JED BABBIN: SO MANY LIES- EVEN THE US MARINES HAVE BEEN CORRUPTED
http://spectator.org/articles/57340/so-many-intolerable-lies
Two events last week — one an announcement by the Marine Corps, the other speeches at the inauguration of New York City’s new mayor — illustrated vividly how President Obama and his media cohort have so narrowed the boundaries of political speech that we no longer believe we can challenge outright lies.
Among the lies we’ve become inured to is that women can perform every job a man can, including those of combat infantryman and special operators. We’ve also been told the lie that the injection of women into combat arms has no effect on the warrior culture. The liberals insist that the culture isn’t of any value to combat effectiveness regardless of what the warriors themselves say.
And we have relied on the promises made by all of the military leaders, including the Marines, that they’d never diminish the physical standards that any prospective warrior had to meet simply to allow women into combat arms.
That virtually all women can’t meet the standards to do these jobs is so well-established a fact that only the liberal idiots who control Obama’s Pentagon could deny it. Twelve years ago, I reported on this page that the Clinton administration’s efforts to “gender-neutralize” combat arms depended upon its ability to significantly diminish the physical standards demanded of male warriors. By that means, it was creating the fiction that women “passed” the tests. The Clinton administration went on from there to declare women fit for jobs such as that of a combat infantryman.
Last week, the Marines — who had promised that they’d be the last bastion of objective performance standards — announced that they’d “delay” the imposition of male physical standards on the girls because more than half of them failed to make the grade. (The Marines had already broken their promise. This was just a renewal notice.)
For at least another year, instead of having to do at least three pullups (the men’s minimum) the girls will continue to pass by performing a “bent-arm hang” for fifteen seconds, which is the equivalent of zero pullups. (Both of the ladies who tried to pass the combat infantry officer’s course in 2013 failed.)
The reason the Marines did this was, of course, was pressure from the White House. But that’s an excuse, not a reason. Had the commandant of the Marines threatened to resign over this, he’d have received so much support that the White House would have backed down. But he didn’t.
The “glass ceiling” that had kept women out of combat jobs is smeared with blood. The lies that enable women to break through it will cost the lives of many of them and the men fighting next to them. Marines — like every infantry force — have to do a lot of things that require physical strength. They have to lug heavy ammunition boxes, scale obstacles, and carry wounded comrades out of the line of fire. The Marines’ announcement compels me to say something I’ve never said before to any Marine in my life: for shame, gentlemen.
The gender inequality in combat arms is the necessary result of the tasks warriors must perform in order to win the fight. When you pretend that women are capable of those tasks, you condemn the nation to losing wars. The conclusion has to be that women shouldn’t be permitted into combat arms on falsified standards any more than the NFL lets women play. Not all gender discrimination is invidious.
The diminishing of standards for physical fitness on which the “gender-neutralization” of combat arms depends is the implementation of a lie. But to say that is to stand outside the “mainstream” of political thought. It’s not permitted to debate that topic, even though our national security is directly affected by it. For that, shame not on the Marines, but on all of us.
The inauguration of ϋberliberal Bill de Blasio is another example of why states need not follow Colorado’s example and legalize marijuana. We’ve already lulled ourselves into a drug-like stupor.
As part of the invocation, Rev. Fred Lucas, Jr. called for a new Emancipation Proclamation in New York City, where he evidently believes slavery is a commonplace.
If that weren’t enough, former entertainer Harry Belafonte said New York’s system of justice was based on racial injustice and, he rambled, “Changing the stop-and-frisk law is — as important as it is, the change of the law is only the tip of the iceberg in fixing our deeply Dickensian justice system.” That slavery is rampant and law enforcement “Dickensian” in New York will surely be news to former Mayor Gloomberg who, before the advent of de Blasio’s tenure, had set the record for nanny state liberalism.
These risible remarks brought nary a whimper from the Republican side of the equation. Why? Are the Republicans afraid of saying that racism is un-American and what little there is left of it should be stamped out? Or have they accepted these absurdities as the political truths because their foundation is in what Obama said last month?
Among other slanders of America in his “economic” speech on December 4, Obama said that “increasing” income inequality is most pronounced in the United States. Never mind those dozens of nations whose elites revel in wealth while the poor literally starve (see, e.g., North Korea, Somalia and other places which actually allow slavery).
While he repeatedly “pivots to jobs,” Obama’s economic policy is one that aims at income equality — everyone makes the same amount — which is quasi-Marxism. (Remember “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”?) And he believes that citizens of Canada, Germany, and France have more upward mobility than we do. Any decline in American upward mobility is a direct result of his economic policies.
What Obama said about America in that speech was a lie, what Rev. Lucas and Harry Belafonte said in the de Blasio inauguration were lies, and what the Marines did in renewing their diminution of physical standards for combat arms was the renewal of a broken promise.
There are so many lies coming out of the White House that we have become numb to them. But to concede that is to concede the debate. That is what is happening now across our political spectrum.
We are told by the New York Times that there was no terrorist involvement in the Benghazi attack and that Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, should be pardoned. The former is an outright lie — see the statements of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers — and the latter is a judgment based on another lie.
The Times would have us believe that the “good” that Snowden did in releasing many of our most closely-held secrets outweighs the enormous damage he did to our intelligence community’s ability to gather information and protect secrets that need to be protected. In both cases, the Times is helping Obama — and his possible successor, Hillary Clinton — set boundaries for permissible discussion of the subject.
Perhaps the biggest lie of all is the idea that we are not supposed to say we are at war with Islamic terrorism. The term “act of war” is defined as an act of such impact and importance that it is the equivalent of a declaration of war. The attacks on the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the 9/11 attacks themselves and many more all fit that definition, but our “leaders” insist that we aren’t at war.
Now Obama is peddling the idea that extending unemployment benefits — again — is going to stimulate the economy. That, and the rest of the bunkum coming out of the White House, is positively Orwellian.
There are many certainties, many facts that have to be defended. And there used to be American institutions that could be relied on to defend those truths at all costs. How far has America fallen that the Marine Corps is breaking promises and implementing lies?
Too far. No nation can long survive if it bases its continuation on lies.
It’s long past time for conservative leaders to decide that they won’t confine themselves to the narrow borders of debate that Obama and his ilk have worked so hard to establish. If we have one New Year’s resolution, let it be that no lie will pass without direct challenge and vigorous debate.
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