential candidates Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Jeb Bush, and Gov. Chris Christie provided unserious, politically correct answers to questions about Selective Service – a national security issue of critical importance to military personnel and unsuspecting young civilian women,” said Donnelly.
During the Feb. 6 Republican presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, ABC moderator Martha Raddatz asked Rubio and Bush whether they favored registration of women for Selective Service.
“Gov. Chris Christie gratuitously jumped in with comments that appeared to agree with the other candidates’ support for registering women,” Donnelly reported. “Sen. Ted Cruz was not asked to respond to the same question, but in a post-debate speech, Cruz issued a strong challenge to the position of the other three on Selective Service.”
Donnelly said exit polls “did not explore the reaction with New Hampshire voters, but the narrow finish of Rubio, Bush, and Christie behind Sen. Ted Cruz, who challenged their position as ‘nuts’ in a post-debate speech, apparently shows that these three were not helped, Cruz not hurt, by taking their respective positions on the Selective Service issue.”
“In providing answers to six questions on the 2016 Quadrennial Center for Military Readiness Presidential Candidate Survey, which began on January 4, Sen. Cruz affirmed that he supports the all-volunteer force and opposes efforts to impose Selective Service obligations on women.”
The survey asks for views on “Obama-era social experimentation; e.g., women in direct ground (infantry) combat, religious liberty, and LGBT events promoting transgenders in the military,” she explained.
Those are military-social issues that impact active-duty personnel all the time.
Cruz’s response to his rivals’ stances on women in the draft was a succinct, “Are you guys nuts?”
He called political correctness in the military “dangerous” and said, “The idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.”
At the New Hampshire event, Rubio said there are women already “in roles that are like combat.”
“I have no problem whatsoever with people of either gender serving in combat so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised.”
Noted the CMR report: “For starters, Sen. Rubio seems unaware that being ‘in harm’s way’ in a war zone, where women have indeed served with courage, does not fit the definition of being in direct ground (infantry) combat. The latter experience is properly defined as ‘seeking out and attacking the enemy with deliberate offensive action.'”
At the same venue, Bush said, regarding drafting women: “I do [support registration], and I do think that we should not impose any kind of political agenda on the military. There should be – if women can meet the requirements, the minimum requirements for combat service they ought to have the right to do it.”
“Bush … seems unaware that in addition to disregarding the Marine Corps’ request for exceptions to across-the board women-in-land-combat mandates, orders to repeal women’s direct ground combat exemptions, triggering likely obligations to register for [Selective Service] are the most extreme ‘political agenda’ that the Obama administration has imposed,” the CMR report said.
The CMR survey said the next commander in chief “must take the lead, starting with orders to all appointees and military officials to provide complete and candid information on what has been done to our military during eight years of social experimentation under the Obama administration.”
Last year,
Heritage Foundation national security and foreign policy expert James Carafano spelled out the impact of the Obama administration’s policies on the military, with the Army’s manpower down 10 percent, “aging” naval capabilities, “the smallest and oldest” force of combat aircraft in its history and the Marines “running only about two-thirds the number of battalions they have historically needed to meet day-to-day operational demands.”
It’s interesting how our military has changed over the past century.
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