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DAVID DEMILO's avatar

Totally agree. I was skeptical of the nomination at first, but the more I looked at his record, the more I liked him. His combination of civilian intellectual and military battlefield accomplishment is impressive. He had a rough coming home, like a lot of veterans do. But if adultery is a showstopper, then Eisenhower and many others would have been passed over, too. To hear that kind of pearl clutching from some of these senators is farcical, as Sen. Mullin pointed out.

Elevating him to a position like this is a bit of a risk - for him, mostly, given the record of his predecessor. Is he ready for the grind? He certainly has demonstrated the fortitude to deal with pressure and antagonism.

But his inexperience with large organizations is a legitimate concern. I think if he has the right team around him - the right financial team and right legal team who know the bureaucracy and are faithful to his mission - he will succeed.

You're also right about Warren's call on his changing position on women in combat roles. I figure that was probably a deal two secure Ernst's vote. Hegseth fell back on standards to justify it, but the fact is that the army has different standards in some areas (e.g., lifting dead weight) for men and women in combat roles.

Standards ought to be based on what it takes to do the job, period. If you need to be able to lift 300 lbs. of dead weight while wearing full armor to be able to haul a wounded solider out of harm's way, then that should be the standard. If most women can't do that (most men can't either), then TS.

Democrats seem to view military service as a Title IX affair, a matter of equal opportunity to get on a career ladder. It is not. It's about fighting wars - killing people and breaking things. There are cyber and intelligence dimensions to that mission that do not require listing 300 lbs. of dead weight and they are equally valuable, maybe more so. So I think Hegseth is right to insist on setting the standards for the role rather than generalizing about the capabilities of men and women.

One thing is for sure: he will be the biggest boost to recruit meant we've seen in a long time and that is probably the #1 issue. You can write all the checks in the world to manufacture planes, ships and guns, but if you can't have qualified people signing up for the right reasons, it's just metal.

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Stu Cohn's avatar

Pete Hegseth got his arm twisted, and the rest of us got rolled, by Sen. Joni Ernst. Hegseth obviously had no choice but to backpedal to the degree he did regarding opening combat billets to females.

In 2015 the Marine Corps conducted a somewhat-publicized training exercise pitting gender-integrated vs. all male units. Only in 21st Century America should it have been necessary to engage in such a resource-wasting exercise to conclude that all-male units are more effective and more lethal – that the all-male units were, among other things, faster, better able to evacuate injured comrades (including able to hoist heavy objects overhead), and better marksmen.

This is not to mention the higher rates of injury and disability among female soldiers/Marines – a subject on which several women soldiers/Marines have written.

This is also not to mention the predictable problems with unit cohesion (elucidated by USAFA alum, Michael, in this comment thread). Neither the U.S. Senate, the SecDef, nor anyone else can repeal the laws of human nature. If people like Kirsten Gillibrand are truly principled and really believe there are more than a minuscule number of females who are fully capable and qualified to participate in combat infantry units, what would make the most sense – and they would advocate for – would be all-female units.

If Hegseth is true to his word and enforces across-the-board the higher standards for combat infantrymen to which he alluded, crow-barring into those units the vanishingly small number of females who will qualify cannot possibly justify all the attendant (and time and resource-wasting) rules, regulations, protocols, training sessions, complaints, hearings, injuries, disability pay, and who knows what else.

If and when the U.S. military were deployed on a mass scale, opening combat infantry to females is a terrible idea that will jeopardize the effectiveness and safety of both the male and female soldiers/Marines subjected to this version of social engineering.

Thanks a lot, Joni.

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