After President Obama leaves office in January 2017, the restoration of America’s military will be a “huge burden” for the next president, contends the head of a think tank on military issues.
“Demoralized troops are counting on the election of a new president who will honestly address military/social issues that affect their lives every day, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness in Washington, D.C.
Donnelly, who was a member of the congressionally established 1992 President Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, commissioned a survey of Republican candidates focused on restoring the military.
She said in a report on the CMR survey that the troops “won’t get much help from former Sen. Hillary Clinton, Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, or other Democratic presidential candidates who are on record in support of liberal policies that are doing great harm.”
That leaves GOP hopefuls, and even for them, it is not “enough for candidates to say, ‘I will follow military leaders’ advice.’”
The CMR report explained that “military leaders are no longer free to express their views on the potentially deadly consequences of ordering women with minimal capabilities into the combat arms.”
“The next commander-in-chief, therefore, 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.”
Then actions can follow, based on evidence, the report said.
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.”
Carafano said the most “neglected of all U.S. national security elements are our strategic forces,” with Obama reigning in development and deployment of ballistic missile defenses.
The consequences for the next president, he concluded, will be “emboldened adversaries who boast far greater military capabilities than they had when Obama entered the Oval Office.”
And the number-crunching doesn’t even begin to address the impact of Obama’s social agenda on the military, the women-in-combat requirements, the allowance of openly declared homosexuals and other issues that affect cohesion and force effectiveness.
So what ideas do the Republican presidential candidates propose to restore U.S. military prowess?
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum opposes Obama’s “egalitarian social agendas.”
“Egalitarian social agendas diminish the United States’ role as a global superpower and guarantor of global peace,” he said in response to CMR’s survey questions.
Santorum said he would continue an exemption for women in direct ground combat.
In December, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that Army and Marine infantry and Special Operations Forces, including Navy SEALS, will be open to women.
“If we start making gender neutrality the most important factor, then we put lives at risk,” Santorum said.
“We all respect and appreciate the role of women in the military and recognize their courageous service,” he wrote. However, he said, “Scientific research and empirical evidence put forth by the U.S. Marine Corps shows that women naturally have physical disparities that cannot be ‘mitigated.’”
Santorum also believes the military is no place for “social experimentation” by LGBT activists, and he supports freedom of religion for the soldiers, sailors and others who defend that right.
“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.
The views of the rest of the candidates?
Mostly crickets, so far.
The CMR report on its survey said campaign officials for Donald Trump, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and former Gov. Jeb Bush said a response is forthcoming. There was no formal word from Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign.
In a CNN interview, CMR noted, a Carson campaign official was “highly critical of Obama military/social policies.”
The campaigns of Sen. Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina said the candidates will not respond.
And nothing was heard at all from Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Mike Huckabee and Gov. John Kasich.
No ‘plausible rationale’
Defense Secretary Carter’s announcement Dec. 3, 2015, of a decision to open direct combat to women conflicted with the “best professional advice” of Gen. Joseph Dunford, who at the time was the Marine Corp commandant, CMR said.
Carter’s determination, according to Donnelly in the CMR report, came “without a plausible rationale or explanation.”
“Carter also confirmed that minimally qualified women will be assigned to combat arms units on the same involuntary basis as men. Once a woman volunteers to serve her country, she will have no more choice of assignment than men do, but her burdens and risks will be proportionately greater. Surveys have indicated that such mandates will hurt recruiting and retention, but facts don’t seem to matter to the Obama administration.”
It’s already known, the report said, that the Marines’ Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force, which was set up to affirm the assumption gender-mixed groups performed as well as all-male teams, “proved the opposite.”
Also, a University of Pittsburgh study showed “all-male units outperformed gender-mixed groups in 69 percent of tested events, and not a single female volunteer made it through the Marine Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Virginia.”
Injury rates for women also are estimated to be “six times” the rate of men among trainees at the Infantry Training Battalion course.
“Voters who care about national defense and our military men and women should actively join the search for a new president who will take these issues seriously,” the CMR report said. “National security is a matter of paramount concern, and the questions CMR has asked reflect challenges that the next president will have to confront honestly.”
Donnelly told WND her organization will continue to pursue responses from candidates.
When Carter made his announcement, Donnelly released a statement critical of the administration.
“The administration said it doesn’t matter what the Marines have said. It doesn’t matter what the research says. This is President Obama’s order. That’s why it’s being done, because this president knows he can order the military to do whatever he wants,” said Donnelly, who authored a scathing review of the policy change.
Donnelly said the moves are part of a social engineering effort designed to meet gender quotas.
“The paramount goal of the administration is something called ‘gender diversity metrics’; that’s another name for quotas,” Donnelly said. “The Navy has officially said they want 25 percent women, across the board, on every Navy ship.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Elaine Donnelly:
In the few years since the Obama administration and Congress repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Donnelly said virtually every concern of opponents – from an erosion of religious liberty to skyrocketing male-on-male sexual assaults – have come true. She said the impact of a women-in-combat mandate will be even greater.
WND reported when CMR cited the military’s own concerns about women in combat.
A memorandum from Brig. Gen. George S. Smith Jr., the head of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, cited causes for concern.
“The assessment across all occupational specialties revealed that gender-integrated teams, squads, or crews demonstrated, with very few exceptions, degraded performance in the time to complete tasks, move under load, and achieve timely effects on target as compared to all-male teams, squads, or crews,” the memo said.
He also concluded there will be risks he believes cannot “be fully mitigated.”
“The associated risk is directly linked to the physiological differences between males and females. Simply, size matters when executing a dismounted movement under load,” the report said.
Statistically, more than 40 percent of the women had musculoskeletal injures during the assessment, compared to 19 percent for men.
“Those who choose to turn a blind eye to … immutable realities do so at the expense of our Corps’ warfighting capability and, in turn, the security of our nation,” Smith wrote.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/where-gop-candidates-stand-on-women-in-military/
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