OPINION:
When James Mattis, the retired Marine general once called “Mad Dog Mattis” by his troops for his no-nonsense combat leadership, was named secretary of Defense many senior officers were encouraged to think that at last someone would put his foot down, hard, on the use of the military as a petri dish for the social experiments so beloved by Barack Obama and Ashton Carter.
Alas, the radical feminists and their intimidated allies in the Pentagon seem determined to make mad dogs behave like lap dogs. Certain posters at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia were taken down after the radical feminists of the National Organization for Women and the irreligious Military Religious Freedom Foundation objected to them as “sexist” and “faith-based.”
The posters quoted from a U.S. Air Force manual published a half-century ago and used the once-honorable word “man” to refer to humanity, and cited the Declaration of Independence, still honored in certain quarters, as a source “that man was made in the very image and likeness of God.” A senior Air Force officer at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, no doubt hearing distant drums, distributed a list of words and phrases that shouldn’t be used by worthy airmen. The list of the verboten was obtained by Fox News, and includes the words boy, girl, blackball, blacklist, blackmail, colonial and the phrases “blondes have more fun,” “it’s all Greek to me,” “too many chiefs, not enough Indians,” and “you people.” Such lukewarm breezes would melt any snowflake.
A public-affairs spokesman issued the usual nondenial denial, that the Air Force had not banned the words. “The the Air Force has no list of prohibited terms,” the spokesman told Fox News. “It was sent out by an individual simply reminding airmen to be respectful to others.” (Shouldn’t that be “airpersons”?)
More troubling to an authentic mad dog, assigned to look after the interests of everyone, is the revelation that a private group, Marines United, has solicited and distributed nude photographs of lady Marines. The Washington Post and a gaggle of lady senators of the Democratic persuasion blame the “sexist” culture in the military. We can’t imagine what these snowflakes would have made of the famous World War II pin-up photograph of Betty Grable, in a form-fitting one-piece bathing suit, that graced every barracks, footlocker and mess hall. The Marines are the designated villains this time because it has been most determined of the services to keep combat readiness, disdaining co-ed boot camps and assigning lady grunts to combat only with reluctance.
The Pentagon is shocked that such he-ing and she-ing goes on, as it always does when young men and young women fit together in close quarters, but when it violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice someone, probably the head mad dog, should punish the guilty. If Secretary Mattis is serious about putting a stop to the dumbing down of the military he might start with withdrawing Defense Department celebration of Gay Pride Week at the Pentagon. This was another big idea of the Obama administration.
He should rescind the directive of Ashton Carter, who never wore the uniform of his country (not even the short pants of a Boy Scout), enabling the transgendered to serve in the armed forces. This would relieve the military of paying for the “medically necessary care and treatment” for transgenders’ “transitions.”
The military’s ultimate mission, as every soldier and Marine was once taught, is to kill people and break things. The mad scientists of the left should be required to look elsewhere for a laboratory for their social experiments. The military was never meant to be a petri dish.
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