Signs of the End

In the last few months, I have seen two major pieces of evidence that truly exhibit the decay that now infects our once glorious civilization.

Here is Exhibit A. In April, the Army will begin sending women to Ranger School. I want to point out a few things about this. Before I do, I'll tell you that I speak from experience. I am a graduate of the course, and served in combat arms positions for years before I left active duty. Here are some notes.

1. Some women are capable of completing Ranger School. No single day of the course is overwhelming. If I were to take an average college athlete and have him go through 24 hours of the course, he'd say: "This sucks, but I can do it." The monster of Ranger School is the cumulative effect. Were I to take that same athlete and subject him to a week of the course (it's two months, if you don't recycle), he'd certainly quit unless he truly wanted to finish. And that is the point. So, the absolute physical requirements of the course are within the capability range of some women, but they are few and far between. This leads to my second point.

2. If all standards are maintained, women will attrit much faster than men. In fact, many classes will see a 100% wash out rate for women. This will be unacceptable for our PC military leaders, as their political overlords will claim that the divergence in male vs. female attrition rates is not due to physiological differences between the sexes, but rather discrimination.

3. Given the situation which will occur in Item #2, our military leaders will cave, and will reorganize the course. There are only two ways this can happen. They can create separate standards for men and women, effectively having two courses, or they can dilute it writ large, making it much easier for men.

4. Let's consider the former. In short, the men will despise the women. This is already the case at many military academies; it is well known (but largely unspoken outside of close circles) that women are not held to the same physical standards as men--not even close.

5. Now, let's look at the latter case. In this scenario, the course will be so diluted as to be of no major value to men; this is the only way women will pass at levels even remotely acceptable to our political leaders. Remember that Ranger School is designed to apply very high levels of stress in order to build resilience of graduates, thus allowing them to perform at a higher level under stressful situations in the future. Thus, the entire purpose of the course is now forfeit. This has happened with other military courses in the past, such as the Airborne School. In the past, it was grueling; when I did it, it was a joke.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, one might ask: "So what; it's one course." Out of context, this argument makes sense. After all, the real power of our military lies in our economic, technological, and logistical prowess--not our tactical capacity. Like the Romans, we may project power because we can feed, water and fuel our forces at much greater lengths than can anyone else.

But, this is not a lone incident. The impending destruction of our Army's trademark tactical leadership course, one of the few bastions of true physical discipline which remain in the military today, is but one more step in the gradual decay of not only our armed forces, but our civilization writ large.

To drive this point home, let me turn your attention to Exhibit B. Consider this quote from Mr. Hagel:

“I've made it as high a priority as there is. I meet with all our sexual assault prevention office people once a week for an hour.”

Read the statement again and think about what he said. Our Secretary of Defense, charged with nothing short of the defense and security of our nation, has stated that prevention of sexual assault is on par with things like force projection, maintenance of technological superiority and counter-terrorism. He devoted an hour of his time each week to this effort. I can only wonder if he spent as much time on matters which might actually impact US sovereignty and military influence the world over.

I can take only one thing from this: I am now bearing witness to the utter destruction of history's most powerful military, not by an external threat, but because its true nature is utterly forgotten by our fat, weak and slothful populace.

In truth, we are victims of our own success. The US has so thoroughly dominated its potential adversaries that we cannot imagine a world in which we face an existential threat. I'm not talking about terrorists or one off crises here and there; I mean a real threat, on the order of the Axis Powers or a global economic collapse resulting in chaos. We have not faced such a thing, at most since the Berlin Wall fell, and potentially since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And so, we now have two, maybe three, generations of citizens who assume that peace and order is the default. It is not, and unfortunately, I don't think we will learn this lesson until the Vandals land upon our shores.