An open letter from US Defense Watch (for you Vets out there)

Dear General Mattis,

I know you’ve been busy sir. Across the globe, our enemies are stacking up against us. The Pentagon is the virtual three-alarm fire brigade, attempting to put out every conflagration caused by the Obama administration’s disastrous national security policies.

Eight years of worthless, feckless US leadership and budget cuts have severely weakened the US armed forces.

While in our history, the US military has been gutted by Congress, then rebuilt, to fight another day, the military has never been a vast social experiment as it is now.

This is something that apparently you have not focused on yet. Perhaps, you have been too occupied, or most distressingly, you have decided that you will step away from this vicious third rail in the US military; the social engineering and political correctness that is eating the military alive like a mutating tropical virus.

Americans who have never served have no conception of what the social experiment has done and is doing to our military. Sadly, the young people in the military right now; mainly believe everything is A-Okay, because like children in a dysfunctional family they don’t know any difference.

But, vets who served before the cultural Marxists and the militant feminists took control understand. We know perfectly well that diversity and gender neutrality are not combat multipliers. We understand what the military is capable of doing when it focuses on its mission; to defend the country if called upon and to destroy our enemies on sea, land and in the air as violently and as swiftly as possible.

That is the sole purpose of the military. It is not a day care center, a lactation station, a LGBT rights forum, a check your white privilege foundation, a transgender club; nor is it an organization whose sole purpose is to shame male soldiers into wearing red high heels and pregnancy simulators, while fudging standards to graduate a trio of well-fed women from Ranger School, including one 37-year-old mommy.

Perhaps you should investigate sir, how these women looked like they added their ‘Freshman 15’ at Ranger School, and were in dire need of an emergency phone call to order Marie Osmond’s Nutrisystem. Perhaps you should compare them to six decades of male grads who crawled out of Benning looking like Holocaust survivors.

Talk about a Bridge too Far…

Sometime in the last eight years, the wheels completely came off the military.

ROTC male cadets were ordered to parade around our nation’s campuses in red high heels to show empathy for rape victims; male soldiers were instructed to conduct PT in pregnancy simulators; the Marines were forced to endure some kind of Soviet-style gender unconscious bias training, to brainwash young men into believing women were as strong as they were; there was a new lexicon of gender-neutral military terms, soldiers took online classes that informed them the Bible and the Constitution were now sexist documents; there was the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell and the celebration of open homosexuality in the ranks, the embracing of the transgender mentally ill and gender reassignment surgery paid for by the tax payers; lactation memos and instructions for the proper storage of breast milk in the field; sensitivity training in combat zones, babies born on US ships of war and the firing of a two-star general and a decorated combat pilot all because he told a junior officer he was ‘drunker than 10,000 Indians.’

And, there’s the biggest piece of lunacy ever signed by a cabinet member and the death knell to our national security, Ash Carter’s authorization last year to allow America’s women to serve in the combat arms and special operations units.

Sir, in 2014 you stated unequivocally that “The problem is that in the atavistic primate world” of close-quarters combat, “the idea of putting women in there is not setting them up for success.”

And you said whether women soldiers could meet physical requirements is “not the point.”
You also said, “commanders must consider what makes us most combat effective when you jump into that room and you’re doing what we call intimate killing. It would only be someone who never crossed the line of departure into close encounters fighting that would ever even promote such an idea as putting women into close combat.”

Strangely, you reversed course on this topic during your confirmation hearings in January. You told Senator Claire McCaskill and Congresswoman Kristen Gillibrand, two women who have never served and who wouldn’t know an AK-47 from a Tiger tank, that you would not reverse Ash Carter’s authorization.

The left rejoiced! So did our enemies sir.

If Mad Dog Mattis won’t stop the social engineering and the PC music, who will?

The late Colonel David Hackworth, a polarizing figure, loved by the troops and hated by the Pentagon, a man whose combat experience and rows of fruit salad made anyone take notice, warned about all of this twenty years ago. Hack was ridiculed, and above all, Hack was right. He had seen war in Korea and Vietnam and his endless travels to military bases up to his death in 2005 convinced him that the PC monster was marauding through the military at top speed.

Elaine Donnelly, Director of the Center for Military Readiness has been warning about the problems of women serving in combat for years.

As you know sir, the Marines conducted a $34 million study in 2015 that concluded in very precise detail how and why individual male Marines performed more swiftly and efficiently than individual female Marines in simulated combat tasks. The study also indicated quite clearly that all male units performed better than coed and all female units in simulated combat tasks. While the male Marines chosen were only in average physical condition, the females were some of the best athletes in the Marine Corps.

To a society functioning normally, the government wouldn’t have to spend $34 million to explain what the human race has known since our ancestors rose up on two feet in Africa. Women do not have the upper body strength of men, the physical endurance and aerobic lung capacity to serve in the combat arms and especially in the combat arms on prolonged combat operations.

This study, like all common sense was thrown out the window and into the Pentagon dumpster by Ash Carter and Ray Mabus.

Apparently, the study is still in the dumpster.

Some say allow women in the combat arms, but maintain the standards. As you know sir, the standards are never maintained. They can’t be because women aren’t physically the same as men.

Sadly, as we bask in our bountiful, beautiful sensitivity in the new military, our enemies fight and prepare to fight wars the old way, with the roughest, toughest sons of bitches they can find and suit up for battle.

Reality says quite clearly that Jane at five feet two and 100 pounds is going to die very quickly in a slugfest with Ivan standing at six three and weighing in at 220.

Reality says that Jane is not capable of carrying a 140 pounds of ruck, ammo, water and weapons into battle as efficiently as Mohammed can, if Jane is capable of carrying it at all.

Reality says Jane can’t lift and carry a 98 pound, 155mm artillery round.

Reality says that the Hollywood fantasy of the emaciated super model on an all-night commando raid, is just that, a gigantic Pinocchio that has been shoved down the throats of the American people all for the sake of diversity and the craziness known as third wave feminism.

Nine out of ten women in the military have no desire to be within 1000 miles of the combat arms, so why are we hurting women and endangering the nation to placate the fantasies of feminists?

There are hundreds of different military jobs open for women to serve honorably and to climb the career ladder without weakening our force.

A coed combat arms unit is tantamount to bringing a knife to a gunfight.

This year a baby was born on a US ship of war. The crew seemed more concerned about flying in baby food and diapers than about performing their mission on the high seas. This is the height of insanity and the harbinger of future disaster that only fools would believe is workable and normal.

Why are women serving on US ships of war with men? The US Navy has become nothing more than a floating high school.

Sir, people are looking for you to stick the dagger in the heart of the social engineering that has turned the greatest military force on God’s green earth into a Bob Fosse musical with weapons.

When does the Fubar Express stop? Will it be when the bodies of young Americans start showing up in body bags on the 6 O’ Clock news; American kids who died because the combat arms unit they were in was deliberately weakened?

How far does equal opportunity go before it turns into national suicide?

There is no equal opportunity or gender neutrality on a battlefield. In war, the strong survive and the weak and poorly trained are ground to ashes and scattered to the winds.

Sir, what are you planning on telling the parents of American men and women who come home in flag-draped coffins; that, no one in the Pentagon would stop this insanity?

Sooner or later someone is going to have to put national security above political correctness. You, sir, have the power right now to repeal the authorization to allow women in the combat arms and special operations forces.

If nothing is done, the US military is heading for a disaster that is going to be biblical. Next time we’re going to be going up against the Russians, the Chinese or the North Koreans. As brutal as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been, the US military has not fought a foe that has ground, air and sea capabilities since 1953.

All the technology in the world can’t erase the need for combat arms units to seize and hold ground. In war, speed and lethality win the day. Coed combat units lack swiftness, cohesion and the efficiency to put cold steel down range faster and more accurately than the bad guys.

Currently, the forces needed to accomplish that mission are weak, and in the case of the Army’s armor community, practically non-existent.  We have a US Army of Lawrence of Arabia wannabes, obsessed with fighting Middle Eastern insurgencies, who are going to be facing the Third Shock Army with M-16’s and a homophobia power point presentation.

Why are we deliberately handicapping ourselves? It’s the height of folly, the pinnacle of lunacy;  the peak of delusion that allows us to commit national suicide to placate cliques of feminists and LGBT flag bearers in the Pentagon, idiots in Congress and a nation of whining snowflakes.

You were the military’s last hope. I guess now, we have to standby. But, if you do nothing, no doubt, the day of reckoning will arrive, soaked in the blood of American service personnel.

Meanwhile, Task Force Smith II is headed to the sound of the guns.

To quote that immortal sage of wisdom, Harry Callahan, “It’s a hell of price to pay for being stylish.”

Garryowen!

Ray Starmann

Editor in Chief, US Defense Watch

Remembering Andrew Heiss: Life from the Perspective of an Intern

Andrew Heiss was a summer Intern during 2015. He graduated from Towson University in December of 2015. Andrew’s father Joe is a CPA, a great personal friend and has been our accountant for neigh on 10 years. 

On the 11th of April, while attending a training program for a new research position for CoStar Realty in Richmond, VA, Andrew, at the age of 23 died in his sleep. 

During his summer employment, I asked Andrew to write an overview of his assignments and accomplishments for the next bunch of Interns. His poignant and illustrative remarks follow below:

Dear New Intern,

First off, I would like to congratulate you on obtaining an internship with The Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge!  This is my first of a few letters to you, as I write this one from the perspective of just one month, part-time, on the job.  You will learn about many aspects of working in an office, and many aspects of event management.  Not only will you be in the office, but you will be traveling to places that you haven’t imagined traveling to before.  I just returned from a Challenge in Tyler, Texas, and later this summer I will be heading to a Challenge in Lexington, Kentucky with the Firefighter Combat team.  Hopefully I will attend even more challenges.  In this letter, I will be discussing the various tasks that will be required from you, and my suggestions to help you do the best possible job while helping the company, and learning and having fun.

In the office you will be working very closely with Naseem, our accountant and office manager.  Most of your work with Naseem will consist of scanning invoices and receipts, filing, copying, and working on the computer using QuickBooks, Word and Excel.  It’s helpful if you have prior experience with Excel, but Naseem is good at teaching what needs to be done.  Invoice and receipt scanning can cause some problems, because it can be quite tedious.  You will be using QuickBooks to search for items that match prices and dates from the invoices and receipts, and then scanning each to attach to the proper item.  It’s tedious because sometimes it’s hard to match each one up, but this task is important because it’s necessary to have every purchase the company has made supported with the proper documentation in the company accounting system.  Some other office tasks I have performed include answering phone calls, mailing and shipping packages, and some light cleaning.

Also in the office you will help organize media clips that are tracked online.  Currently I am working with a service called Magnolia Clipping and Broadcast Monitoring Service.  Magnolia tracks media clips (print and TV coverage) of companies throughout the country.  We have some sort of subscription with Magnolia, and I have been working with their online service to filter out the relevant and irrelevant information regarding our company.  There are thousands of media clips that have key words such as firefighter, combat, challenge, or Scott Firefighter Challenge.  “Scott” is our title sponsor . . . more about them in my next letter to you.  We need to filter this information to determine the impact of our online presence so we can have accurate reports to give to Scott and other current and potential sponsors. 

Now I will talk about the exciting part of the internship . . . traveling.  You will be traveling to various parts of the country to work at the actual competition where firefighters compete against each other in an obstacle course geared to firefighting.  But slow your roll young intern, this event isn’t as glamourous as it sounds.  Its hard work and long days.  I’m told each Challenge has different logistics and itineraries, so I will discuss my first and only experience that I’ve had so far last weekend in Tyler, Texas. 

I woke up at 4 am after watching the first game of the NBA Finals the night before.  Big mistake, the game went into overtime so I was up until midnight.  I my team lost.  I met Dr. Davis at the office in Burtonsville at 5 am and he drove us to BWI airport.  I was excited and nervous at the same time because this was my first time flying (Yes, can you believe it, I just turned 22 and this is my first time flying).  Anyway, we took off from BWI at 7 am and flew to Dallas.  Then after a couple hour layover, we took a commuter flight into Tyler and landed around 1 pm Texas time, 2 pm Maryland time.  Even though I didn’t get much sleep the night before, I didn’t sleep on either of the flights. 

When we arrived at the Challenge, I was very surprised to see the Challenge course already set up and pretty much ready to go.  Our road crew is very impressive.  Really, I was very surprised, pleasantly surprised.  I really didn’t know what to expect.  I thought we were going to help set everything up, but instead the guys from Maryland just helped with the final touches of the setup of the course.  Then I had various tasks throughout the event, including issuing boots to the competitors in exchange for their driver’s license as collateral, then exchanging them back after their race was completed, and numbering the Air Packs used in the competition.  During the competition, I took pictures with Dr. Davis’ Sony camera, picking up trash, helping out wherever else I could throughout the event.  Mostly I asked questions and observed because this was my first Challenge.  After the event, I was starving, so I was thrilled that we ate dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  We returned to the hotel about 10 pm Texas time.  Long day, great day . . .  I went to sleep immediately.

The next day we woke up around 7 am and we were at the event at 8:30 to set up for day 2 of the event.  Pretty much the same thing, exchanging boots with the competitors, number Air Packs, taking pictures.  After the event was over, following the road crews lead, the cleanup took about two hours and required heavy lifting and organizing.  I organized and put away the merchandise in one of our trucks.  I also helped the crew put away the giant tower that the competitors used in the course.  Once all of that was done, we drove to the airport, took the commuter flight back to Dallas, and then the main flight back home.  We landed at BWI around 12:30 am.  Home, sweet home!

For the office work I don’t have a lot of advice, it’s pretty self-explanatory you just go in and learn the job, it’s general office work you will get the hang of it.  For someone who has never worked in an office before, this experience is a great learning opportunity.  A few basics when traveling: 1) make sure you are well rested before you head out.  Long days are ahead of you. 2) Bring and use sunscreen.  Tyler, Texas is basically a desert and it’s close to 100 degrees. 3) Learn how to use a high tech camera before you go on the trip and look at some of the previously taken pictures beforehand to get a feel for what is expected.

Working here is a very valuable, because you are getting a white collar and a blue collar experience.  I’m told most entry level jobs will have both white and blue collar work, so I’m diligently working hard and trying to absorb and learn as much as possible.  Yesterday I participated in a staff meeting for the first time.  I took pretty good notes and I look forward to working on the items discussed.  Pretty cool stuff.  I look forward to telling you about my second month here.  Until next time!

Andrew