GEN Brady and ADM Lyons speak out on the current state of our military…
Niether gent is politically correct, they just call it as they see it…
First GEN Brady-
Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, retired from the U.S. Army, is a recipient of the United States military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor. He is the author of “Dead Men Flying: Victory in Viet Nam The Legend of Dust Off: America’s Battlefield Angels.”
As incompetence, deception, duplicity and dishonesty become the hall marks of the Obama administration, it is important that we not lose sight of the greatest danger posed beyond these serial scandals: the feminization, emasculation and dismantling of our military. The two most important elements of national survival are the media and the military; one keeps us free and the other keeps us secure. We know the media are failing ˆ God help us if the military does also. We may be able to fix the government in 2014. Fixing the military is more problematic.
Let‚s begin with Benghazi. It is incomprehensible that any commander, let alone the commander in chief, would go AWOL during a crisis such as Benghazi, but he was. In the midst of the massacre of our ambassador and three heroic Americans, President Obama was nowhere to be found. He did manage to surface, too late for the massacre, to meet a campaign commitment the next day. But, before retiring, we are told he turned the crisis over to his underlings, including the military. What we learned about our military leadership during that crisis should alarm all Americans.
The demise of our military of course begins with the commander in chief, but he can‚t do it alone. He has to have willing sycophants and he has had them in the civilian and military leadership at the Department of Defense. The indifference of the people and military inexperience in Congress are contributing factors. The military disasters are a form of gradualism. Look at the changes under Mr. Obama. We cannot focus on these changes enough.
Our military is suffering unprecedented rates of suicide and PTSD. Obama‚s sequestration will cut benefits to veterans as well as damage readiness. (There has been a 2000 percent increase in backlog for veteran assistance in four years!) We now have a quad-sexual military with all the health, readiness and moral issues that come with exalting sodomy. Sexual assault is at an all-time high. Women will be tasked to lead bayonet charges. As a result of the sex scandals, Congress is now looking to curtail the military‚s ability to discipline, another tribute to the lack of leadership in the military and lack of military understanding in Congress.
Billions of defense dollars are unaccounted for. Christianity is under military attack, and Bibles have been burned to appease Muslims. (References to God and Jesus are forbidden at Arlington, chaplains will be forced to perform homosexual „marriages,‰ and Bibles and religious item are forbidden to the wounded at Walter Reed, etc.)
We have a new doctrine for crisis: „Don‚t deploy forces into harm‚s way without knowing what‚s going on.‰ Therefore, no Normandy or Inchon. In other words, don‚t go until the crisis/massacre is over. Their default position is don‚t go, period. The military leadership, after the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood, outrageously lamented the effect it would have on diversity ˆ and equally outrageously labeled it workplace violence denying the victims and their families the benefits they deserve.
There have been unprecedented security leaks, and China is electronically in bed with us. They even lost the graves of our warriors at Arlington. I could go on, but it should be clear that all of the above is the result of a leader who knows not the difference between a corps and a corpse and is both indifferent to and unknowledgeable of military readiness. And as bad, the military leadership is complicit in these disasters. (As a further tribute to their ineptitude, they have actually considered combat-level medals for warriors not shooting and desk-bound computer operators, medals that were the laughingstock of veterans.)
But given that the president tasked the military to act in the Benghazi crisis, what did they do? Indefensibly, they did nothing, they did not even try! No obstacle, no doctrine, nothing can defend not trying, never mind the risk, to save fellow Americans. Were they under orders to sit on their aˆ and let their fellow Americans die? In my 34 years of military service involving many crises, I never knew of one without an after action report (AAR), in which each and every action was put under a microscope to identify those responsible for the results be they good or bad. Congress, the media, someone should demand the AAR on Benghazi. It must exist. Who ordered the stand down? Who said sit on your aˆ? Why no hearing on this?
Just as the way forward for America is a return to the morality and values of the past, so too must the military return to the readiness standards and common sense of the past. We can survive in a relatively valueless society ˆ but only with a strong and ready military. Sadly the military is mirroring society ˆ the goal of Mr. Obama and progressives ˆ and will soon be impotent. Once the progressives have a helpless military they no longer need to explain why they didn‚t go; they can say we are unable to go. Progress is not the path we are on; true progress is the path to our past. The other scandals may be more glamorous and outrageous (such as lying about Benghazi before the coffins of those massacred by terrorists, enemies‚ lists and assaults on the First Amendment) but what Mr. Obama is doing to our military is more grave.
ADM Lyons-
Washington Times
June 11, 2013
Pg. B3
Pg. B3
Restoring Military Readiness
A professional fighting force, not diversity, must be the military’s priority
The impact of fighting two wars over the past decade has taken its toll on our military forces. They have been run hard and put away wet. Sequestration has only compounded the problem. Our military services are already reeling from previously approved $800 billion in defense cuts over the next decade and are now faced with $500 billion in additional budget cuts now that sequestration has been implemented.
All this means that we will have the smallest Army since prior to World War II. The Navy, with its anemic shipbuilding program, will most likely be left with the smallest fleet since prior to World War I. The U.S. Air Force will suffer a similar adverse impact. Selected aircraft squadrons from both the Air Force and the Navy have been ordered to stand down and not fly. It will take several months to restore their readiness.
Symbolic of the Navy’s demise are the five aircraft carriers that are currently moored at piers at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia for lack of operating and overhaul funds. Clearly, with the escalating civil war in Syria, one carrier battle group should be immediately deployed to the Mediterranean. Such a deployment would dramatically change the strategic equation and counter Russia’s deployment of 11 ships currently there.
The Obama administration’s draconian budget cuts are being made at a time when global instability is increasing. The Middle East continues in a state of turmoil, particularly with the ongoing civil war in Syria. However, the most destabilizing factor in the Middle East would be for Iran to achieve a nuclear-weapon capability. With China and North Korea’s help, they may now have all the necessary elements. In the Pacific, China continues with its massive military buildup. Its cyberwarfare attacks and penetration of our military-industrial complex has, at a minimum, reduced our technology advantage in any future confrontation. This is most serious since our technological advantage was always our force-multiplier.
The one constant that made our military the finest fighting force in the world was the dedication and professionalism of our personnel – our national treasure. The troops took pride in being recognized as the “best and brightest.” It made for high morale and solid unit cohesion. Professionalism was their No. 1 priority. Now with President Obama’s social engineering of our military forces, “diversity” has become the No. 1 priority. It is hard to comprehend how the promotion of the homosexual and feminist agendas contributes to unit integrity or improves combat readiness. Why, then, are these disruptive agendas being forced on our military, particularly when we are being challenged throughout the world? Fulfilling a political agenda is insufficient rationale to deliberately weaken our military forces and national security.
As he was tiptoeing out of the Pentagon, former Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta made his ill-advised and irresponsible endorsement of eliminating military women’s exemption from direct land combat battalions. Thirty years of studies and reports in the United States and the United Kingdom have provided more than sufficient empirical data that men and women are not physical equals nor interchangeable in all roles. There is no other nation in the world with a military force comparable to ours that assigns women in direct combat infantry land wars.
When the U.S. Marines conducted an online survey of active-duty personnel in 2012, it failed to show support for women in direct ground combat units. Regrettably, never asked was how would women assigned to infantry and special operations forces affect mission effectiveness? Research done by the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, which studied the issue in depth in 1992, determined that a “voluntary” option for women to engage in close combat, but not for men, would not work. In a direct combat environment, women do not have an equal opportunity to survive, or worse, would end up causing fatalities to fellow troops.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that women’s exemption from direct ground combat missions somehow has contributed to the current rise in the sexual abuse we see in our military forces today. This makes no sense. Women are closer to combat today than ever before, but the rates of sexual assault and abuse are soaring with no end in sight.
The rescinding of the Clinton “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has come at a price. In Volume II of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office report, there is no change in “unwanted sexual contact” for women (32 percent in both 2010 and 2012), but an increase among men reporting “unwanted touching” from 31 percent in 2010 to 57 percent in 2012. It certainly calls into question the Department of Defense’s claims that repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been a complete success.
What’s most disturbing is the apparent acquiescence to these ill-conceived policies by our top military leadership. In life-and-death situations, you must have the first team in place. Mandates for diversity metrics are no substitute for proven combat effectiveness when engaging the enemy.
Our combat readiness in today’s world must be our first priority. Since our top military leadership is complicit in the administration’s social engineering of our military, Congress must exercise its constitutional responsibility to “provide for the common defense” and make policy for the armed forces. As a first order of business, Congress should reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S.military representative to the United Nations.
The question is, “What can we realistically do about the decline of our nation?”
“I” don’t have a good answer, because I don’t know what we can do to resolve the mess in Washington short of starting over… And the dems have the illustrious 47% who will back them to keep getting their free cheese…
Comments, recommendations, ideas??? ANYTHING???
h/t JP and others
