Is That An Enemy Out There Or Not?

We’ve spotted something trying to sneak through the wires out along the perimeter again. But we're not sure if it's the enemy or not. You might want to do the IFF on this one, and decide for yourself.

It appears that the researchers at The Kinsey Institute (Indiana University, Bloomington) have been awarded a two-year grant to study the medical accommodation needs and care of transgender service members in the U.S. military.

Excuse me? Did I read that right? They’re trying to understand what kind of medical accommodations and care transgenders should have in the military? And they are using our tax dollars to do that? How about this instead: why are they even in the military?

Now I know that times have changed since when I joined up and I had to swear that I wasn't gay, but has it changed that much? Does the military now sign up people with gender identity problems? Not being an expert on this topic, I'm not sure what the line of differentiation is between gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and those who are classified as having gender identity issues, but it does make me wonder why the military needs to be involved in this area at all.

Look, no one in this world should harbor any grudge, bad feelings, or otherwise have any antipathy towards gays, lesbians, transgenders, or anyone else with an other than heterosexual sexual identity, except of course if they happen to be into animals. As the Pope said, “Who am I to judge?” He’s right, it’s not up to us to judge... except for the animal part that is.

These are all good people, with most probably being fundamentally better than this author will ever been. But that’s not the point, we’re not talking about how good their souls or intentions are, we’re talking about whether the U.S. military needs them to accomplish its mission, and if not, what it owes to them when it finds them in its midst.

With little doubt, as fellow travelers on this earth, it is up to us to help troubled people as much as we can... and my apologies to these transgender people if they don't consider themselves troubled... but if they're not, then why do we need to research what needs to be done to help them? Help in the form of understanding, empathy, kindness, compassion and forbearance as fellow human beings makes sense. But letting them into the military and then changing the military to accommodate their emotional, physiological, psychological or pathological needs, that seems a little extreme.

From this former soldier’s perspective, the military should not be a halfway house for troubled souls. It is not the Red Cross. It is not a therapy center whose purpose it is to help people who come into it with extant problems figure out how to deal with them.

Having said that, let us make it clear: our view is that if you are a member of the military and because of the duties you perform in it you acquire emotional, identity, or other problems, then without doubt it is the military’s job to help treat you. If the military caused the problem, then the military owns the problem. But it seems to this author that the military should not be marching the streets of America looking for recruits that already have troubles in need of treatment, and then asking them to join.

According to the people who requested the funds to do the above mentioned study, "Some research findings and clinical observations… [suggest]… that the rates of veteran status among the transgender community may be elevated compared to the general public. You can even see cases in the media, like Kristin Beck 'Warrior Princess,' a former Navy SEAL, interviewed on the 'Today' show, and soldier Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, recently convicted of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks; there seems to be an ongoing connection between the transgender community and U.S. military."

Really?

Like we said, it looks like these people are starting to come through the wire out along the perimeter. You might want to take a look at this and decide if these folks are friends coming back from a LRRP or the enemy in disguise.

In the mean time, if you see any other strange things coming through the fence, let us know.

Peacock he may have been, but when he wasn't strutting his feathers he was a damned good soldier. With every moniker he could have from Big Chief to Dugout Doug and the Gaijin Shogun, Mac had more nicknames than most generals, and most of them fit him to a T. Unafraid of controversy, MacArthur seemed to court it, walking headlong into any fracas just as though he was storming a shore on one of the Philippine islands he loved so much. The Korean War fracas however proved to be his undoing.

In our column at left we talk of how the way in which the Korean War ended changed how politicians today see the purpose and result of war. With the partitioning of Korea, the seed was set that made world leaders begin to find it acceptable to end a war on terms that satisfied the needs of the proxy powers behind the war, rather than the needs of the nation on whose soil the battle was fought. If MacArthur had lived long enough to see how this would affect America in Vietnam, Iraq, and our thinking today, he might have wept with sorrow.

To MacArthur there was only one way to end a war: defeat the enemy on the battlefield so that not a drop or vestige of any resistance or strength remained. Once so done, occupy the defeated country and use that occupation to offer magnanimity  and generousity aimed at helping to rebuild the country until its people could reassert free and reasoned rule over their country again.

An approach that said more of the times in which he lived than today, what MacArthur failed to realize was that the Korean War was not a war like other wars. The protagonists may have been North and South Korea, but the real power behind the war was the U.S., Soviet Union and China. For the fact is, the Korean War was the world's first but certainly not its last war where proxies went at it through the arms and blood of smaller nations.

What MacArthur failed to realize was that in proxy wars, unlike in normal wars, the proxy players can never really engage each other in combat, and so only one of them takes the field while the other fights through his proxy. For if they both took the field, then a post-nuclear age world war would break out that might obliterate the earth.

And so, as the modern age dawned during the time of the Korean War a mechanism had to be found whereby in a proxy war once one proxy fighter had proven their ability to gain the upper hand over the other, they could offer the losing proxy fighter a graceful way to exit the war. As we now know that mechanism turned out to be 'partition'... the partitioning of the underlying country by the proxy fighters, as a declaration that the war is being ended on mutually acceptable terms short of the need for one proxy fighter to annihilate the other.[2]

MacArthur was an old school fighter. To him war was war. In his time you fought to win. Little did he know that with the end of World War II would come an end too to the idea that great powers should ever face each other again on the battlefield. From that point on, great powers would fight through underlings... tin pot dictators, tyrants, despots, the Taliban, Moslem radicals, communist hangers-on, freedom fighters, rebels, Shi'a, Sunni, North Koreans, or whatever or whomever was available to take to the battlefield while the proxies argued their case for imperial control over the country in question behind closed doors.

With MacArthur's farewell speech above you are hearing more than just his personal words of good bye. You are hearing a good bye being said to a time and age of warfare that will likely never return again... a time when truly great powers faced each other across a battlefield and fought to the end.

Truman got it. He got the fact that the times had changed and great powers would not confront each other on the battlefield again. That's why he fired Mac when he wanted to nuke China. Mac never got it... and so he did what he had to do... fade away, peacock feathers and all.