Conservative blog post I read... by kpo

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Conservative blog post I read...

POSTED BY: KPO
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 15:54
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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 4:56 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Moving off the EU theme, I read this recently:

Quote:
The phrase “sensitivity training” needs to be struck from our collective consciousness immediately. On top of the fact that it’s stupid, the thought of sailors, soldiers, and Marines sitting in a multi-hour class teaching them how to be “sensitive” to the gays is quite bizarre. I mean, I’m pretty cool with gay marriage, but I’m not so cool with openly gay active duty servicemen and women. For all of my latent feminist tendencies, I’m also against women in combat.

...

Anyway, as much as equality is fabulous in theory, the repeal of DADT will simply open the floodgates for people who believe they’ve got something to prove, just as many gay couples who weren’t ready got married just because they could. And I’m sorry, but just because you can join the military as an openly gay person doesn’t mean you should.

Thoughts?

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 6:03 AM

HARDWARE

Too much PC bullshit like this comes from the commander in chief. Part of the problem goes right back to Vietnam. Hearts and minds is all wonderful, let's stand around the campfire and sing kumbaya. When you've got their balls in your fist their hearts and minds are yours too.

But asymmetric warfare doesn't allow us to destroy their infrastructure, since they don't have infrastructure. Or at least the infrastructure they rely on is also being used by the civilian population. The one example of asymmetric warfare not turning into a war of attrition involved killing large portions of the civilian population and removing the support base from the guerrillas. Essentially you have to make the civilians more frightened of what you will do to them if they support the guerrillas than what the guerrillas will do to them if they are not supported. There is no political, popular or military support for that solution.

As far as DADT, gay soldiers stop bullets as well as straight soldiers. DADT didn't stop gays from serving, just as when being gay in the military was a crime. Gays continued to serve. If you are arguing that "gay pride" will make some young gays enlist for an in-your-face-we're-queer-and-we're-here reason, you're probably right. But stupid young men and women have been joining the military for the wrong reasons for a long, long, time.

Women have been dying in combat as far back as WW2 in the US services. In recent times they've been in MP and logistics units that get in combat. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you a nice set of window dressing. Women combat pilots have died in action in the GWOT. Lots of women have died from other causes in the combat zone, but it always seem to be something other than enemy action. Does it matter to their next of kin why they died? They died serving their country.

As I told a former 11B who was vehemently against gays in the military on the basis that an infantryman who was gay might rape one of his squad mates; If I have a soldier who can rape one of his squad mates while holding off the other ten, I WANT him in the infantry. If gays want to serve they better learn to suck it up and take the hazing of other servicemen and women. You think white soldiers took "sensitivity classes" when Harry Truman integrated the military?

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 6:31 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Thoughts?

I don't believe in mandatory sensitivity training. People should be free to be as insensitive as they wish, provided they don't engage in coercion or violence.

That said, I find this person's remarks quite bigoted. And irrational.

Let's substitute "Harvard" for "joining the military."

How many kids go to Harvard because they feel they have something to prove? Just because you can go to Harvard doesn't mean you should. WTF?

People should have the civil liberty to "have something to prove" as well as be utterly insensitive and bigoted.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 6:54 AM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Hardware pretty much said it for me, only without being 'polite' to the point of being ambiguous, as I might have. While I don't approve of discrimination of any sort, it's my understanding that pretty much everyone in the military gets 'hazed' and why should gay servicemen get treated any different? In a way, making gay 'hazing' off limits could just separate them further from truly integrating.

I also agree that gay folk should have every right that straight folk have to get married or join the military for stupid reasons.

CTS, I don't doubt that this blogger is probably bigoted, but it's hard to see the military and Havard having anything in common. Though, on that same note, how many go to college 'to prove something' or because they've been told by their parents sense elementary school that they have to make good grades so they can go to college or they will never find a job?

So in a nutshell, sensitivity training seems like a stupid waste of time, and those that might actually need it probably aren't taking it seriously, and gay people should have every legal right that straight people have.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 7:45 AM

DREAMTROVE

I'm going to agree with everything said here, except I don't think it was bigoted. The blogger is more or less correct: This is no way to fight a war. If your soldiers aren't calling each other pansies just on the grounds that they are or aren't from iowa, you're already too gay to win a war

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 10:34 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by Hardware:
As I told a former 11B who was vehemently against gays in the military on the basis that an infantryman who was gay might rape one of his squad mates; If I have a soldier who can rape one of his squad mates while holding off the other ten, I WANT him in the infantry.

ROFLMAO

Hell yes - me being me, I never gave a shit, they specifically assigned me the guy they did as a loader for me M60 because he was something of an effeminate ponce and suspected to be gay, and they figured I would tear him limb from limb...
(I was really, really violent and nihilistic at the time, and pretending to be even worse.)
But long as he kept my belts linked, what did I care?

He got to be pretty handy with an M79 after a while too - although some people are just not cut out for fighting, it ain't in them, and rather than hate on those people, I tend to take a sort of pity on them cause it's one thing for a born savage like me to do it, fully another for someone who isn't a fighter at ALL to serve, and much as an army needs trigger pullers, it needs cooks and gas pumpers and truck drivers too, right ?

I never did ask him, not cause of policy, but simply cause I DID NOT CARE - I think most grunts have much the same attitude, and that attitude is IMHO the keystone to breaking sexism, racism, and all forms of intolerence, all this bullshit does is raise the walls and stoke the flames.

The answer to intolerance is, I think, indifference, apathy, even.

-Frem

ETA: PS - I dunno about Iowa, but when I went to basic I got shoved into the platoon they stuck all the "inevitable fuckups" in, and half the platoon was from Ohio...
Just sayin....

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 10:46 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Anyone watch Generation Kill? I hate to quote a tv series as if it were real life, but it seemed to me that it was pretty realistic and someone who had been in the military also said the same thing. The marines it depicted used bigotry in all its forms, racism, homophobia, you name it, as tools to establish a pecking order. That's the way the treated each other, all 'weaknesses' were exposed, mocked and used against each other. It was a pretty brutal psychologucal regime, but then that's the military for you, or as one of them commented, just like being back in high school where the same sort of jockying for alpha position happens.

Sensitivity training and the military - just does not compute. Brutalised people who are employed to do brutal things, what do we expect?

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 10:53 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Magons, I call it Military CULT-ure, for a reason.
http://www.counterpunch.org/saggia09242007.html

I see them as a religion, actually, in service to the Blind God - and you will, of course, note my signature line here.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 2:16 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Hardware, well said, on the whole I agree with you.

CTS,

Quote:
I find this person's remarks quite bigoted. And irrational.

Probably my two cardinal sins. I personally found it kinda irrational, doubly so because the person is not really bigoted in my opinion (I follow the blog)... Mostly I thought the comments were weak and my reaction was

She doesn't personally have feelings against homosexuals, but she will lazily side with her political group with some weak reasoning, to deny them their rights? In some ways this was more frustrating - one of the things that annoys me about some conservatives.

But upon more reflection she did come out and support gay marriage, which is some kind of sticking up for gay rights I suppose, so I probably ought to give her some credit for that. Maybe in her world that was a sticking her head out above the parapet.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 2:55 PM

BYTEMITE

Assuming that gay means effeminate and that it'll hinder the armed forces is probably a mistake. Assuming gays will rape straight people is also probably a misconception, as most don't do this, notable exceptions being child molesters (who often actually consider themselves straight), psychopaths, or really, really sex-starved desperate people.

As for disliking women and gay men on the battlefield, while it's probably because of perceived strength differences, I find it hard to disagree with this. If you volunteer to go into combat, minus all the cheery thoughts about serving your country (if you really are), then what you're really doing is volunteering to go out and possibly be killed. I take it a step farther than her and add straight men in combat to that list. First we're killing off the poor males, now we want to kill off a minority group and poor females? Can't say I'm for that.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011 3:54 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I don't think sensativity training is a good idea, isn't going to change anything.

My only problem with Don't ask Don't tell was that if they found out you were gay then they kicked you out, which doesn't make much sense if you're a good warrior. As long as you do your job well what you do in your private time isn't any of my business, nor do I really want to know.

I think that if someone's gay and goes in to the military they should keep it to themselves, other people don't need, and probably don't want, to know, keep your private business private in my opinion, then we don't have to worry about any of this stuff. If someone finds out then you should still be allowed to stay in as long as you have been behaving yourself, but don't broadcast it all over the place. So I guess my opinion sort of lines up with Frem's story about his comrade who loaded his guns, Frem didn't need to know and the person who the rumors were about kept his business private.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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