When I played my recording of Pete Hegseth’s hearing today, I followed my normal practice of watching all questioning by members of the Party dead set against confirmation (in this case the Democrats).
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.
I am not particularly concerned with his lack of leading organizations of this size. He has been a leader in a variety of situations and I expect he will continue in that role. In large governmental organizations, there are subordinate staff more than capable of carrying the routine matters. Leadership is what matters.
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.
My concern is whether he has the skill set necessary to fight the professional bureaucrats whose entire purpose at DOD will be to thwart him. As for the allegations and accusations of the Democrats, after Kavanaugh they should never be taken seriously again.
I'm an AF Academy graduate from 1986. Women were only there for 6 years when I got there in 1982. For men, we had to be able to do 10 pullups to graduate (and had to do this task twice a year among other physical tasks). Not a huge deal for the guys but women had a different standard, they had to be able to accomplish exactly 1 pullup in their 4 years at the Academy.
This double standard did not sit well with most men at the Academy and the women wound up being essentially second class citizens due to the blatent double standard.
Not very many of the men I graduated with would have had any issues with the women there if the standards were consistent across both sexes.
Now from what I've seen at my 30 year reunion, the DEI crap has infiltrated the Academy to the point that I refuse to attend another reunion and support the insanity in any way.
Further on in my career, I was deployed to Somalia and the Army unit next to my unit had 2 women in it in a company sized unit (roughly 100 people). The women braged about working their way through the company one guy at a time. I was about 30 at the time and that discovery pretty much set my notion of women in combat is a terrible idea in stone, not for the problems of physically not being able to keep up, but as detrimental to unit cohesion. Just who do you think all the guys were going to protect when the shit hit the fan (mission be damn).
By the way, women can actually build upper body strengh, it just takes alot of work. I exausted by the women who just say, "I can't do that". Not going to play well when the bullets are flying.
Yes, some women are amazons and can perform in the combat roles and that's a discussion that should be had, IF the standards are absolutely the same. Flight roles are another area to serve in combat and some women are quite good pilots. My question though is, "has anyone explained to them in gory detail exactly what will happen to them if they are ever captured. I've thought about it and can't really come to grips with it at all.
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.
I am not particularly concerned with his lack of leading organizations of this size. He has been a leader in a variety of situations and I expect he will continue in that role. In large governmental organizations, there are subordinate staff more than capable of carrying the routine matters. Leadership is what matters.
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.
My concern is whether he has the skill set necessary to fight the professional bureaucrats whose entire purpose at DOD will be to thwart him. As for the allegations and accusations of the Democrats, after Kavanaugh they should never be taken seriously again.
I'm an AF Academy graduate from 1986. Women were only there for 6 years when I got there in 1982. For men, we had to be able to do 10 pullups to graduate (and had to do this task twice a year among other physical tasks). Not a huge deal for the guys but women had a different standard, they had to be able to accomplish exactly 1 pullup in their 4 years at the Academy.
This double standard did not sit well with most men at the Academy and the women wound up being essentially second class citizens due to the blatent double standard.
Not very many of the men I graduated with would have had any issues with the women there if the standards were consistent across both sexes.
Now from what I've seen at my 30 year reunion, the DEI crap has infiltrated the Academy to the point that I refuse to attend another reunion and support the insanity in any way.
Further on in my career, I was deployed to Somalia and the Army unit next to my unit had 2 women in it in a company sized unit (roughly 100 people). The women braged about working their way through the company one guy at a time. I was about 30 at the time and that discovery pretty much set my notion of women in combat is a terrible idea in stone, not for the problems of physically not being able to keep up, but as detrimental to unit cohesion. Just who do you think all the guys were going to protect when the shit hit the fan (mission be damn).
By the way, women can actually build upper body strengh, it just takes alot of work. I exausted by the women who just say, "I can't do that". Not going to play well when the bullets are flying.
Yes, some women are amazons and can perform in the combat roles and that's a discussion that should be had, IF the standards are absolutely the same. Flight roles are another area to serve in combat and some women are quite good pilots. My question though is, "has anyone explained to them in gory detail exactly what will happen to them if they are ever captured. I've thought about it and can't really come to grips with it at all.