Designer Air Force Training:

American Conservative Union ^ | By Donald Devine, Washington Times

[webber]

Designer Air Force Training

The Washington Times
By Donald Devine

The Air Force Academy has just announced a new training policy for this year, the Agenda for Change. This summer the old in-your-face yelling and drill instructor harassment was replaced by "positive reinforcement" for the new recruits.

Col. Debra Gray reports, "The main focus is to make sure they are getting counseling." The 1,000-plus incoming freshmen were introduced to new training sessions in human relations, gender roles, alcohol education, sexual assault, lawful and unlawful orders, and military law.

Only specially vetted upper classmen will now be allowed to contact with the cadets, ending the ribald rivalry and rough testing by the senior classes over their junior platoons characteristic of a academy training from their founding. Military training will all be quieter, gentler, more humane and sensitive.

While class spirit and loyalty to unit are still taught, National Public Radio reports the school is "hammering home" the necessity of reporting on fellow classmen. Col. Gray says, "Its tough, because we've always stressed through the ages here your loyalty to your class." The lesion is that reporting sexual misbehavior is more important.

Is it? Somehow these schools managed to produce warriors like Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Curtis LeMay, Chester Nimitz, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur without positive reinforcement. They even turned out to be gentlemen, if that is not too old-fashioned a term. More importantly, every study of military effectiveness shows that the most important factor in success is unit loyalty and cohesion.

While most warriors will not fight for abstract concepts like nation, they will sacrifice their very lives for their comrades-in-arms. Sensitivity training is unlikely to motivate soldiers to run at machine-gun nests.

Perhaps the days of the human fighter pilot are numbered and nonwarriors will be able to direct drones from the back lines. But until that day, warriors even from the Air Force Academy will remain in demand if the nation expects a victory in battle.

The good news is there still are two weeks at eh Academy where "warrior" training is allowed, at the end of basic training, including the shouting and harassment. Two weeks of real training is undoubtedly better than none at all but some may think American airmen should be warriors all the time.

Some cadets still think so. Regarding the charges of sexual assault that were the motivating force behind the new curriculum, academy senior Nicole Nwen told and interviewer: "I guess I question the validity of the accusations. And maybe we can help the girls out, as in if you just keep yourself out of the situation, you won't have to come up with stories to make yourself look better-because a lot of guys, their names are slandered, and I don't think its right."

The liberal NPR reporter attributed "this mind set" to "loyalty to their classmates." The job of the new rules is to change this mindset whether it is "right" or produces effective air officers or not. Ideology is to triumph military effectiveness. Presumably future Ms. Nwens will know better than to rally to their classmates under fire.

But wait. News has just leaked out of the Academy that, despite the new policy, two sexual assaults have taken place already on its campus in the first few days of this new term. Is it possible that placing the two sexes so close in such an intimate environment can override all of these nice positive personnel policies?

Former member of the Pentagon's Committee on Women in the Armed Services, Elaine Donnelly, has a more practical solution: single gender training. She is petitioning the president to stand up for a common-sense personnel policy of appropriately separating the sexes in military instruction, as a means to promote unit loyalty and real warrior training for our wonderful military forces.

Donald Devine, former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist, a Washington-based policy consultant, and a Vice-Chairman of the American Conservative Union.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Lovely. Why don't we have them march around the grinder with flowers in their rifle barrels too????

[xm177e2]

The lesion is that reporting sexual misbehavior is more important.

He probably meant "lesson," but in this case, I'd say there's no difference.

[xm177e2]

Although if the ACU is using "sexual misbehavior" as a euphemism for "rape of female cadets," then of course they should inform on each other.

[thegreatbeast]

This is a joke. Right?
It's got to be!

[Khurkris]

"So you're in the Aiiiirrrr Foooorrccee...isn't that SPECIAL"

[RLK]

Military training will all be quieter, gentler, more humane and sensitive.

-----------------------------

Presumably the enemy, if we are not too sensitive to admit there is one, will also quieter, gentler, more humane and sensitive.

[zingzang]

Somehow these schools managed to produce warriors like Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Curtis LeMay, Chester Nimitz, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur without positive reinforcement

None of the above were graduates of the Air Force Academy. That should be an indication of what the AF is now producing.

[LiteKeeper]

Somehow these schools managed to produce warriors like Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Curtis LeMay, Chester Nimitz, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur without positive reinforcement

None of the above were graduates of the Air Force Academy. That should be an indication of what the AF is now producing.

And none had to contend with female cadets in their ranks. I know this is old school, but lets send the women home, and leave the fighting to the men...a policy that gave us the great leaders mentioned above.

[squidly]

Does it surprise anybody that this is happening first in the Air Force?

[First_Salute]

Ahhh...

Buuussshhhhh Still Running the Clinton Administration; looks like that "help" that was "on the way" has arrived.

[DuncanWaring]

Are you sure this isn't from the Onion?

[DuncanWaring]

Curtis LeMay was ROTC.

[DuncanWaring]

This is utter bunk; an abomination and a betrayal of the Americans who will be counting on these folks to win wars on our behalf.

I'm glad I graduated long before any of this idiocy took hold.

[DuncanWaring]

Working link to the source article.

[warchild9]

The sad consequence of this is the demise of the traditional D.I. My daddy was a old-school Marine "trainer", and I remember many a time huddling and leavesdropping in his quonset office on base while he tried his damnest to get his post-Parris Island Marines to laugh in ranks. He'd say the funniest things I ever heard in my life, then pound them when they laughed. The whole scene was very manful, and that sort of thing won us wars. Now, we treat our warriors like pansies, and tout their victories over sixth-rate enemies, while our first-string enemy across the Pacific builds warriors. Hm.

[zingzang]

And none had to contend with female cadets in their ranks. I know this is old school, but lets send the women home, and leave the fighting to the men...a policy that gave us the great leaders mentioned above.

Agreed. Lots of women get involved in the military knowing full well that they can get out at any time by any number of tactics, the biggest one being pregnancy. From what I'm hearing about Iraq right now, they are discharging one woman almost every day due to pregnancy. Even if men had that option I don't think they'd elect to use it.

[LiteKeeper]

God made the man with an eye for the woman. I have yet to find anyone who doesn't think that women are a [pleasant] distraction, particularly during training, when it is not quite as intense. And young men, of college age, read: military academy cadets, are at the age when their fancy turns to young women. Some are able to control that urge, but others obviously are not. Why do we continue to perpetuate this egalitarian concept of war-fighting?

To quote the King of Siam, "Tis a puzzlement!"

[joanie-f]

Buuussshhhhh Still Running the Clinton Administration; looks like that "help" that was "on the way" has arrived.

The cavalry, as described here, might as well leave its horses in the barn. And tell their bugler not to waste his breath.

There is no more dangerous place for political correctness to gain a foothold than the military.

Our (and freedom’s) enemies have become more ruthless, barbaric, and determined than ever before. Instilling in our military personnel anything other than the most effective, efficient way with which to deal with determined, ruthless barbarians, will prove fatal to them (and freedom).

Note: 'training sessions in human relations, gender roles, alcohol education, sexual assault, lawful and unlawful orders, and military law' do not (capital D, capital N) fall under the 'effective, efficient way in which to deal with determined, ruthless barbarians' category. They fall under the 'stupid, self-destructive, irrational, leftist-inspired way to re-define yourself as a third-rate military power .... not to mention a civilization self-destined for extinction' category.

How come nobody ever asks me why I’m always so cheerful?

~ joanie

[First_Salute]

As usual, these changes are By Order of The President, but that shall be overlooked, again, here.

I have to ask about this "gender roles" --- it must be in reference to the historically poor results in French studies that are so crucial to manning ("populating") the control tower during such occasions that French-ONLY - speaking pilots (or hijackers) check in?

It could not possibly be about the powers emanating from the Prenumbra of whatever, which delegate to the government, the authority to define what is man's role and what is woman's role? Because surely the women have been claiming that it's their right to choose?

Too bad there is not enough courage to face Mr. Bush's failure to understand enumeration, the basic protection of the people and our Constitution - against - government principle of our Constitution.

By the time that the "fruits and nuts" are done with the new hole torn into the document, they will have established what is "man" and what is "woman" and such Amendments that some wish to prevail, regarding marriage, will be moot.

Forget man and woman, when "man" and "woman" according to "legal experts with expertise" will be decided in court, cleverly stripped of the relationships man = male and woman = female.

It'll get nasty, with "forward moving" promulgations that all people must be DNA checked, to fit them into what categories are "legal" for determination of marriage.

Prediction: Turnout, poor (except 'underground marriages in private churches --- very popular).

"Thank" the day that the U.S. Air Force Academy was granted the power to define man and woman.

Side bar from the trail ---

Hot tip for all the ladies out there:

If you expect to find a good man, you had better accept the fact that you are powerless to define him. If you want to be with him, be prepared to go along for the whole ride.

Yes, that is your lot.

So my two bits are that you choose wisely a man who loves you and then help him, stand by him, support him, do that, and you will most likely have the time of your life, if you are determined to have him and hold him.

When he reaches from the saddle, to take your hand, you must decide that you are going with him, or you are going to complain at this juncture, about what you want to do.

Woman, you cannot happily follow both paths.

Any complaints with these facts of our existence, you can take up with the Almighty.

No judge on earth can succeed in making it otherwise.