1,226 words
This week, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth ordered every general to attend a meeting with himself and President Trump at Quantico on short notice. The purpose was to clearly emphasize that the era of the Department of Defense, which Hegseth characterized as the Department of Woke, is over. It is not just a superficial name change. Names do indeed have power, which is why the Left renamed so many bases named after Confederate generals.
Hegseth laid down four rules. First, the golden rule test, which is do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit. Second, no walking on egg shells. This means liberating leaders to enforce standards and overhauling an inspection process that favored complainers, ideologues, and poor performers. No more frivolous, anonymous, or repeat complaints. Third, the E6 rule which rejects any policy or standard if it hinders those with the rank of Enlisted-6 or Officer-3 (captain) from doing their jobs. (I favor empowering the E-4 mafia, but to each their own.) Fourth, returning to 1990s standards and questioning whether any change since then has been due to evolving combat or due to the pursuit of other priorities.
It is difficult for civilians to comprehend the absolute state of the military. Hegseth calls it the 1990 standard because the subversion doesn’t go back to Dark Brandon or Obama. It goes all the way back to Clinton. Then the military was one of the few institutions the Left didn’t control. Given that the military has the highest capacity for organized violence, that made it a priority target for subversion. Thus the Left has been waging a “war on warriors” for decades because any weakening against external enemies was irrelevant compared to turning them against internal enemies.
Hegseth’s reforms strongly echo Dr. Greg Johnson’s stance that diversity inherently undermines institutions because it creates an additional goal which competes with the institution’s real goal: making war, fighting fires, teaching children, etc. Hegseth emphasized that war fighters are entitled to the best leaders, and that means no more promoting people based on superficial things like being “historic firsts” instead of merit or being aggressive risk-takers. There will also be no more distractions like climate change or gender delusions. As Hegseth said, “We are done with that shit.”
There’s an additional reason that 1990 is a special year to Hegseth. In the early 1990s, senior military leadership had learned and internalized the lessons of Vietnam, primarily an aversion to mission creep and open-ended conflicts. This is one of the factors why Operation Desert Storm (1991) was one of the few American successes since WWII. Having been forgotten, the same lessons from Vietnam had to be painfully relearned from the Global War on Terror. Rejecting open-ended conflicts means that we are not going back to the forever wars. There might be limited strikes, which I disapprove of, but we will not be indefinitely occupying Israel’s enemies for them. That’s a major improvement over every administration since 2001, both Democrat and Republican.
Another important aspect of Hegseth’s speech is his announcement that standards are back. Hegseth characterized high standards of fitness, personal dress and appearance, and punctuality as color-blind meritocracy. But we all know that women, non-whites, and liberals will be most affected. They literally can’t meet standards. This means that the military will be whiter, more male, and more right-wing.
This is great for everyone on the Right of the political spectrum, from tepid Republicans to ardent White Nationalists. First, because the military has traditionally been a way for talented white boys without trust funds (like myself and JD Vance) to obtain status and education.
There will be high, gender neutral (a.k.a. male) standards for combat arms. If that means no females, that’s fine. Hegseth just flat out said it. Not only does this mean stronger warriors and more unit cohesion, it also means a drastic reduction in dating drama, not to mention rape and sexual harassment allegations, some of which are actually based on fact.
There will be no more rampant shaving waivers, which are disproportionately given to non-whites.
Perhaps the most important effect of a return to basic standards is how everyone from the lowliest E-1 to four star general will take a PT test and meet height and weight standards twice a year. From my personal experience the liberal problem has a strong correlation with the fitness problem. Insisting on basic fitness standards will be even more of a purge by proxy than the Covid vaccine.
Interestingly, Hegseth likened tightening up standards to the broken window theory: small signs of disorder let unfixed create an environment in which crime thrives. Likewise, allowing lax standards creates a lax environment in which liberal subversion thrives.
Hegseth included an extremely populist, bipartisan policy to sweeten things up: a drastic reduction in death by Power Point and computer based training (CBTs). Its difficult to convey to a civilian the extent to which frivolous training requirements had multiplied. The stress and insult of having to track rampant CBTs combined with low fitness contributed to widespread depression. Adding something sweet to help the bitter go down will hopefully get a lot of the moderates and better liberals on board. At the very least it will secure the E-4 mafia against the woke generals.
Hegseth emphasized that the military “culture” must change, and that it is hard to change a culture with those who created or benefited from it. He will see who was just following orders versus who embraced the Woke Department and will thus be unable to follow new lawful orders in the War Department. I think he and everyone else knows that the super majority of generals embraced woke, but putting it in nice terms will make it easier to bring the hammer down.
One reason Trump was haplessly swept aside in a color revolution in his first term is that he, like many who are living in the past, did not realize how badly the American military had degenerated. It is a great sign that he has tackled military reform during the first year of his new term. Even if you are not enthusiastic about Trump’s second term, I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of turning the military to our side, or at least towards neutrality. We don’t need woke, anti-white Milleys or Lloyd Austins who would happily drone strike us if they had the power. The Left wouldn’t have waged a war on warriors for over thirty years if it wasn’t important.
Reforming the US military is a huge task, but it looks like the administration won’t have to do it alone. Restore the Military is a non-profit launched by Doug Truax, a West Point graduate, Army captain, and Ranger. They are accepting confidential tips to help Hegseth hold woke military leaders accountable. Already, they have profiled over 90 senior officers, many of whom have been removed from command or denied promotions.
I strongly encourage our veterans to provide them with tips if they can.
Liberals are complaining that this meeting was in person. I couldn’t care less, because these uppity generals inconvenienced me a lot. It also emphasizes that Hegseth and Trump are serious. If Hegseth has to fire even more people than he already has, they have been given ample notice.
I only wish Hegseth had led them through a PT test right on the spot.
35 comments
Fourth, returning to 1990s standards…
They actually need to go back farther, to the 1940s standards! 🙃
Hegseth will fail unless he returns the military to the old pension plan, the “high three.” Right now, they have a 401k plan, very few people are going to stay in the military for a retirement plan that you have to fund, and can’t draw from until you are 57. He also needs to raise the standards on the I. Q. test you do at the recruiting stations (I can’t remember the name of it), and do away with the mandatory, quarterly Equal Opportunity (EO), and Sensitivity classes. I am of course talking about the enlisted personnel, the most desirable being the ones straight out of high school, whom you can more easily mold. The officers have a different retirement plan, and make out like “fat cats.” 🙃
This is great news, if they can pull it off.
The “rot” in the military goes back to the Civil War when the North allowed blacks to enter the army, after that the military lost all credibility. 🙃
I’ve never been in the military, but weren’t those physical standards for generals meant to be a joke? I think the stereotype of a fat general who has to be lifted onto his horse with a crane has been around since at least the Napoleonic Wars. Modern generals are practically bureaucrats who sit in headquarters poring over maps. Today’s army doesn’t need generals who can fight hand-to-hand, but who understand the strategy and technical issues of modern warfare. Correct me if I’m wrong.
PT standards have always (or at least, since standards were implemented) been “scored on a curve” so to speak, accounting for age. standards for a 60 year old general are lower than they are for a 22 year old second lieutenant.
However, you’d be surprised at how fit some older officers maintain themselves, even with lower standards. Even someone a little overweight like Gen Norman Schwartzkoff back in the 90s could pass the PT standards of a 2 mile run and pushups/situps for his age.
as I remember them, when I was in the Army, the requirement for my age group was a 2 mile run under something like 16.5 minutes (a little more than an 8 minute mile) and going from memory, something like 45 pushups in 2 minutes and 50 or so sit-ups in 2 minutes. (True to form) My memory isn’t 100% accurate on this but close. My age group was mid-20s male.
i am in my mid 50s and 40 pounds overweight, largely due to mature muscle mass due to weight lifting for years. I can meet the push-up requirement today. Easily. For a 20 year old male. I could meet the sit-up requirement if someone holds my feet. I couldn’t finish a 2 mile run in less than 18 minutes I suspect, but I also am pretty sure that the requirement for a mid-50s soldier in 1995 was not much better than that.
In the Army, every so often a post commanding general would have a run for esprit de corps. I remember participating in 5 mile runs led by a 2 star general. They were often slow paced, but in the military, the pace of a run is set by the slowest person, not the fastest. (Caveat, that’s an integrated Army with female soldiers, which existed in noncombat roles even in the 70s)
By the mid-90s, certain standards had already started being tweaked to accommodate a more inclusive military, but there still have always been some kind of standard even for older “bureaucrats”.
A woke American military is of great benefit to Russia. While Europe disarms itself in favour of unlimited social programs, America renders its combat readiness into a wet paper bag. Western Europe and Arctic Canada would be tipe for the taking.
I can’t think of a more damning indictment of reformative, democratic socialism, the geopolitical con is laid bare for everyone to see.
Putin took that into consideration. It wasn’t too long after the Afghanistan fiasco that Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine.
I’m absolutely in favor of purging the Woke elements and upping the PT standards, especially for the younger service members.
With the generals, however, it is not so much an issue unless the author thinks that dumb jocks make good generals.
When the Pentagon was completed in 1942 by General Groves (notorious for his girth and for later heading the Manhattan Project) the building deliberately had plenty of restrooms to allow separate facilities for Negroes, but it had minimal elevators because nobody liked the prospect of seeing fat political generals in Washington. It was purely an Optics issue.
I am appalled in that whenever I have seen a Negro in uniform lately he has a nasty-ass beard. Are they really giving shaving profiles to so many Negroes now, or was that the new Bidenista grooming standard?
However, I am also somewhat less than impressed by Hegseth himself. He’s a tatted up Evangelical Bro. Oohrah! After the traditional grooming standards are put back in force, then they need to ban tattoos outright for NCOs and officers. That is a huge litmus test for me.
I will respect the new Secretary of War when he starts his appointments for tattoo removal at the laser center.
Perhaps the author can explain what is meant by “unleashing the E-4 mafia.” What is the point of that?
Generally speaking, NCOs (non-commissioned officers) are E-5’s and above. That is three stripes in the Army. (More on Army Corporals and Specialists later.)
In the Marine Corps, an E-4 is a Corporal (two-striper) or a “Junior NCO.” Lance Corporals (E-3) are not Junior NCOs. Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Actually, Private First Class Gomer Pyle was an E-2 in the USMC and never made further rank (and likely never would have). An Army PFC is an E-3.
I don’t know exactly about the Navy culture, but I was in the Civil Air Patrol in the 1970s and at that time an Air Force Sergeant (three stripes) was an E-4. I don’t recall if they were considered “Junior NCOs” then or not. But now an E-4 (three stripes) is called a Senior Airman and an NCO is a Staff Sergeant (E-5), so I assume that an E-4 is not now considered a “Junior NCO” in the USAF.
In the Army, E-4’s are either Corporals or Specialists. Corporals are “Junior NCOs,” and while this rank is equivalent to Specialist, which is not considered a Junior NCO, Corporal is seldom awarded unless one is either in an Infantry MOS or has taken extra NCO training, which begs the question as to why not just go for E-5 and Sergeant (i.e., an actual NCO).
I was not happy when Army Specialist-4 Pat Tillman was postumously “promoted” to Corporal just so that they could say that the football jock who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan was a “Junior NCO.” They tried to hide that important little friendly fire detail too. Specialist Tillman warn’t no Sergeant York.
The Army has a long history of Technician and later Specialist ranks which allowed senior enlisted to accumulate special training and to be paid more whilst not necesarily needing to fit into open command slots in the immediate chain of command. One cliche is that Technicians and Specialists were booksmart nerds that did not have the leadership chops or NCO potential ─ but the reality is that they were often respected more, and they certainly had plenty of supervisory duties.
When I was in the Army in the early 1980s, they still had some senior Specialist ranks, having just phased out Specialist-7 in 1978. The Specialists tended to be things like medicos and mechanics. I don’t remember anybody in the Signal Corps who was not a “hard-striper,” although sometimes you would see a Spec-5 who had started in some other MOS like Military Police.
So now the Army only has Spec-4’s or just “Specialist,” unless you are an E-4 in the Infantry (i.e., Corporal). The ranks of Specialist or “the E-4 mafia” are large because it allows retention of troops getting more specialized and technical training and drawing higher pay without necessarily fitting them into command slots or as apprentice NCOs.
But I am at a total loss of why the “E-4 mafia” has some kind of insight over actual NCOs. It does not take that long to make E-5 (Sergeant).
I guess the argument is that you have to have Woke credentials to make NCO. This seems overstated to me.
🙂
Yeah, the First Gulf War was handled well by the fat generals like Schwartzkopf until President George H.W. Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by not deposing Saddam Hussein.
This was done in accordance with a prior agreement with people like the Saudis who did not want to see Iraq liquidated. But after the Liberation of Kuwait and the glorious defeat of Iraq, President Bush could have had Saddam deposed and even executed without too much fanfare. And the postwar chaos in Iraq could have been mitigated by not purging the Ba’athists entirely.
However, Papa Bush was being run by the Neocons who wanted not a big victory and a go-home but an open-ended peacekeeping mission in the Middle East.
This and reneging on his election promise not to raise taxes cost the elder Bush the 1992 election.
Ostensibly, the reasoning for the 9/11/2001 Al Qaeda terrorist attack was because Sunni extremists were unappy that U.S. bases were still ensconced on Holy Saudi soil long after Kuwait had been liberated from Saddam’s godless Republican Guard.
🙂
The Neoconservatives (i.e. the Israel lobby) absolutely wanted Hussein out of power in 1991. Bush attributed his defeat to losing the support of the Israel lobby precisely because he had not deposed Hussein. I’m not sure how you reach the conclusion that it was the Neoconservatives who wanted a limited war. The notion that limiting the war set the stage for it to drag on is just paradoxical.
Regarding what cost Bush the election, I don’t think it has anything to do with ending the war. Bush’s approval rating hit 90% at the end of February 1991 when the war ended. His approval cratered in late spring and summer 1992, coinciding with the Rodney King riots. The tepid response to that is what cost him the election.
” I’m not sure how you reach the conclusion that it was the Neoconservatives who wanted a limited war. The notion that limiting the war set the stage for it to drag on is just paradoxical. “
I didn’t say the (((Neoconservatives))) wanted a limited war. The Neocons certainly wanted Iraqi power crushed and Saddam contained.
But they didn’t want more than a superficial “mission accomplished” or a decisive declaration of victory that might justify a deep peace dividend, but instead an ongoing excuse for unlimited open-ended Israel-centric “peacekeeping” in the Middle East.
Papa Bush was at the top of his game immediately after the First Gulf War, but that soured on him quickly once it was clear that Saddam was to be left in power and we would be enforcing compliance from now one, no-fly zones, continuing the sanctions, etc.
Bush had spent months getting international agreements to liberate Kuwait and to deal with Saddam as though he were the new Hitler. Only then did he get permission from Congress to deal a crushing blow. Then the Commander-in-Chief and his post-Vietnam generals produced a Blitzkrieg-like victory that the Presidente immediately appeared to have squandered. And it was a rapid ride downhill thereafter.
The President’s Israel-centric advisors told him to stay the course with tone deaf Libertarianism and trickle-down voodoo economics. He was riding some long coattails, and the Reaganite answer was to stay the course with supply-side economics and low taxes ─ but then in currying the favor of Congress in the long windup to the Gulf War, Bush had caved on that too.
By the Election of 1992, Bush stood for little but a “wimp” with at best a wet finger in the wind of public sentiment.
After the end of the Cold War, the Neocons did not want the Clintonistas claiming some kind of “peace dividend,” either ─ but to maintain the Military “Interventionist” Complex infrastructure, only maybe refit it more for new anti-terrorism applications. It is a process that the Neocons had been doing systematically since Reagan, though Carter had tried to give lip service to it as well.
At the end of the Cold War, the Clintonistas even issued a Cold War Victory Medal if you served in the armed forces with an Honorable Discharge between September 2, 1945 and December 26, 1991. But the Neocons had a hissy fit lest it contribute to an idea of DoD downsizing. So the Cold War Victory Medal was immediately made “unofficial” and you were not even allowed to wear it on a uniform.
Yes, George H.W. Bush appeared tone deaf on just about everything after successully completing the First Gulf War, especially on the Recession. Bush was clearly behind the eight ball from that time forward with respect to the (((establishment media))).
A more forceful approach to deploying the National Guard to the L.A. riots in 1992 would have been noteworthy, although this was a local problem that had been brewing for some time ─ and there is no guarantee that the “nattering nabobs of negativity,” as Vice President Agnew once called them, would have spun anything in the President’s favor regardless of whether he zigged or zagged on an issue. Trump faced a similar problem during the Summer of Floyd as he was trying to play both sides when clear decisiveness would have rallied his base.
I had been watching the media situation in 1991 as I had access to raw TV satellite feeds out of Los Angeles, and the (((establishment media))) had been earnestly stoking the flames of some kind of racial “catharsis” for quite some time. Negroes always riot on cue.
And it is hard to run things with clarity and decision with your wet finger in the wind and you aren’t even clear about what game to play.
🙂
Pat Buchanan was right, the US never should have gotten involved in the First Gulf War.
Not one single drop of American blood should have been spilled for the benefit of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel.
I always despised General Milley for a variety of reasons such as his lies about Afghanistan and implementing critical race theory in the military.
My understanding is that the institutional rot has also spread to the service academies, especially West Point. Both academic and disciplinary standards have declined significantly since 1990. Wasn’t there an incident a few years back in which a graduating cadet posed for a photo with a pro-communist message inside his hat? I think his name was Spenser Rapone.
Thomas you are correct. Spencer Rapone is an avowed communist and went through four years at West Point that way. He was blatant about it, which is why he was referred to as the commie cadet. When he graduated, he had a sign underneath his hat that said, “communism will win”. He also had a T-shirt on underneath his uniform with Che Guevera on it. During his graduation photo he removed his hat to display that sign. He also unbuttoned his uniform shirt to display his Che T-shirt. Prior to West Point, he was an enlisted infantryman who served in Afghanistan. He was not a ranger but was assigned to ranger unit. After his tour, he entered West Point and was commissioned as an infantry officer upon graduation. After graduation he went to ranger school. As a ranger student he became a discipline problem and argued with the ranger instructors, which caused him to be kicked out of ranger school. Not too long after that he got into trouble with his superiors for his conduct and received an”other than honorable” discharge from the army. The fact that something like that happened at West Point and in the army is evidence of how far things have eroded. I’ll recommend a couple of websites that have some interesting information about Spencer Rapone and about how standards have declined at the service academies. The first one is militarycoruption.com and the second one is JohnT.Reed.com. John T. Reed is a graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran. He is a real estate guru but has a blog on his website devoted to military matters, which is eye opening. Finally, I’ll recommend an open letter by LTC Heffington, which is on John T. Reed’s website. LTC Heffington is a graduate of West Point and was an instructor there as well. He had a confrontation with Spencer Rapone while Rapone was a cadet there. Also, his open letter adequately describes how far standards at West Point have fallen. It is eye opening as well. I’ve recommended these websites to other CC commentators in the past when discussing military matters. I don’t believe that I’ve responded to one of your posts before, so hopefully you might find this information useful.
I will definitely check out those resources. Thank you for recommending them.
Your welcome.
I wonder if West Point still requires their students to go on a diversity training field trip to my city, the most diverse city in the US. They did do this for several years in the 2000s and 2010s. Between freshman and sophomore years, cadets would have to spend a week in the city meeting diverse constituencies. They did this by attending mosques, synagogues, black and Puerto Rican storefront churches, and even Eastern Orthodox churches, where they would meet and “rap” with “members of the community.” The local media was proud of this and would have a feature article about it each year. They would emphasize that the cadets themselves were diverse, not just Eisenhower-style Kansas farmboys in the big bad city for the first time in their lives. There would be black cadets from South Side Chi and Filipina cadets too. It was too early to mention tranny cadets, but if the program had continued, no doubt they woukd have been there too.
This program was not that diverse though, in that meeting vetted, respectable, civic-minded, older members of the community, the cadets were being mollycoddled. During the day, sure, they could meet with these more or less polite people. But at night they should have been rousted from their bunks at 2 AM, blindfolded, stripped of their phones, had their hair dyed electric pink, whisked individually to one of the three or four fabulous ghettoes we have, and kicked out of the van in sight of the local youths, without a map, and told to make their way back on foot to their hotel by dawn. Now that would be real diversity training.
I’m glad to see the US military is being reset to something more resembling the experience I had going through Army basic combat training in 1995 and then serving through 2003 including an “over there” desert deployment in 96. Back then, I might have thought my overall treatment by the military was soft, at least compared to the Vietnam era and all the hardship and struggle that came before it. The drill sergeants couldn’t really swear and they definitely couldn’t lay a finger on you but at the same time I had no women commanding/leading me and all the freaky deeky gay/trans stuff was still far off in the future. There was a standard and you had to meet it or go buh-bye back to Fort Livingroom. Salute 🫡 to SecWar Pete Kegsbreath. See we’re already having more fun!!
The presence of women in combat arms is an abomination which cannot be circumvented by half-measures. Any women – no matter how few – in a combat unit weaken the unit. The only real solution is to ban women entirely from combat arms. I believe Hegseth wants to do this, but realizes the power of the feminist lobby is too strong to be challenged directly, largely because of pusillanimous males in congress, as well as (disgusting, but true) a large number of male career officers, including many generals, who have sent their daughters through the service academies or ROTC, in the process brainwashing their little darlings into believing that they can be Amazon Warriors. Hence, Hegseth’s emphasis on an indirect way to skin this cat: high, truly gender-neutral physical standards, as a way to at least drastically reduce female numbers in combat arms, while publicly highlighting the more generally popular (& acceptable) goal of restoring combat effectiveness. No doubt there will be pushback by feminists (female & male) in positions of power, in & out of the military. Let us hope it will fail.
I believe in male combatants only. Regarding the “feminist lobby”, as often as not, gay men and trans folks make the inroads toward placing women in leadership positions, and in turn, they then hire more gays & trans.
This has happened in many formerly all-male clubs, most notably Boy Scouts of America, now known as “Scouting USA”. BSA withstood the occasional noisy Girl Scout* egged on by ”’adults”’ into wanting to invade the boys’ group, but they fell to pressure by fags with their corporate backers such as Lowes, along with some gay-glorifying churches. After BSA allowed gay male scouts, AND gay scout leaders, >30% of the Boy Scouts (the Mormons) quit overnight, & BSA said they needed to invite the female siblings of the Boy Scouts to join, in order to stay afloat.
*As a former Camp Fire Girl, I want to remind folks that (pro-choice) Girls Scouts was never the parallel to Boy Scouts. It was actually us Camp Fire Girls, which turned co-ed thanks to weak leadership, way before BSA was crippled.
Since nobody seems to be complaining, I’ll continue with a few more comments regarding the military and reform proposals.
First of all, the photograph of the Trannies in uniform associated with the article does not depict the U.S. military. The original caption had something to do about NATO competency but I don’t know what countries are represented by the persons in uniform ─ Royal Air Force, Canadian, I don’t know.
The Armed Forces uses the ASVAB test (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) and it basically functions like an intelligence test. From the ASVAB, the AFQT (Armed Forces Qualification Test) score is derived.
The AFQT
Purpose: To determine if a candidate meets the minimum enlistment qualifications for the armed forces.
Components: It is calculated by combining the scores from four specific ASVAB subtests: Word Knowledge (WK), Paragraph Comprehension (PC), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), and Mathematics Knowledge (MK).
Scoring: The AFQT score is a percentile score, indicating the percentage of a nationally representative group of young adults that the test-taker scored at or above.
This is probably why I don’t remember many Blacks of low intelligence in the Signal Corps unless they were the dumb-as-rocks “pole climbers” or had other roles like Administrative. The only Black in Basic Training who could shoot his rifle straight was a mulatto from Louisiana who had a French name. A fair amount of the Negroes actually “boloed” at the rifle range and had to be passed anyway.
Another weird observation was that the Puerto Rican Negroes always panicked during gas attacks and threw their gas masks and rifles down and tried to run. No idea why.
Anyhow, in the early 1980s when I was in the Army, President Reagan made some reforms in keeping with more of a post-Vietnam “warrior ethos.” If you have ever seen the 1981 movie Southern Comfort, you might notice the scruffy haircuts of the Louisiana National Guard who have a homicidal ordeal with the backcountry Cajun locals after pranking them with an M-60 machine gun firing blanks. That (the scruffy haircuts) is pretty realistic.
President Reagan ended the scruffy haircuts thing for the state militias, but I am not sure his other reforms really amounted to much. I was in the middle of Basic Training when Reagan was shot. Everyone was dedicated to fighting Communism, of course, but I remember that some ROTC-commissioned officers wanted to emphasize desert training for capability in the Middle East to fight harder for Izrul.
In those days there were plenty of Black NCOs and Command Sergeants Major, plus some junior officers, but you never saw Darkie Admirals or Generals. Now they are probably the Post commander.
Women were not allowed to have combat roles in those days, and the Army was on the cusp of the “everybody is a soldier” concept, not women auxiliaries, so you weren’t supposed to call them WACs anymore. My unit for Basic Training was all-male and we trained in the crappy WWII wooden barracks at Fort Gordon, GA that have all been torn down as fire traps now.
Based on conversations with others who might have trained at other places, like Fort Jackson, SC ─ I think that sex-segregated Basic Training is better. We rarely had to deal with female Drill Sergeants which suited me fine. Drill Sergeants did plenty of swearing and yelling but you knew that they were not going to actually hit you.
Just for the LOLs, if you paid attention to the dossier on Colonel Kurtz in the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, you will see that Kurtz with the colonialist “heart of darkness” went to Basic at Fort Gordon, GA before going to AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) at Fort Benning, GA.
I was in the Signal Corps so went to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) also at Fort Gordon. There was also a Military Police school at Fort Gordon so we got some of that training too. At AIT there were both men and women training together. I did not see any problem with that and don’t really understand all the fuss. There were combat and non-combat and quasi-combat roles. Every soldier does guard duty, for example.
However, the reality is that a lot of roles that are technically non-combat actually are. This is especially true with modern doctrines of concentrating on eliminating Command & Control by attacking both rear areas and forward bases with modern weapons like missiles and aircraft, and sometimes with commandos.
Most career-oriented women in the service did not like the fact that combat roles were excluded to them, and in general I think it is a bad idea to have too many women in combat roles. I agree that there should be one Physical Training test standard for combat roles. I also never liked that girls were exempt from registration for the Draft but the boys must do so (thanks to Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness with Iran). Register, otherwise no student loan for you, Jack.
One of the biggest changes since my day was that there was no “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” then. Every recruit was asked by the command surgeon at the induction station whether he was a homosexual. An affirmative response meant that you were not qualified for military service.
Of course, I suppose that many lied ─ the Negroes always did lie, since they lie to The Man as a matter of course, and Africans do not compartmentalize their brains in this way as far as Straight or Gay. But when the fire guard caught a pair of Darkies dicking around in the shower late at night, the MPs were right there to take them away, never to be seen again. Now that Gay Marriage is legal everywhere and in most advanced countries, maybe there is no going back. I don’t know.
Also, I looked up three-stripers (E-4’s) in the U.S. Air Force in the 1970s when I was in the Civil Air Patrol. I don’t remember them being called anything other than Sergeants, but apparently they were being called Airmen First Class before the late 1960s. If they were being called Sergeants then, they were technically Lance Sergeants because E-4 is equivalent to Army and USMC Corporals, i.e., “Junior NCOs.” Army and Marine Corps E-5’s are real Sergeants, although the Army had a Specialist-5 rank also that was more or less treated like an NCO.
Anyway, from 1976-1993, the USAF had two classifications of three-stripers (E-4’s), whether the rank chevrons had a star on it or not. If the rank had a star, he was a [Lance] Sergeant and without one he was now called a Senior Airman. So I suppose the Air Force was then making a distinction like the Army does today, on whether an E-4 is a “Junior NCO” or not.
This is interesting, I think, because of the Air Force culture itself. Unlike the Army, they have virtually eliminated Warrant Officers. The Air Force is primarily a “pilot culture” so they want only officers jockeying aircraft. When the USAF was created by cannibalizing Army (but not Navy) aviation in 1947, they had zero interest in rotary-winged aircraft and pilot officers without college degrees (like the first man to break the sound barrier, General Chuck Yeager).
The Army increased its Warrant Officers to fly helicopters, although now all Warrants have college degrees just like all other officers.
But the Air Force pretty much dropped Warrant Officers, and these roles are handled by the senior enlisted ranks who have very “busy” chevrons on their uniforms. I won’t get into the egregious sartorial problems with American military uniforms (primarily the Army and Air Force).
I had quite a few supervisors in the Army who were Warrant Officers, particularly in areas like ComSec. Basically there are now five grades of Warrant Officer and even the most senior is technically outranked by a 2nd Lt. They are technical specialists who might be outside the chain-of-command but are highly paid and very authoritative. You call them either Mister or Sir (or Ma’am) and salute them just like regular officers. There are supposedly about 1,400 Chief Warrant Officer-5’s in the Army now. The youngest is in his forties, I believe.
Whether the service academies are now Woke is another question that has been asked. West Point has always been a Football and Civil Engineering school. My Nephew graduated from the Naval Academy which is strong on Aviation and Mechanical Engineering. He was planning on an aviation career but intensely disliked the rah-rah “Top Gun” culture. He became a linguist who monitored North Korean signal intercepts from a submarine, and after completing his required tours of duty, is now completing medical school. Hopefully he will stay in the Reserves. He has a nice family and I don’t recall any complaints about Wokitude either at Annapolis or on USN submarines, which are probably considered elite personnel. However, long deployments on submarines are not very conducive to family life.
The bottom line here is that I see nothing wrong with Hegseth’s reforms, and the Department of War rename is a nice touch. The DEI and the anti-White “Woke” has to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
But the establishment media is trying to portray the Secretary of War as just another Rah-Rah who wants fratboy jock culture in the Armed Services, which is not something that I’m an admirer of. I’m not sure if Trump is really any more nuanced here either.
🙂
Pro Patria Vigilans my friend
My MOS was 31R, MSE LOS in the node center.
I don’t like to get too detailed about my background in these forums but I do owe my engineering career to the Signal Corps.
Basic training in the mid 90s, we did have to deal with some high testosterone negresses who drilled us along with our male DS’s. I also remember a quite obviously lesbian white woman. This is because our basic training was partially integrated with females. (Partially, not completely).
The female DS’s mostly focused on the female recruits. There was a little bit of gender hierarchy in with the DS’s in a sense. I think the male DS’s were really in charge and the females kind of understood that they were the “platoon mothers”. When a platoon of recruits is 45 men and 5 females, it’s sort of obvious that the females don’t “really” have an equal position, even if everyone pretends they do.
When I got to AIT and it was time to train on erecting masts for antennas, guess which soldiers had the sledge hammers in their hands for pounding in the guy spikes? Guess which “soldiers” were attaching the guy ropes?
Awesome. I would love to hear more of your stories, as it fits your comfort zone.
🙂
“Another weird observation was that the Puerto Rican Negroes always panicked during gas attacks and threw their gas masks and rifles down and tried to run. No idea why.”
That immediately made me remember something I experienced during my own service. I went through Officer Basic Course at Fort Sill, OK. During a week-long field exercise, the trainers surprised us with a gas attack. It wasn’t simulated either, they used actual tear gas. Two or three of us were inside a self-propelled 155 howitzer, part of a battery that was set up. We heard the shouts of “Gas!” at the same time that we felt it hitting our eyes and noses. We all masked up right away and were fine.
Suddenly we heard screaming outside, and the only Puerto Rican female in our class came stumbling in. Her gas mask was on upside down and hanging off the lower half of her face, and she was panicking. I ripped her mask off and proceeded to put it on her correctly, talking her through the process. (These were the M17 masks in use at the time, where you had to cover the filters, exhale hard to clear the inside of it, tighten the straps, etc.) After I got the mask onto her she started calming down, but the whole thing left me appalled. This was a commissioned officer who would soon be in charge of soldiers, and she completely melted down in a mildly stressful situation that we had all been trained to respond to. I have no idea where she was assigned after OBC, but I’m glad it wasn’t anywhere near me.
Glad I didn’t have to see that! I was a field artillery officer from 1975 until 1986. When I was in OBC, we regularly had to “hump” by ourselves the 95 lb, 155mm HE round, from one howitzer to another during field exercises. (Even did it occasionally as a battery XO when we were shorthanded.) It’s hard to imagine any female FA officers doing that. There were no females in cannon field artillery when I was in, but in the early 80s they started putting women in missile units, like Lance & Pershing, though at first they were only in headquarters & service batteries, not firing batteries. A friend commanded a Lance service battery in Germany & told me about it. He had five females in the battery (out of 80 soldiers, total), three hetero & two lesbians. The heteros frequently got pregnant, with many accompanying “profiles” (medically ordered restrictions on the duties they could be required to perform). Not that being pregnant made much difference. Even when non-pregnant, the hetero females were too weak, physically, to do many routine tasks in the field, so the ladies got male soldiers to do them for various favors – sometimes just a smile, sometimes more. The lesbians, however, could do the physical work required in the field for a Lance support unit, like wrestling heavy electrical cables to hook up generators, or changing the tire on a 5 ton supply truck. But the lesbians caused more trouble than they were worth. They beat up the hetero girls for not having sex with them. Then they beat up each other when both had a crush on the same hetero. So my friend had to “chapter” the lesbians for discharge out of the Army, because this was long before the days of “don’t ask don’t tell.” “It’s like an X-rated soap opera in my battery,” he told me.
And this was back when Ronald Reagan was president!
So…I can’t imagine how bad things have gotten in the 40+ years since. I pity all you guys who’ve had to put up with it. Maybe Hegseth can make things a little better, at least for a while.
Because I went in in 95 I was one of the first recruits to experience gender integrated basic training at Fort Jackson. Our training company was made up of mostly men but quite a few females. We did many things together under the leadership of three male drills (2 white and 1 black) who oversaw both men and women. There were no female DIs that I was aware of. The women lived and slept in a different area than the men and so this created some difficulties in communication etc during certain times but honestly it was nice having the females around if only too see some female beauty amidst all the the bald male recruits and all that “macho” energy present there.
It is possible that when you went through basic at Ft Jackson, the female DIs were not yet present. My basic was in 96. (I actually joined the army when I was 22). There were a couple of female DIs for my platoon. This was shortly after the big sexual harassment scandal was in the news. The political winds forced their hand and they had to get some females in there to keep the peace.
Like I said earlier, the females mostly served as platoon mothers for the females. The actual drill was mainly handled by men. I distinctly remember a high testosterone negress though. Not pleasant.
Matter of fact. I just Googled the timeline for female drill sergeants in the Army, and it said that there were 6 females DIs introduced in 1972 at Fort Jackson. I think the sexual harassment scandals of the mid 90s increased the female presence though.
By the way, that whole scandal was exactly what you would expect it was.
Read the names of the men who were prosecuted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_scandal
Mr. Hegseth is a persuasive, hawkish Trump mouthpiece from what I saw of his passionate speech the other day about tightening U.S. military standards, but can he be believed when he now says?:
“There might be limited strikes, which I disapprove of, but we will not be indefinitely occupying Israel’s enemies for them.”
Recall that earlier this year he said the following at his Senate confirmation hearing to be Zionist Trump’s Secretary of Defense:
‘I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas’ says Trump nominee Pete Hegseth
By Jewish Chronical reporter Andrew Bernard
January 15, 2025
Fox news host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US Secretary of Defence, delivered a staunch defense of Israel’s military actions during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Hegseth, a retired Army major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said: “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.” His comments came in response to questions about his support for the Jewish state and its right to defend itself.
The hearing, held by the Senate Committee on Armed Services, was filled with controversy, with Hegseth repeatedly interrupted by anti-Israel hecklers. These protesters accused him of being a “Christian Zionist” and even accused him of supporting genocide.” In a direct response to such claims, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked Hegseth about the label “Christian Zionist,” pressing him to clarify his position.
“The first one accused you of being a ‘Christian Zionist’—I’m not really sure why that is a bad thing,” Cotton remarked. “I’m a Christian. I’m a Zionist. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient Holy Land where they’ve lived since the dawn of history.”
When Cotton asked Hegseth if he considered himself a Christian Zionist, Hegseth affirmed: “I’m a Christian, and I robustly support the State of Israel and its existential defense, and the way America comes alongside them as their great ally.”...
Pete, were you lying then or are you lying now?
I say his admitted “robust” Christian Zionism (no scare quotes) should be scary to Jew-wise pro-Whites.
Source: ‘I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas’ says Trump nominee Pete Hegseth – The Jewish Chronicle – The Jewish Chronicle
Keep in mind, that when SCOTUS recently ruled affirmative action (and DEI, aka DIE) was unconstitutional, they said that military academies were exempt from this.
And also, Justice Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin, a tranny, got sentenced for a mere 8 years. He’ll be right back out while Kavanaugh is still a SC judge.
everyone…will take a PT test and meet height and weight standards twice a year.
I know you get slightly shorter as you age, but is height loss a particular problem in the military?
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.