Your Mother's Army

American Spectator ^ | June 4, 2004 | George Neumayr

[prairiebreeze]

Even as John Kerry lapses into pacifist rhetoric -- describing the military under President Bush as a "back-door draft" is a scare tactic from his anti-war days -- Kerry casts himself as strong on national defense. To appear sufficiently militaristic in the eyes of the moderates he needs to win, Kerry cobbled together a board of military advisers this week. Kerry is turning for advice to, among others, Claudia Kennedy, the first female three-star general -- a feminist famous during the Clinton years for charging a fellow general (whose advancement she hoped to stop) with "inappropriate touching."

Kerry's selection of Claudia Kennedy to his board of military advisers is illuminating: he is now taking advice on how to strengthen the military from feminists intent on weakening it. Claudia Kennedy once bragged to West Point cadets that "this is not your father's Army anymore!" As the press reported in the 1990s, Kennedy didn't like the word "enemy"; she relied instead on the term "peer competitor."

Hillary Clinton was so impressed with Kennedy's political correctness she named Kennedy her "favorite general." While Kennedy never received a Purple Heart from Bill Clinton for getting chased around a desk, she received many honors and served in important posts. One of her more noteworthy contributions was her launching of the "Consideration of Others" (COO) training program.

People magazine reported that Kennedy entered the military after filling out an Army enlistment coupon in Cosmopolitan magazine. She had hoped to feminize the military and did. But not all of her subordinates appreciated her vision for a softer military. The press reported their criticism of her for "giggling" at an intelligence conference.

After she lectured them on the need to conduct Consideration of Others sessions, one complained to the press: ''The general, wearing spit-shined paratrooper boots that came up to her knees, spent 15 minutes discussing our mission. And then, for the next 40, she stressed the need for equality and sensitivity and understanding of others…I couldn't help wondering if this was some event sponsored by the YWCA instead of the U.S. army.''

Kerry's comment about Bush's "back-door draft" is curious given that he is taking advice from feminists who have long thought that women should be exposed to a draft. After all, equal rights means equal exposure to the draft. Claudia Kennedy thought it only fair that she enter the military if men were entering it. As she writes in her memoirs, "In 1969, America was at war in Vietnam, and although some of my sorority sisters ... were bemused when I told them I was joining the Army, young men were being drafted and I didn't think it was fair for them to shoulder the entire burden when women were exempted. I also didn't believe women could claim equal privileges of citizenship without understanding and accepting the equal responsibilities of a citizen."

Imagine what America's draft policy would be like under a Kerry administration if Kennedy were the head of the Joint Chiefs, with Hillary chipping in from the Armed Services committee (where she now sits). We might have a Kerry kitchen-door draft. The military already dragoons single mothers from the reserves into service (on the principle that deployment policies must be gender-neutral and leaving orphans behind is a price an enlightened society must pay for the progress of women in combat). In the Iraqi conflict, at least 20 women have died, several of them mothers. The first woman killed in combat in Iraq was Lori Piestewa, a single mother with two preschoolers.

A few more years of gender engineering ramped up under a Kerry administration, and Claudia Kennedy would be able to say: This is your mother's army.

[prairiebreeze]

Googling "peer competitor" seems to bring up more uses of the phrase in references to countries as competitors such as China for example. NOT the enemy, fer cryin' out loud!

[Just mythoughts]

A little bit about JFKerry "general".

[Jonah Hex]

We went through quarterly COO sessions for about a year.

The sessions stopped when management noticed a lot of folks just happened to take sick leave those same days...

[leadpenny]

One of her more noteworthy contributions was her launching of the "Consideration of Others" (COO) training program.

While Kennedy added new meaning to the term 'political correctness' in the military, wasn't it an Asst. Secretary of the Army who started COO? Her name escapes me.

[we_will_prevail]

Kennedy didn't like the word "enemy"; she relied instead on the term "peer competitor."

What?

[chilepepper]

hmmmm, "peer competitor". I kind of like it, as in "lets bomb our peer competitor back into the stone age".

[leadpenny]

http://www.goptimes.com/2002_07_21_goptimes_archive.html

Thursday, July 25, 2002
AN ARMY OF WHAT?
Matt Labash of the Standard:

The strip that runs outside Ft. Benning, Home of the Infantry, is called "Victory Drive." The soldiers call it "V.D. Drive," a reminder of what one stands to catch from spending too much time off-post. Among the chicken'n'shrimp shacks and no-tell motels, you see tomorrow's warfighters, or, as they're now called, peacekeepers, frequenting Tattoo Tommy's and Ranger Rags military surplus and, on weekends, dropping into the Lucky 7 Lounge to enjoy the dance stylings of Brandi and Flame and Raven. Amidst all the low-rent squalor is a strip mall that houses Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiting stations. Their offices are scattered among a Jazzy Girlz exotic dancewear retailer and a plus-size lingerie shop. At first, the juxtaposition seems a sad joke. But on second thought, the strip-mall occupants seem to have plenty in common: They're not afraid to abase themselves with cheap sales pitches, and they're desperate to appear sexy.


Of all the services, the Army is the most desperate. Recruiting has not been easy in recent years, and though there are any number of plausible explanations—from the end of the Cold War and declining defense spending, to the soaring economy of the 1990s—the deeper one, everyone seems to agree, is that the Army is suffering from an identity crisis. In true bureaucratic fashion, the Army seems to have concluded that it is simultaneously too tough and too soft.

What to do? Reinvent yourself. In the new Army, training is easier and friendlier, but they pretend everyone is a warrior. Thus the decision of the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, to appropriate the black beret of the elite Army Rangers in order to share it with the rest of the troops, even the "desk molesters" in Ranger-speak. Thus the new slogan and recruiting campaign, the colossally unpopular "Army of One." And thus the invention of programs like the one I traveled down to Ft. Benning to witness, in which non-combat lieutenants, men and women, are being rotated through infantry officer training, ostensibly to inject them with warrior spirit.

Anyone who subscribes to Elaine Donnelly's Center for Military Readiness newsletter can give you a convincing disquisition on how the last decade saw Bill Clinton and his civilian appointees turn the Army into a Nerf version of its former self. From the assistant secretary Sara Lister, who was run out of town for calling Marines "extremist," to former Army secretary Togo West, who launched programs like COO ("Consideration of Others Training"), the leadership saw to it that troops were sensitized as often as they got haircuts. And as recruiting got harder (the Army missed its goal three out of the last five years), the culture grew softer. Even former defense secretary William Cohen—whose military career consisted of one day in ROTC—admitted that coed basic training lacked rigor. Meanwhile, after downsizing from 18 to 10 divisions, money is still scarce. As one angry Ranger tells me, "Because you have no money, you can't train, can't go on deployments, can't even afford to buy bullets. But because you have no money, you have plenty of time to do more Consideration of Others Training—because we've got to feel good about things. Hey, you know something?" he thunders. "The time for feeling good is over. We've got problems."
8:22 PM

[GailA]

We keep seeing in both print and TV media that John Kerry cares about our military and veterans. His votes on their pay raises, equipment and hardware does not match what he says. Since I've seen no photo op pictures of him visiting our wounded troops from either war zone.

I can only deduce from the lack of those photo op pictures that he doesn't really give a rats behind about them. He's been to busy campaigning and vacationing to visit them. President Bush, Laura Bush and the Bush twins along with the former President Bush and First Lady have all been to several military hospitals to personally thank our men and women for their sacrifices. President Bush is busy governing America, fighting 2 wars, and the WOT and he still finds the time WITHOUT photo op pictures to visit our injured troops.

What's hanoi john and breck girl's excuses for not even one visit to them?

[verity]

God save this Country from these people.

[Dante3]

Anyone know what her husband is like? I believe she got married about two years ago or so. There was at one time talk that she might move to Canada -- but this probably was just idle gossip.

[Old Sarge]

PING to some FRiends on the inside.

"Aunt Claudia", as she was known to us, was and is a true Clintonista. I've known too many of these diesel dykes in uniform, to think that it's isolated; it's more like an infiltration.

[Pete98]

I was in the Army for most of the Clinton years, and this statistic should scare you:

Number of times per year we went to the range to qualify with our weapons: ONE

Number of times per year we had to go through COO: FOUR.

That should tell you what is more important to today's army.

[haywoodwebb]

"The first woman killed in combat in Iraq was Lori Piestewa, a single mother with two preschoolers."

This is cause for great judgement against this nation in the future.

[Happy2BMe]

OH - DEAR - GAWD! - ping. Look who Kerry is about to UNLEASH as the JOINT CHIEF OF STAFF on our unsuspecting military should he win COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF!! (pass and email, pass and email) ~ ping ~

______________________________________

"To appear sufficiently militaristic in the eyes of the moderates he needs to win, Kerry cobbled together a board of military advisers this week. Kerry is turning for advice to, among others, Claudia Kennedy, the first female three-star general -- a feminist famous during the Clinton years for charging a fellow general (whose advancement she hoped to stop) with "inappropriate touching."

_____________________________________

Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy

United States Army
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence

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Lt. General Claudia J. Kennedy, is the first and only woman to ever receive this flag rank in the United States Army.

[Happy2BMe]

Ping on #14 - there she is again . . (nightmare on Pentagon street)

[MeekOneGOP]

"To appear sufficiently militaristic in the eyes of the moderates he needs to win, Kerry cobbled together a board of military advisers this week. Kerry is turning for advice to, among others, Claudia Kennedy, the first female three-star general -- a feminist famous during the Clinton years for charging a fellow general (whose advancement she hoped to stop) with "inappropriate touching."

Kerry is UNFIT!!

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Excellent anti-Kerry video laying out the VietNam case against him...

Great to forward and spread to the public.

http://www.stopjohn.com/movies/hanoi-john.htm

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Kerry Fitness Reports in Vietnam Show Him Unfit for Command
(Explodes Central Kerry Campaign Lie)

Kerry’s FITREPs are awash in dings, and some of the reports border on the adverse, particularly his combat FITREPs. The FITREPs convey significant performance problems and suggest problems in conduct, so much so that it is surprising that the campaign chose to release them. This may suggest that the FITREPs held from public view are even more adverse.

In what would customarily be an opportunity for a glowing “swan song” FITREP, the Commanding Officer of USS Gridley (DLG-21) tacitly blasts Kerry on his departure for Swift Boat duty by ranking him significantly below the norm in desirability for virtually every Navy assignment possible -– command, staff, whatever. He is a ship handler who is dinged in ship handling. He is in line for command, but his CO doesn’t want him near the bridge. He is slammed in all performance areas –- most notably and significantly in initiative and reliability. The “nice” narrative emphasizes performance in collateral duties, but in the grades and marks, the CO is telling the selection board and detailer loud and clear that this officer is lazy, unreliable and not suited for command. 3 SEP 68 (W.E. HARPER).

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[Happy2BMe]

Thanks! BUMPING A SUPER POST

[Gritty]

I honestly don't know if the military could survive 8 years of Kerry as CIC. He would return all the nincompoops of the clinton Era to positions of power and influence.

We saw a cadre of them on display last night.

[El Gato]

The military already dragoons single mothers from the reserves into service

They aren't "dragooned". They all signed up voluntarily, and certainly since Desert Shield/Storm, they knew that they could be called up. The vast majority seem OK with that.

[hattend]

The military already dragoons single mothers from the reserves into service (on the principle that deployment policies must be gender-neutral and leaving orphans behind is a price an enlightened society must pay for the progress of women in combat). In the Iraqi conflict, at least 20 women have died, several of them mothers. The first woman killed in combat in Iraq was Lori Piestewa, a single mother with two preschoolers.

I don't understand what this paragraph was doing in this article. Nobody is forcing these women to sign up and the military is not a college enrollment career.

Dragoon: 1. To subjugate or persecute by harsh use of troops. 2. to force or attempt to force into submission by violents mean. To coerce