Lt.Col. West and the Feminization of American Culture

Introduction On 29 October 2003, the U.S. Army filed a criminal assault charge against an American officer who frightened an Iraqi informant into providing information that foiled a planned attack on U.S. soldiers [1]. "Lt. Col. Allen B. West says he did not physically abuse the detainee, but used psychological pressure twice by firing his service weapon away from the Iraqi. After the shots were fired, the detainee, an Iraqi police officer, gave up the information on a planned attack around the northern Iraqi town of Saba al Boor."

"Col. West is a member of the 4th Infantry ... Division occupying areas around Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and an area infested with loyalists of the former regime. An informant reported that there was an assassination plot against Col. West. On August 16, guerrillas attacked members of the colonel's unit who were on their way to Saba al Boor."

"An informant told the soldiers that one person involved in the attack was a town policeman. Col. West sent two sergeants to detain the policeman, who was placed in a detention center near the Taji air base. The interrogators had no luck at first, so Col. West decided to take over the questioning."

West, accompanied by a few of his soldiers, attempted to gather information from the detainee. "He said his soldiers, 'physically aggress[ed]' [read 'beat up'] the prisoner. A subsequent investigation resulted in nonjudicial punishment for them in the form of fines."

After the physical 'aggress' failed, Col. West says he brandished his pistol. "I did use my 9mm weapon to threaten him and fired it twice. Once I fired into the weapons clearing barrel outside the facility alone, and the next time I did it while having his head close to the barrel. I fired away from him. I stood in between the firing and his person. 'I admit that what I did was not right but it was done with the concern of the safety of my soldiers and myself.'"

Col. West said he informed his superior of his actions. The incident lay dormant until the Army conducted an overall command-climate investigation of the brigade. The investigation turned up the interrogation technique, and Col. West was charged with one count of aggravated assault [under the Uniform Code of Military Justice].

West said the gunshots spurred the Iraqi to provide the location of the planned sniper attack and the names of the three guerrilla fighters. The planned Iraqi ambush was forestalled. The information garnered by Col. West's interrogation of the detainee [2] allowed him to avoid [the planned ambush areas] as [his unit] conducted sweeps [to find Saddam's guerrillas].

The 'West Affair' Reveals the Depth of the Destruction of the Warrior Ethos in America's Military The U.S. Army announced during early December 2003 that "A hearing officer has recommended administrative punishment - but not a criminal court-martial - for Lt.Col. West ... Under this procedure, Col. West would appear before [Maj. Gen. Raymond] Odierno, the 4th Infantry Division commander who can accept it or reject it in favor of court-martialing Col. West or dismiss the charge [altogether] ... The hearing officer ... recommended what is called Article 15 punishment, not a trial ... Under this procedure, Col. West would appear before Gen. Odierno. The general would be limited in his punishment options to a written reprimand, forfeiture of pay and confinement to quarters."

During a 19 November hearing in Tikrit, Iraq, Col. West testified that [2a] "I felt there was a threat to my soldiers ... If it's about the life of my men, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can ... 'I love the Army,' added the 20-year officer, as he sat erect on the witness stand, holding back tears ... 'I know the method I used was not the right method,' said the 42-year-old colonel. 'If I had to err, I would err on the side of not losing my soldiers ... There is not a man here I would not sacrifice my life for.'" Such officers are the heart and core of a fighting army. Lt.Col. West exemplifies the pinnacle of the 'warrior ethos.'

But given the political circumstances (civilian and military), "Col. West said from the start he was willing to subject himself to nonjudicial Article 15 punishment and then retire. Gen. Odierno has already relieved him of his command of an artillery battalion, a sure career killer." This is a disastrous travesty of justice.

The travesty of the Army's handling of the 'West Affair' is much more serious than the ruin of an outstanding officer's career [3]. It is much more important than the dark and vicious 'behind the scenes' attempt of the Army, through its lawyers, to 'reward' a decorated soldier by initially offering him two choices: resign, short of his imminent 20-year retirement eligibility or face criminal proceedings that could lead to a trial - with the risk of a maximum penalty of eight years in prison. It is much more revealing than a self-serving high-rank military leadership's lack of concern for morale (of the troops and their families) than initially attempting to force Lt.Col. West to forego his hard-earned retirement worth more than $1 million in pay and health benefits over his life expectancy. His wife is a cancer survivor, meaning medical insurance will be extremely costly. It is much more loaded with unintended consequences to the continued loss of the 'warrior ethos' in our armed forces due to the Army's ultimate humiliation of Lt.Col. West by summarily relieving him of his battalion command for an act that nearly every American combatant, who saw brutal hand-to-hand action on the ground in our previous wars, fully support as necessary in gathering battlefield intelligence. In today's war against a determined terrorist zealotry, such techniques are mandatory - not punishable - if America is to win and survive.

The damage, possibly irreparable damage, has been done. The ruin of Lt.Col. West's career for acts in combat that, in our previous wars, were found necessary and which produced results, are now career terminators. This fact tells more about the fitness of our nation's top level military leadership and the strength of our will to survive as a nation than it does about Lt.Col. West. We have allowed the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon, terrified of the Shrill Sisters in Congress, to further erode, nay purge, the 'warrior ethos' from our armed forces.

Even the above list of travesties pales in comparison to what the 'West Affair' means to those of us who have a huge stake in the future of American civilization. It means much more than the effects on an honorable man and his family. It means much more than the race of the man, which, to some, has been something to 'overcome' in order to reach his position in the American social order. [Read the essay at the link: 'The Pilson Case,' to understand how gender trumps race in the U.S. Military]. It reveals a weakening of the trust in the U.S. military as an institution by the individuals who volunteer to serve (including their wives). And it reveals a weakening of the trust that we, as Americans, can have in the character of the high-level military leadership and their ability to lead our young men to victory in a war against terrorism of global reach.

It has more to do with us, and our determination (or lack thereof) to preserve the Constitutional Republic, which our Founding Fathers handed down to us only ten-or-so short generations ago. And with the decay and disintegration of this Republic, rests our entire American civilization.

The 'West Affair' in its Broader Context The 'West Affair' has implications for the survival of American civilization. It is just that important. Great empires of the past have similarly dissolved, disintegrated, and disappeared as a result of the same malady that holds America in its grasp - the feminization of their culture. Why few in America realize this truth in its stark reality and its dark implications for the future - most concern themselves with the minute details of the media's entertaining but trivial political 'issue of the day' - tells us more about America than it does about the primary actors in the 'West Affair.'

Will and Arial Durant, the popularizers of world history, who spent a lifetime writing the 'Story of Civilization,' summarized the decline and fall of ancient Greece [4], "The death of Greek democracy was both a violent and a natural death, in which the fatal agents were the organic disorders of the system ... The city-state had proved incapable of solving the problems of government ... its love of liberty had seldom interfered with its passion for empire [Does America really want to spread democracy worldwide by the force of arms?]. The class war had become bitter beyond control [Democrats vs. Republicans in America], and had turned democracy into a contest in legislative looting. The Assembly, a noble body in its better days, had degenerated into a mob ... voting itself every favor, and taxing property to the point of crushing initiative, industry, and thrift. [Greece] had destroyed itself ... Greek democracy was corrupt and incompetent, and had to die."

Subtler factors entered into the weakening of Greek democracy. Durant explains [5] that "The life of thought endangers every civilization that it adorns. In the earlier stages of a nation's history there is little thought; action flourishes; men are direct, uninhibited, frankly pugnacious and sexual. As civilization develops, as customs, institutions, laws, and morals more and more restrict the operation of natural impulses, action gives way to thought, achievement to imagination, directness to subtlety, expression to concealment, cruelty to sympathy, belief to doubt; the unity of character common to animals and primitive men passes away; behavior becomes fragmentary and hesitant, conscious and calculating; the willingness to fight subsides into a disposition to infinite argument. Few nations have been able to reach intellectual refinement and esthetic sensitivity without sacrificing so much in virility and unity that their wealth presents an irresistible temptation to impecunious barbarians." Indeed, ancient Greece had found its feminine side - and slowly, gracefully disappeared.

As Durant puts it [6], "The basic principle of democracy is freedom inviting chaos ... The weakening of Greek democracy was directly related to the decay of Greek morals ... neither faith nor patriotism survived in the educated Greek; civic frontiers had been erased by empires; and the growth of knowledge had secularized morals, marriage, parentage, and law...The pursuit of pleasure consumed the adult life of the upper classes. Education spread, but spread thin; as in all intellectual ages it stressed knowledge more than character, and produced masses of half-educated people who, uprooted from labor and the land, moved about in unplaced discontent like loosened cargo in the ship of state ... public games had degenerated into professional contests ... in which strength counted for more than skill; the Greeks, who had once been a nation of athletes, became now a nation of spectators, content to witness rather than to do." If you do not believe this description applies to today's America, then we must not be reading the same daily newspapers or watching the same television programs.

In ancient Greece, "Sexual morality was relaxed even beyond the loose standards of the Periclean age. Homosexualism remained popular ... Dances of naked women were accepted as part of the mores ... Athenian life was ... a round of triviality, seduction, and adultery. Greek women participated actively in the cultural pursuits of the time and contributed to letters, science, philosophy, and art ... The partial emancipation of women was accompanied by a revolt against wholesale maternity, and the limitation of the family [Planned Parenthood in America] became the outstanding social phenomenon of the age. Abortion [Roe vs. Wade in America] was punishable only if practiced by a woman against the wish of her husband, or at the instigation of her seducer. When a child came it was in many cases exposed (left out to die). Families with no child, or only one, were numerous. Philosophers condoned infanticide as reducing the pressure of population; but when the lower classes took up the practice on a large scale [abortion on demand in America], the death rate overtook the birth rate. Religion, which had once frightened men into fertility lest their dead souls be untended, no longer had the power to outweigh considerations of comfort and cost."

According to Durant [7], "Moral disorder accompanied the growth of luxury and the enlightenment of the mind. The masses cherished their superstitions and clung to their myths ... As the state religion lost its hold upon the educated classes, the individual freed himself more and more from the old moral restraints -- the son from parental authority, the male from marriage, the woman from motherhood, the citizen from political responsibility. Sexual and political morality continued to decline. Bachelors and courtesans increased in fashionable co-operation, and free unions [live-in couples, legalized civil unions and the 'right' to homosexual marriage in America] gained ground on legal marriage. The voluntary limitation of the family was the order of the day, whether by contraception, by abortion, or by infanticide. The old families were dying out. The lower classes were multiplying [mass immigration, legal and illegal, into America], but the ... supply of citizens for military service suffered a corresponding decrease [and] the life of comfort and domesticity, of business and scholarship, had replaced the Periclean life of exercise, martial discipline, and public office [the absence of a draft in America]. Athletics were professionalized; the citizens [became] content to exert themselves vicariously by witnessing professional exhibitions [the Superbowl and March Madness in America]. Young men received some grounding, as ephoboi, in the art of war; but adults found a hundred ways of escaping military service. War itself had become professionalized by technical complications, and required the full time of specially trained men; citizen soldiers had to be replaced with mercenaries ... [the all-volunteer force in America]."

Any American who does not immediately see the parallels between these aspects of the ancient Greek empire during its period of decay, disintegration, and death and the visible condition of American civilization in its current state [as decipherable from our national news media accounts, if not the accounts themselves], must be hiding under a rock.

The 'West Affair' is yet further evidence that the feminization of American culture has reached the point that it threatens the very existence of American civilization. This virus infected ancient Greek culture and played a contributing role to its demise. The feminization of American culture is even more virulent. As the 'West Affair' informs us, it has the potential to emasculate our fighting forces by eliminating the 'warrior ethos' from those at the 'tip of the spear' and rendering our military unable to take the measures necessary to guarantee the survival of our civilization from the 'barbarians at the gate.'

There is ample evidence of this fact - far beyond the details of the 'West Affair.' But there is an element of the feminization of our military at the ground level, even in this case. Two trained U.S. Army interrogators, both female, worked on the Iraqi suspect for hours and hours, and he wouldn't talk [8]. One, Captain Sheri Day, an intelligence officer, testified that it was virtually impossible to obtain information from detainees under the constraints imposed by the code of military justice. "Our hands were tied behind our backs," said [Ms.] Day. "It didn't take the detainees long to figure out our techniques and procedures. They knew we had to stay in certain boundaries (of treatment) because we're Americans. They knew they could sit all day long and not say anything and eventually walk free." One can just visualize the Iraqi detainees inwardly smiling in contempt at a so-called superpower using inept, non-threatening women to interrogate them. As if touchy-feely could induce a hardened Islamic terrorist sympathizer to divulge useful information. Maybe those Iraqis have not been 'sensitized' to the pop-culture television with which we Americans are bombarded, daily.

Many critics of the Army's shabby treatment of Lt.Col. West see a sinister radical feminist agenda at work in this case [8]. "A politically correct, feminine culture has obviously infiltrated the highest levels of our military. The most ominous development is the large number of costly 'noncombatant' women in the military, solely because of political reasons. If female soldiers are phased out and replaced with male combatants with Col. West's bravery, our effective fighting force will increase by 15 percent at no added cost. [Winning this war] may take pacifying Iraq block-by-block until the bad guys are rooted out. And this takes more combat manpower -- soldiers who look and act like Col. West rather than Pfc. Jessica Lynch. The feminists may not like this, but neither will the enemy." This guy has it just right.

A highly decorated combat veteran of three foreign wars says [10], "The generals so eager to court-martial colonels for doing their jobs should be court-martialed themselves ... The conventional generals ... should be replaced by mainly Special Forces leaders, both from the active and retired ranks, who comprehend the war at hand. Leaders should drop the silly charges against Col. West in a heartbeat so he could get on with winning his piece of this ugly war." This guy has the solution to the problem.

I have written extensively about the politically inspired radical feminist movement which has the military establishment so firmly in its grasp that the nation was falsely propagandized concerning the 'heroic' performance of Pfc. Jessica Lynch during an ambush of her unit in Iraq. This myth [see the essay at the link: 'The Mythical Modern American War Hero'] was initiated by Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post in a brazen attempt to use raw intelligence data (from Iraqi sources in the battlefield) passed by the feminist network near the battlefield, at the National Security Agency, and the Pentagon to promote the idea that America's women belong in combat roles. This propaganda agenda is working so well that military officers and civilians in the chain of command right up to the Bush White House have used this false story to lionize Lynch as a firm member of the Pantheon of American War Heroes. See the essays at the links: 'Women in Combat After 9-11,' 'War as Radical Feminist Propaganda,' 'Thoughts on Women in Combat,' and 'A Metaphor: The North Tower and Women in Combat,' to see how deep and widespread this propaganda campaign has been.

The military is the penultimate American institution to have come under the strong influence of the feminization of American culture. The nation's elite universities have already folded under this attack. The press [11] informs us that a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court which overturned the ban on sodomy has emboldened the Massachusetts Supreme Court to recognize the 'right' for homosexual 'partners' to marry. These decisions, in turn, emboldened the female President of the University of Michigan to create an Office of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Affairs (LGBTA) to cater to the identity needs of the other-directed in the university's affairs. Indeed, America is traveling down the path taken by the ancient Greeks.

Our nation's K-12 public and private school system is under attack by this same perverse and alien agenda. For example, Maryland's public school system has long been a target of the homosexual agenda. On April 1st, 2000, I attended a workshop on 'Making Our Schools Safe for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered Youth.' The event was a public forum sponsored by our Federal Government and State of Maryland tax dollars. The all-day 'workshop' was funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the AIDS Administration of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the Maryland State Department of Education. The one-day 'workshop' was free to the public and served breakfast snacks and lunch free of charge.

The subject of the Saturday 'workshop' was "Just the Facts -- Sexual Orientation and Safe Schools." It was designed for high school staff and families who want to make all schools safe for sexual minority youth in Maryland. Attendance was limited to 100 persons on a first-come, first-served basis. A detailed description of the homosexual agenda for Maryland's school children (and eventually all of America's school children), as revealed at this workshop, is provided at the links: 'A Homosexual Sensitivity Training Session,' and 'A Military Closet Leftist Joins A '60s Revolutionary.'

The agenda placed before us at that workshop is summarized as follows: The facilitator capped her performance by stating that she is proud of being non-judgmental with regard to knowledge -- in her role as a teacher. But she asserted dramatically that this non-judgmentalism does not extend to behavior. Of course, she meant behavior such as that exhibited by those who oppose the homosexual agenda.

She concluded by saying that "Schools are in the business of promoting a safe school environment for everyone." Of course, who could possibly disagree with this premise. At issue, however, is the ultimately important question of what constitutes 'harassment.' She and her New Totalitarian cohorts would have us believe that our children's speech, indeed their and our very thoughts, are to be subject to their scrutiny. Speech and thought would be subject to penalties under the law -- their law, that of a feminist totalitarian state.

At the time, I warned 'Be aware. Be warned. This may come about in the State of Maryland as a result of laws of which you are not even aware but which are being considered by the Maryland State Legislature.' At the time of the workshop (1 April 2000), five such bills were under consideration under the Maryland State Legislation 2000 program."

By April 2001, one of these bills, the 'Homosexual Rights Act,' which added sexual orientation to a law that prohibits discrimination based on factors such as race, religion and gender, passed the State Senate and the House of Delegates to become law. The law was designed to protect homosexuals from discrimination on the job and in housing. In 2002, the Maryland State Board of Education used this law to implement regulations governing standards of behavior in Maryland's K-12 public and private schools. Indeed, America is traveling directly down the path of the ancient Greeks.

Further evidence attests to the feminization of American culture. During the mid-to-late 1990s, articles started appearing on the subject of 'raves,' gatherings of young 20-somethings and teenagers in makeshift dance halls where all-night partying, drugs, music-of-alienation, and sex combined in an explosive mixture. Pictures taken at these events featured young men with baby pacifiers (binkys) in their mouths as a symbol of their need for attention. A veteran 'raver' writes on the Internet [12], "To be honest, I am really fed up to see all these kids at parties and when I say kids I mean 13-14 year old kids at parties sucking on a binky because their older brother/sister think its cool to see their little brother/sister rollin [getting high on the drug, Ecstasy] for the first time. It's not right! I feel that if you really want to introduce someone to a rave, let them go sober the first time and let them make the decision if they want to continue to go. Let them see what other people look like on drugs."

If that isn't enough to make one gag, we now learn that young American adults often watch the 'Teletubbies,' a TV program for pre-school toddlers [13]. "In New York, twenty-and-thirty-somethings buy products that remind them of their childhoods...People in their twenties and thirties are clamoring for comfort in purchases and products, and sensory experiences that remind them of a happier, more innocent time - their childhood...Society has come to accept the idea that people do not become adults until they are in their late thirties. As a result, adolescence has been extended well into the twenties. It is interesting to note that the Society for Adolescent Medicine, an American doctors' organization, now states on its website that it cares for persons '10 to 26 years of age'... The sense of despair that surrounds adult identity helps explain why contemporary culture finds it difficult to draw a line between adulthood and childhood. Childishness is idealized for the simple reason that we despair at the thought of living the alternative...Maturity, responsibility, and commitment are only feebly affirmed by contemporary [American] culture. Such ideals contradict the sense of impermanence that prevails over daily life. It is the gradual emptying out of adult identity that discourages young men and women from embracing the next stage of their lives." Read a complete account of this phenomenon at the link: 'Jessica Lynch's Teletubby Navy.'

The traditional image of masculinity is under direct attack in our feminized American culture. The term, Metrosexual, was coined by a British journalist in 1994. It was used to describe [14] "...a kind of narcissistic, insecure masculinity shaped, if not invented, by film, advertising and glossy magazines." It suggests that young American men are "...more vain and self-indulgent than he is feminine or sensitive." Lionel Tiger [15] says the term "...has everything to do with antipathy to maleness and confusion about what it is. It stems from the post-modernist ideology that sex is a social construct somehow promoted by a 'patriarchal culture' ... If men read the right magazines, listen raptly to sensitivity trainers, eschew the competitive games that boys enjoy and aren't allowed pick-up trucks with big tires, they'll be fortunate enough to become more like females...But the toxic net-effect of all the earnest sexual upgrading and male undermining is that boys do less well all through the feminized school system. They are now only 44% of the college population. By 2010, men are expected to receive only one-third of bachelors' degrees." Indeed, the roots of feminization are reaching deep into the soul of America's future.

Internet Online dating [16] has taken over the dating scene for the 20 and 30-year old population. In an environment where women are encouraged to marry, if at all, after they have established a professional career, college and the church are no longer the 'meeting place' for our nation's young people. And the work-place is out because of the risk of sexual harassment charges for conversation and actions that a female can construe as 'assault' far outweigh the opportunity to explore the depths of potential for a prospective mate. Consequently, young men and women are left with two options: the bar scene or online dating.

The explosion of online personals is awesome. In the first half of 2003, Americans spent $214.3 million on personals and dating sites. Forty million Americans visited at least one online dating site in August 2003 - 27 percent of all Internet users for that month. Many who participate in this venture describe themselves to potential 'viewers' via their 'avatar,' a picture and text description of themselves. These young men and women often live in a 'dream world, ' a 'fantasyland' of their own imagination. Says one, "When I'm lonely, it helps to know there is someone out there who is looking for me ... And while my ad may not be 'the real me,' at least there is potential for me to be that best version of myself. Even for just a small part of a day." This Epicurian dream world is right in step with ancient Greece in the time of its disintegration from within, reborn in America!

Compare the above description of what is becoming the popular culture in the 'raising of boys' in America with that of our potential enemies around the world. Arnaud de Borchgrave describes the training of Muslim youth in the Madrassas, the system of schools that teach a fundamentalist Wahabbi doctrine [16a]. "Pakistan's madrassas (Koranic schools) are still churning out 750,000 jihadi-prone male teenagers a year with ... hateful views of America ... A total of 5 million young men have passed through the system for the last 13 years. The madrassas were the spawning grounds for the Taliban." More subtle versions of these schools exist in America, funded by the rulers of Saudi Arabia.

According to de Borchgrave, "The number of mujahideen (freedom fighters) are now growing daily ... they form the core of the global Muslim resistance - engaged in fighting in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmire, Afghanistan and Iraq. They are highly motivated, selfless and fearless people, obeying no earthly authority ... They are hard to subdue by military force, and recognize no international borders in pursuit of their goals ... They have frustrated the designs of two superpowers and are surging forward to carve out their own destiny."

"The perceptions based on membership in marginalized groups, the deprived sensibility accumulated through sufferings, discriminations and denial of justice and fair play, dissolve hope and expectations and lead to what sociologists have termed anomie - a mental state where death or life ceases to have any meaning or relevance." Read the essay at the link: 'Thoughts on Women in Combat' for a visual depiction of the training of young Islamic boys - beginning at the age of four or five years of age - to become Jihadists.

Compare that training to the feminization of the education and schooling of America's youth. There are hardly any male teachers in our elementary schools anymore. The ratio of women to men teachers in some of America's 'blue ribbon' high schools [16b] is approximately 3 to 1. USA TODAY reports that [16c] "The dearth of male teachers is affecting boys in unexpected ways ... [a longitudinal study of 445 students in Connecticut revealed that] three to four times as many boys as girls with reading problems ... [this may be because] 90% of second-and third-grade teachers are women ... Men make up only about 10% of elementary school teachers, but [only] nearly half in middle and high school [nationwide] ... in 1971 they accounted for 55% of high school teachers; now its 41%."

The U.S. Naval Academy surveyed nearly 3,000 midshipmen in November 2003 and found [16d] "...the lowest levels of satisfaction in the student body since scandal buffeted the school in the mid-1990s." This could well be expected for an institution which has been subjected to the most intense agenda of 'feminization' of any institutions in the land. I have written of this agenda with extensive essays at the link: 'New Age 'Ethics' at the U.S. Naval Academy.' An institution which introduced 'sensitivity training' as a behavior modification technique to encourage young virile men to accept reduced standards for females as a precursor to encouraging females to fill combat roles in naval aviation and combat ships has had disastrous effects. In 1995 we learned of the 'Crying of the Admirals' [see the essay at the link: 'The Frankfurt School' in a sensitivity training session for midshipmen [16e]. "The U.S. Naval Academy has added female 'role models' to the faculty. In August 1994, the Academy placed a new emphasis on conflict resolution and consciousness-raising. "As 'Lean On Me' started playing, Master Chief Liz Johns gave the plebes her final orders: stand in a circle, sway to the music, sing along, and hug. From the circle came the sharp sniffle of sobs. The future admirals of America were crying."

As the qualification and training standards continued to be lowered for females during the later part of the 1990s and early 2000s, the Academy resorted to 'Consider Plebes Dignity' by abandoning the rigorous plebe year in 2002. This raised a howling storm of protest from the more 'traditional' alumni who exclaimed [16f], "The softening of plebe year will undercut our ability to identify the best military leaders for war ... another response, captioned 'Sissies on the Severn, states that the Naval Academy 'has become a government-funded day-care facility.' ... [Col. John R. Allen, the Commandant of Midshipmen at the time] defended the new techniques ... '[We] go right up to [a plebe who has committed an offense]'s ear and whisper, 'you really disappointed me.' [The critics of this touchy-feely method states] that 'plebe training should not be about feeling another's pain, but learning to perform their duty while feeling their own pain.'"

Consequently, when we now learn that the midshipmen at the Naval Academy are more dissatisfied with their 'professional training' [read military training], it is [in spite of CYA reclamas by the USNA administration] a reaction to the forced and pervasive 'feminization' of their training. It is now becoming so apparent to male midshipmen because of the hardship and real life stress of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the Academy is 'softening' the military leadership program and that this is detrimental to their ability to successfully prosecute a war against a resourceful and determined enemy. This fact is so clear from the Washington Post article, which quotes from an 'anonymous' midshipman [because he is fearful of retribution by the feminist USNA administrators] "...the declining satisfaction with military training to the recent toning down of Plebe Summer - every midshipman's grueling introduction to the rigors of military life - are the source of the morale problem." Indeed, the feminization of our nation's primary educational institutions, including our premiere service academies, has reached a crisis stage. The young men in these academies know this truth but are afraid to express it. The yoke of the radical feminist agenda has these young men by the throat. And they do not like it one bit.

Observing the widespread advantages offered girls over boys in American culture today, even Business Week intones [16g], "Today, across the country, it seems as if girls have a kind of scholastic Roman Empire alongside boys' languishing [ancient] Greece." Indeed, America's youth are being 'feminized' on a scale that makes America vulnerable to the demands of a hard and ruthless enemy. The Lt.Col. West and the Jessica Lynch 'Affairs' are the visible iconic representations of this truth. That is why they are so important to understand in their full context - the feminization of American culture.

Karl Marx and the Feminization of American Culture According to Carey Roberts, a media analyst, the radical feminist agenda for American culture is aimed at 'socializing' our institutions along the same lines that other such movements attempted (and failed miserably - with disastrous consequence to millions of human beings around the world) during the 20th century [16h]. "In 1875, Karl Marx set out his famous prescription: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' Marx was saying workers should be paid the same, regardless of their hard work or productivity. Flat wages, administered by a centrally controlled economy, were tried in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere. Farmhands, blacksmiths, and university professors - all were to be paid the same."

"And everywhere, the result was economic and social disaster ... 'The comparative worth wage-setting, centrally planned economies was part of the framework that led to the collapse of these economies. Comparative worth wage determinations broke the linkages between remuneration and productivity. Intraoccupational and interoccupational differences were the subject of unhappiness and friction that undermined morale and led to endless disputes.'"

"But now, radical feminists have seized upon the well-known fact women earn 74 percent of what men earn. Using Karl Marx's discredited economic theories, feminists have launched a holy war on the gender 'wage gap.' The fact is, the 'wage gap' disappears when you take into account such factors as training, years in the work force, travel requirements, degree of physical labor, and risk to life and limb. And truth be told, men essentially have no choice - they are expected to be the primary breadwinner to support their wives and children. So they accept the high-paying, dangerous jobs women are unwilling to accept."

"In contrast, women have a broad range of options: be a full-time mom, take on a part-time job, or do volunteer work. So the so-called 'wage gap' is really a 'choices gap.' And the feminist campaign to level wages really amounts to equal pay for unequal work. But evidence and reason do not deter the feminist mindset."

"And now, the U.N.-backed International Labor Organization has taken up the cause. In a recent report, the ILO claims women have been victims of what it calls 'occupational segregation.' That explains the outrageous fact that 'Truck drivers, for instance, are usually men.'"

"If there is any doubt about the socialist aims of the ILO, read this statement from page 51 of the ILO report: 'The growing prevalence of wage-setting systems based on workers' productivity or performance instead of on the content of the job raises new challenges for achieving pay equity.' It's easy to understand why socialists disdain free market economies. But why the feminist contempt for capitalism? The answer requires a basic understanding of feminist ideology. Feminists believe capitalism is just another example of oppressive patriarchy."

"As early as 1886, Eleanor Marx, youngest daughter of Karl, issued this harsh indictment: 'Women are the creatures of an organized tyranny of men, as the workers are the creatures of an organized tyranny of idlers.' Nearly a century later, socialist Azizah Al-Hibri, inspired by the same sentiment, penned her feminist manifesto: 'Conceptually, capitalism is an advanced stage of patriarchy ... Strategically, then, the struggle against capitalism, racism, imperialism and any other attempt of man's attempt at domination of the Other must be based o their basic patriarchal nature."

"So the socialists and radical feminists have cooked up an amazingly simple strategy: Promise women equal pay for unequal work, destroy the linkage between productivity and income, destabilize free-market economies, and cripple patriarchy. That's revolutionary." And this radical feminist agenda is working. Working in every institution across the land. American culture has been feminized in every domain, including our traditional religious denominations, referred to hereafter as the Church.

The Decay of Established Religions in America Will Durant describes a period in history during which the weakening of ancient Greek democracy was directly related to the decay of Greek morals. Durant relates [17] "Only an act of persistent imagination, or a gift of observation, can enable us to realize what it means to a nation to have its traditional religion die. Classic Greek civilization had been built upon a patriotic devotion to the city-state, and classic morality, though rooted in folkways rather than in faith, had been powerfully reinforced by supernatural belief. But now neither faith nor patriotism survived in the educated Greek..."

Compare Durant's description of the ancient Greek experience with that of America today. Established religions all over the land have lost (during the 1990s) and are still losing members at an alarming rate. Pollsters tell us that [18] "...religion is losing its grip on American society, at worst, growing numbers of Americans are finding the institution irrelevant." Anyone who drives around the suburbs in America today will notice two trends. One is the explosive growth of 'store front' churches in formerly commercial shopping malls - some small, some huge (taking over warehouse-size 'former huge food stores'). The second trend is the growth of large, newly constructed, churches that offer a complete social network with Sunday baby sitting, entertainment, seminars on secular activities, and political front events. The congregations of the latter, 'worshipping' in expensive, huge brick buildings, often number in excess of 3,000.

On the other hand, national surveys find that "...more that 29.4 million Americans have no religion - double the number 11 years ago. That's 14 percent of the nation, up from 7.5 percent in a similar 1990 survey. The survey found a 'wide and possibly growing swath of secularism' in the American population...singles and childless couples [the cohort most influenced by and associated with radical feminism] make up large percentages of the unchurched."

Most of the 'unchurched' are unconcerned that nearly 100 million Americans [have no connection] to a church, synagogue or temple. The national survey reveals that "More than average, these are people who are aggressive, high-energy and driven...They have made something of themselves, by the world's standards...[and] they do not necessarily believe that God, Jesus, ... faith or Christianity will help them overcome the struggles they face...Most of the unchurched figure they've gotten along just fine without the church for a long time, and until someone gives them reason to feel otherwise, they will remain spiritually unattached...But they still want God..." Of course, often their god tends to be some New Age creation of their own personal 'spirituality' - including worship of themselves. Following Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment philosopher who set the stage for Karl Marx a century later [see the essay at the link: 'Leadership Ethics Training' for the details of this philosophy], if one somehow finds Kant's 'Categorical Imperative,' one can become a god. The New Age Boomer generation has taken this philosophy to heart.

Alan Wolfe has written a book on Moral Freedom [19] in which he concludes, "Americans are not only moderate in economics and politics; they are moderate in morality. By moral moderation he means that Americans tend to avoid judging people by standards of excellence and instead evaluate them in ways that seem 'best capable of avoiding hurt to others.' In this book...people try to avoid being judgmental...By this avoidance they have begun a process that will make the 21st century 'the century of moral freedom,' in which, writes Mr. Wolfe, individuals will 'determine for themselves what it means to lead a good and virtuous life.' No one will be surprised to learn that this view is found among gays and lesbians...but one may be surprised to discover that Mr. Wolfe found something like this self-formed, nonjudgmental morality in [America's heartland -- the Midwest]."

The attack on the institutional 'Church' in America is centered on the radical feminist agenda of ordaining female pastors and priests, acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, and is directly related to the explosive revelation of the sexual abuse of young males by the clergy - Catholic and Protestant - in America today.

This situation has caused splits in many traditional Christian denominations of faith. For example [20], "Representatives of 18 Southern Baptist churches, dissatisfied that two churches that support homosexuality and remain members of the Atlanta Baptist Association, formed a new association..." Other denominations are having similar difficulties with the homosexual activists both outside and inside their churches [21]. "The Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA), and all of its liberal bishops and priests, are living theologically on borrowed time. Recent events, including the consecration of a homosexual bishop [22] in the Episcopal Church, have started a visible splintering of that denomination.

The Catholic Church is even more conflicted by the radical feminist agenda for its destruction. USA TODAY exclaims that [23] "As the USA's Roman Catholic Church roils with reports of sexual abuse by priests and coverups from neighborhood parishes to cathedrals, Catholics and non-Catholics alike wonder: What will it take to 'purify' this church? Who will lead the way?" TIME Magazine, on its front page, asks [24] 'Can the Catholic Church Save Itself?' in response to the same scandal.

Michael Novak provides part of the answer, in his article [25], 'The Culture of Dissent.' "After a daily diet of sexual-abuse scandals, American Catholics ... [have] a new way of observing Lent: mortification, shame, and the bitter herbs of public humiliation. But also with a powerful conviction that 'dissent' has failed. Okay, there was a sexual revolution; okay ther is a 'new morality.' Problem is, had the old morality been followed, there would be no scandals, which so many now suffer from."

"Child abuse comes not from celibacy nor vows of chastity. Neither women priests nor married clergy make it go away - just examine the record of churches that have gone that route ... The sexual revolution of the past generation [the Boomers] was a rocky time ... From about 1970 many of us heard rumors of a ... 'lavender mafia,' practicing and active homosexuals among the Catholic clergy, now in their fifties and older - even in some seminaries. According to Garry Wills, reviewing a recent book about the Jesuits, a proportion of this nation's Jesuits of that generation, now 'gay and graying,' may have fit those rumors. Amazingly, this pattern has been so accepted in some quarters that it has put heterosexuals [in the priesthood] on the defensive."

"Men have never been angels and from time immemorial one has heard, as well, about a few priests seducing women, or being easily seduced. Yet that phenomenon has, so far, not been lately in the news. Rather, one of the striking facts, well known among the journalists who have been covering the Catholic sexual scandal ... is that nearly all the victims (on the order of 95+ percent) have been teenage males. Exceedingly few are girls." Said forthrightly, the abusive priests are sexually active homosexual predators.

"The reason the American Church today stands accused of hypocrisy is that it has been teaching one thing (semper fidelis for two millenia), while in that deeply conflicted generation ordained during the Sixties and Seventies [the Boomers] (hit simultaneously by Vatican II and the sexual revolution) a small but significant body of its priests including some bishops has been flagrantly violating that teaching."

Novak blames these circumstances on the 'dissenters,' who would have a more 'human' church, more 'expressive,' more 'spontaneous,' more 'free.' More sensual. More sexual. Their rallying cry was, 'We dissenters are the liberators!' "So the rationalization went ... In moral theology, their rationalization went like this: The crucial point in Christian life is to love God with all your heart, but in a pure, modern way. Individual acts are neither good nor bad. Intention makes them so ... Love thy neighbor. It's healthy to take off your clothes, lie down with others, touch. Enjoy the bodies God gave us. Accept your own sexuality."

"Even conservative bishops were bludgeoned into believing that they had to trust psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists [on this matter]. What you were trained to think is sexual evil, they were carefully instructed (as if they were backward pupils), is actually a matter of psychological health. Avoid the language of sin and evil. Medieval. Judgmental. Let the experts handle it."

Indeed, the American Church is going down the same path as did the ancient Greeks. As Durant told us, "Only an act of persistent imagination, or a gift of observation, can enable us to realize what it means to a nation to have its traditional religion die."

And now, in the early 2000s, we have a radical feminist ideology - emboldened by its success in the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s - embarked on an attack on the Bible. A novel, 'The Da Vinci Code,' is a noxious best seller [26] "... which promotes the role of Mary Magdalene played in the Savior's life not only as supposedly his lead disciple, but also as his wife and mother of his children, is still making headlines after 35 weeks at the top of the lists." This book's plot was inspired by the revisionist 'reinterpretation' of the Bible by radical feminist 'scholars.'

The book is a well-written murder mystery that takes the reader on an adventure through France, England and Scotland. So well-written is this book, that its central theme [26a] "...Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had a child with her and wished that she continue to build His church ... " that many readers forget the novel is indeed, fiction, not fact. Basically, the novel is about two characters who investigate a murder while trying to decipher the "...explosive secret that is hidden in Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' painting. In the author's world, "...the figure to the Jesus's right in the famous fresco is not the Apostle John, but actually Jesus's wife, 'Mary Magdalene. The novel claims that she - and not a chalice -- is the Holy Grail."

"The 'solid' evidence for this as found in the 'Last Supper' is: Da Vinci painted no chalice on the table, the John/Magdelene figure does not have a beard, St. Peter is positioned to make it look like he wants to slice through the throat of the person next to Jesus (basically silencing Mary Magdalene), and the windows behind Jesus look like the letter 'M.'"

"Da Vinci was privy to this Jesus-Magdalene marriage information, according to the novel, because he belonged to the Priory of Sion, a secret organization devoted to, among other things, guarding this secret, practicing sex orgies and celebrating 'the Sacred Feminine.' According to the novel, other famous artists, scientists, novelists and 'forward thinkers' throughout the centuries belonged to the secret society ...[Critics claim that] the book tries to 'discredit mainstream Christianity and exalt the feminine." Wow! Talk about Hillary Clinton's 'vast right-wing conspiracy,' this book and its 'best-seller' ratings are the ultimate example of the extremist, liberal-left paranoid mind - the mind that fuels the Democrat party in today's politics, today's mass media, and the 'leadership' [read power-elites of the Boomer generation] in nearly every public institution in the land. Corrupted, possibly beyond repair, in the very fiber of the fabric of American civilization.

Newsweek Magazine features Mary Magdalene as its cover person and gives prominent position to two stories, 'Women of the Bible: How Their Stories Speak to Us Today,' and 'Mary Magdalene: Decoding 'The Da Vinci Code.' The latter article essentially, but subtly hidden behind the first glowing story, tells us that there are precious few facts to back up the theses of 'The da Vinci Code' novel. The first story [27], however, is a glowing account of how 'scholars' - nearly all female - "...have added a new force to an already dynamic debate among women who see Magdalene's story as a parable for their own struggles to find a place in the modern church. None of this would be possible without a new generation of women Biblical scholars who have brought a very modern passion to the ancient tradition of scriptural reinterpretation - to correct what these scholars regard as a male misreading of key texts."

Supposedly, according to these New Age deconstructionist 'scholars,' "...what started out as scholarship with an openly feminist political agenda has evolved into serious and respected inquiry." A companion piece, however, throws cold water on this judgment [28]. "Relying on Gnostic gospels rejected by compilers of the New Testament, these revisionists claim that Mary was actually Jesus' intimate female partner. After the Resurrection, she became a leader within the early church and a rival of Saint Peter's. All this, they argue ... was suppressed by patriarchal authorities who favored a males-only clergy ... The implication is that gender warfare lies at the heart of Christianity, and if Mary and her faction had triumphed the history and structure of the church would be radically inclusive." Of course, and maybe next these 'scholars' will publish their imaginative accounts that Jesus was, in reality, a woman. So why not a female priesthood and a female Pope? It's all part of the agenda!

Of course, none of this deconstruction of the threads of the fabric of American civilization is new. It has simply been expanded and applied to the Church in America. Much earlier there was an attempt by radical feminists to corrupt the interpretation of the archeological record by asserting that certain statuary, found in central Turkey from the ancient (circa 7,000 - 9,000 B.C.) 'city' of Çatalhöyük was a Mother Goddess, representative of a powerful matriarchy where women dominated and ruled all aspects of social life [39]. A clay statuette of a voluptuous female figure supported by leopards was found ... The interpretation of the figure when it was discovered during excavations in the early 1960s was that it was the Mother Goddess."

Archeologists steeped in the scholarship of the European tradition [which hypothesized such matriarchies] and radical feminists with an agenda "...argued forcefully for an early phase of matriarchy ... which became the central tenet of the New Age goddess movements in the last decades of the 20th century [in America] ... many 'goddess' tours have visited Çatalhöyük to pray, to hold circle dances and to feel the sway of the goddess." Doesn't this remind one of 'The Crying of the Admirals' at the U.S. Naval Academy during the mid-1990s [as described above]?

The Scientific American article goes on to state that "More recently, cultural anthropologists -- those scholars who compare and analyze [ancient] societies - have withdrawn from making such sweeping generalizations ... cultural anthropology provides no substantiated claims for true matriarchies." In effect, the article states that men and women shared labor requirements in much the same way the early American settlers did - men did the hunting and protecting while the women helped work the fields and tended the children, in a harsh and dangerous natural environment of wild animals and unforgiving natural climate. This division of labor was necessary for their survival. But that has not kept the radical feminists of today from 'mythologizing,' reinterpreting history, and fantasizing of a time past when women ruled - and held vast power over men. It was only a matter of time before such activities reached into the domain of the Church in America.

So now we see just how far America has traveled down the path taken by the ancient Greek empire - toward dissolution, disintegration, defeat, and despair - as a result of the 'feminization' of their cultures. Indeed, the 'West Affair' is a tiny wisp of a hint of a much, much larger malady in the American heartland. Indeed, there is much, much more to this story.

The Corruption of the American Legal System During their descent into chaos, the ancient Greeks experienced the corruption of their politicians and legal institutions. Ancient Greek politicians shared some of the same characteristics that we find in modern American politicians and lawyers. According to Durant [29], "Persia had no difficulty in bribing the Greek politicians to make war upon other Greek states or upon Macedon...rhetors or hired orators became professional lawyers [30] and politicians. Most of these people were no better than they had to be. Many of them laid up great fortunes through political opportunism [read Congressmen allowed to keep campaign funds upon giving up their office] and reckless demagogy. Each party organized committees, invented catchwords, appointed agents [read lobbyists, public relations firms, media manipulators, and political 'war rooms'], and raised funds [read PACs]; those who paid the expenses of all this frankly confessed that they expected to 'reimburse themselves doubly [read Congress voting themselves exorbitant retirement packages and returning as high-paid lobbyists].' As politics grew more intense, patriotism waned; the bitterness of faction [read Democrats versus Republicans] absorbed public energy and devotion, and left little for the city...the individualism of commerce and philosophy had weakened the family and liberated the individual; now the free individual, as if to avenge the family, turned around and destroyed the state."

Lawyers have been an especially prominent growth sector in Washington, D.C. Statistics show what can be called a megaleap [31]: in 1950 not quite a thousand lawyers were members of the District of Columbia bar; by 1975 there were 21,000; and by 1993 the number reached 62,000. No other major U.S. city matched the capital's per capita concentration of attorneys. Most of these lawyers are involved in lobbying for monied special interest groups which have proliferated as well during this period. These lawyers, who contribute absolutely no value-added to any product of commercial value in our economy, are parasites who suck the blood from America's economy. Their model of ethical and professional behavior is becoming the standard for our political class in the nation's capital. This behavior is outrageously evil.

This poisonous situation in the legal profession has become even worse in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Newsweek magazine features this situation in its 15 December 2003 issue with a front page inscribed 'Lawsuit Hell: How Fear of Litigation is Paralyzing Our Professions.' The lead article [32], entitled 'Civil Wars' describes how doctors, teachers, coaches, ministers all share a common fear - being sued on the job. Indeed, America has become a litigation nation. "Americans will sue each other at the slightest provocation ... The onslaught of litigation is nothing new ... Starting in the 1960s, crusading judges and well-meaning social reformers began opening the way for the powerless and dispossessed to assert their rights by going to court." This program essentially destroyed the ability of K-12 teachers and administrators to control the children in our schools.

The 'sue them' mentality has led to disaster in the suits brought against legitimate businesses. The billion dollar suits brought against tobacco companies and medical providers has been disaster for those industries and a boon to the parasitic lawyers. "Under standard 'contingency fee' arrangements, plaintiffs' lawyers get a third to a half of the take. [Even though] the 'litigation explosion' of the past 30 years may be leveling off ... the mere threat of a lawsuit is intimidating. Many Americans sue because they have come to believe that they have the 'right' to impose the costs and burdens of defending a lawsuit on anyone who angers them, regardless of fault or blame."

A typical case of this practice is the bogus case that Lt. Carey Dunahi Lohrenz brought against Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military readiness. Lohrenz, a flawed naval aviator who, along with LT Kara Hultgreen, were to be the first Navy fighter pilots after Congress lifted the ban on female combat aviators. Hultgreen died in a pilot-caused accident while attempting to land on the USS Abraham Lincoln on 24 October 1994. A detailed description of this accident and its cause is provided in the essay at the link: 'The McNamaraization of the U.S. Military.' Both Lohrenz and Hultgreen were rushed through the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) for the F-14 Tomcat fighter in order to meet the deployment schedule of the carriers to which their Air Group was assigned. This was a 'political' decision made by Navy brass to show the Clintons just how eager the Navy was to feminize combat naval aviation.

When Lohrenz demonstrated that she was unsafe and a danger to herself, her crew, and the ship by erratic and unpredictable landing technique, she was given an evaluation board and was disqualified from further shipboard flight operations. She brought a frivolous suit against Mrs. Donnelly, claiming that her release of Lohrenz' training records in the FRS had somehow 'prejudiced' her ability to fly aboard ship. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently unanimously ruled [32a] that District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth correctly threw out the suit against Donnelly. Donnelly estimates that she has spent $600,000 in legal fees to defend herself against the radical feminist lawyers who brought the suit against her. Of course, that was the objective - tie up the Center for Military Readiness so that it would be difficult to continue exposing the agenda of the radical leftists who sought to bring women into combat positions, regardless of the cost to military readiness.

"The cost [of this parasitic litigation] to society cannot be measured just in money, though the bill is enormous, an estimated $200 billion a year, more than half of it for legal fees and costs that could be used to hire more police or firefighters or teachers. Our society has been changed in a subtler, sadder way. We have been hardened and made more fearful. Friends and neighbors are more wary now ... Perversely, our insistence on enforcing our 'rights' has made us less free - less free to use our own judgment to make common sense or humane choices about the way we live and treat others ... We are paralyzed by 'legal fear.'" And this trend will only be accelerated when the parasitic occupation will, in the future, be expanded to accommodate the burgeoning numbers of women who are entering law school [32b] - making up almost half of law students.

Of course, this is the path down which the ancient Greek empire took as it crumbled from within until it became, finally, a sitting duck for the invading Roman legions - and disappeared in a 53-year period.

And all of this taking place in America in the large takes us back to the 'West Affair.' During the 1990s, it became a common practice to render our armed forces potentially vulnerable to a ruthless and savage enemy - the 'civilianizing' of the Judge Advocate General Corps of each service to 'bring to justice' those who made errors of judgment in combat or near-combat situations. Before that time, it was generally understood that the 'fog of war' introduced such uncertainty in the decision process that 'friendly fire' accidents - although always painful and thoroughly investigated so that training methods would incorporate a 'lessons learned' for the future - would, unfortunately, occur.

During the 1990s, however, it became common practice to attempt to 'punish' those who made errors of judgment - sometimes during time periods of only a few seconds - which were made 'actionable' under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A 'civilianized' legal system was incorporated into the U.S. military mentality and pilots who mistakenly fired on 'friendly' helicopters or other errors made in the 'fog of battle' were courts-martialed - often for political, rather than military, purposes.

This 'civilianizing' of the Military Justice System was taken even further into the heart of military operations. The essay at the links: 'Jax USNA Alumni Speech,' and 'War as Radical Feminist Propaganda' detail the control by lawyers of targeting decisions during the Afghan and Iraq wars against terrorism during 2002-2003.

The 'West Affair' reveals just how far this parasitic trend in the legal system, which has destroyed the trust between friends and neighbors over the past 30-or-so-years, has reached all the way down into the military justice system for the purpose of PURGING our armed forces of the very 'warriors' and 'warrior ethos' that is the bedrock foundation of a winning military - one that we can count on to protect us from our enemies in a dangerous and threatening world. We are, indeed, following the path of decay that was experienced by the ancient Greeks. It not corrected soon, it will produce the same result.

Just Who Are the Heroes in the War On Terrorism? During the war on terrorism since the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we have seen a plethora of false to 'imaginative' accounts of the heroism of females in our armed forces. The most blatant falsity was the story of Pvt. Jessica Lynch (see the details in the essay at the link: 'The Mythical Modern American War Hero'). The essays at the links: 'Women in Combat After 9-11,' 'War as Radical Feminist Propaganda,' and 'Thoughts on Women in Combat' expose the propaganda campaign by radical feminists (civilian and active-duty military). These accounts 'imagine' heroism where none exists. Simply 'being there' and 'being female' are the only criteria for raising the ordinary in combat zones to 'heroic' in the mythology that is being fed the American people by the mass media.

In this environment of female fantasies, the exploits of male soldiers - especially those which exemplify the 'warrior ethos' of the traditional fighting man of our nation's history are made 'invisible' to the American people. A perfect example of this is the hoopla and hype that surrounded the story of Jessica Lynch (See the essay at the link, 'Jessica Lynch's Army') which raised a 'survivor' to the level of 'heroine' compared to the story of a 'real' fighting man in the same region where Jessica Lynch was captured and during the same time period.

Rick Bragg tells the story of Seth Bunke, a six-foot-six 'blond recruiting poster of a U.S. Marine [33].' "The rumor that [Lynch] was here, a U.S. Army woman held captive somewhere in the city of Nasiriyah, spread through the marine platoons that were already embroiled in one of the bloodiest, most soul-killing firefights since Hue in Vietnam. Some six hundred marines battled what was believed to be seven thousand guerrillas, fighting in weeds and alleys and door-to-door ... The marines were pinned down by cross fire on open ground and died in smoking vehicles hit by grenades. A woman taped with plastic explosives ran screaming at them and was shot down. Caught in the open, Bunke was fired on by a man who emptied his magazine at him, the bullets kicking up dust all around him, until there was just a click. Then, with wonder, Bunke killed him. They fired into windows where snipers hid, into cars carrying Iraqi soldiers. 'After we shot everybody, we had to go in and clean it up,' he said. Inside the cars were dead women and children, used as human shields. He helped dig a grave for a toddler."

"'They were lighting us up. It was crazy,' he said. In the middle of a dusty street, he and two other marines were attacked by an Iraqi armed with nothing but a knife. 'He stands a hundred feet away, and he's running at me, and he's holding this knife.' Bunke killed him, too. But there seemed to be no end to them, no limit to the number of guerrillas who were willing to die for Saddam, whom they either loved or feared more than they feared the Americans who had come to free them."

"[Bunke] is the opposite of Jessi, except for the color of his hair. His arms are thick with muscle and his legs look like pulpwood logs. He entered the service to fight, to go to war, and he killed when he got there. But they shared one thing in the last days of the battle for Nasiriyah, a thought a lot of young Americans had. 'I thought I was never going to come home,' [Bunke] said. It was already personal, before he and the others learned about Jessi. The story they would hear made Seth Bunke want to kill, and made him proud to."

"In the streets of Nasiriyah, the story of the young woman in the hands of the brutal Fedayeen took hold in the minds of the young marines, and it mushroomed: She was being tortured, in the most cruel ways, every day, every hour. 'I took it personally,' said Bunke. 'I took it right to heart. I have a sister. She's nineteen. I thought of Jessi, and I thought of her. I thought of the people who would do that. I wanted to kill them ... I killed thirty-four of them.'"

The headlines in America's newspapers, which blared the story of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, did not even tell the story of Seth Bunke - not even 'buried' in the inside pages. Why did this happen? The answer is simple. It is the same answer that oozes out of the 'West Affair.' The purposeful feminization of American culture. It has reached deep into the soul of the penultimate institution to be so affected - the U.S. military. And it continues to permeate the military and the mass media.

Indeed, the radical feminist media continue to use the guerrilla campaign in Iraq to laud the 'heroism' of women in combat. The Washington Post, in a story by Vernon Loeb (the co-author of the initial false story of Jessica Lynch), tells us of another 'combat heroine' [34]. "Pvt. Teresa Broadwell is in the middle of the maelstrom, standing on tiptoe in the turret of a Humvee in a vain attempt to see through the sight of her M-249 machine gun." [Note: This is another inadvertent admission of the lowered standards for women in today's military - in this case for our military police units. Read the essay at the link: 'Jessica Lynch's Army' to learn of lowered qualification and training standards in the Army's 'support tail.'].

"American soldiers [Military Police - not combat troops] are down in the street. Iraqis are firing at her truck from the rooflines and alleyways along Highway 9 near the center of [Karbala] ... an hour south of Baghdad. Her lieutenant, jumps out of the Humvee to help rescue his wounded comrades [is he not a 'hero?']. He needs Broadwell's cover to suppress the Iraqis' withering fire and listens for the distinctive bursts of her potent weapon ... Before this gun battle ends, three Americans will be killed and seven wounded. For Broadwell, 20, ... her moment of truth in combat has arrived." Ah yes! In the tradition of Sgt. York in WWI and Audie Murphy in WWII, or so we are to infer from the Post article.

Then comes the feminist propaganda line - discrimination by the patriarchy. "The Army prohibits women from serving in the infantry, artillery and armored units, the combat brigades on the front lines of war. For years, women like Broadwell and her commander in the 194th Military Police Company, Capt. Terri Dorn, have chosen careers in the Military Police Corps because all jobs in the field are open to women (34 of 171 soldiers in Dorn's company are female) - and it is the closest a woman can get to serving in the infantry."

The story then regurgitates the fiction of women MPs engaged in combat operations in Panama in 1989, which has been cited in the mass media as 'proof' of women belonging in combat roles. In fact, the women who were cited for 'heroism' in that 'campaign' - "performing exactly the same mission as all-male combat units" - actually attacked an enemy dog kennel, not human enemy combatants.

The full-page devoted to the Broadwell story in the Post is a glowing propaganda piece for women in combat - in ALL military units. "The firefight was unexpected, like so many engagements in Iraq ... The commander of the MP battalion had come to Karbala that day to review intelligence indications that tensions in the city were surging, following a shootout between religious factions four days earlier ... [The commander] was riding along on a routine patrol ... when he and soldiers in three Humvees saw dozens of heavily armed guards for Sheik Mahmoud Hassani standing near the sheik's compound on either side of Highway 9. Hassani, a Shiite religious leader ... was not enamored of the U.S. presence in Iraq. The Americans had already had run-ins with his men and told them they could not carry arms on the street."

But here they were again, in open defiance of the weapons ban. The Americans ... stopped their vehicles, got out and started walking toward the Iraqis. One of them motioned for the Americans to lay down their weapons before coming any closer ... [an Iraqi] fired a shot ... [The battalion commander] was hit almost immediately and fell to the ground. Then all hell broke loose ... it seemed like a well-planned ambush, given the large number of Iraqis on both sides of the highway firing from roof-tops, storefronts and alleys."

One of the American participants in the firefight said, "That one individual decided he wanted to fight that night. We outgunned them - that's the only way we got out of there. If Broadwell and her comrades 'hadn't fired that night, none of us would have made it out.'" Of course, that was the gunners' job -- the ordinary laying down of suppressive fire. Not an act of 'heroism.'

But that didn't stop the Post propagandist (and the Army) from extolling the ordinary to produce a female combat hero. "Since Broadwell wasn't quite tall enough to see through the weapon's sight [what in hell was she doing there if she wasn't even able to perform the minimal qualification task of sighting in her weapon?], she was gauging the accuracy of her fire with tracer rounds -- every fifth bullet in an Mmm-249's ammunition belt ignites a phosphoric compound that leaves a luminescent trail to help gunners see where they are firing."

"[Broadwell] remembers feeling terrified, but somehow fighting through it and 'walking tracer rounds' into her targets. Somehow [for God's sake, it's a miracle she didn't kill her own troops], no rounds or shrapnel hit Guerrero, down on the street ... Guerrero credits Broadwell with saving his life. 'She was up there doing what we trained her to do as a gunner,' he said. 'She kept their heads down.'"

"' She was on top of it,' says Pfc. Jonathan Rape, who was driving their vehicle that night. 'If she were two inches taller, it would have helped, but you couldn't expect anything more. All I could hear was the [squad automatic weapon] going off. She seemed so calm. It was three-to-five-shot bursts, like she was taught. That told us she wasn't freaking out and holding the trigger down and spraying. She covered the whole right side of our truck."

For her role that night in the Oct. 16 firefight, Broadwell "...was awarded the Bronze Star with V for valor ... [During the awards ceremony], "Capt. Dorn recalls how Broadwell stood in the front row and cried the whole time. But Wallen, the unit's 1st sergeant, corrects her. 'The whole damn unit did [cried],' he says." Read 'The Crying of the Admirals' [described above] and the "Navy Inspector General's Report on the 'Integration of Women into Carrier Air Wing Eleven'" to learn how widespread and 'accepted' this practice of women 'crying' has become in the U.S. military. A touchy-feely military that cries when attempting to meet the stress of a combat environment is one which is doomed to defeat. And yet, that is just what we are getting in today's 'feminized' military.

To quote from the Navy report [34a], "The [Landing Signal Officers] LSOs had encountered argumentative men, also. Buth they could deal with that problem easily. The would stick a finger in their chest, tell them to shut up, and continue with the debrief. They didn't think they could do that to a woman aviator. One of the senior LSOs recounted a debrief in which he became so frustrated that he had to stop and walk away ... Occasionally, during a tough debrief, a woman would start crying. The LSOs were used to seeing men curse, throw objects, and kick things when they performed poorly. But they didn't know what to do with [women Navy 'fighter' pilots] crying. They didn't know how to interpret [the female's] crying, or whether they could continue the debrief."

As contrast, compare the Broadwell propaganda piece with the story Rick Bragg tells of Sethe Bunke, a U.S. Marine with the 'warrior ethos,' as described above. Indeed, the mass media is fueling the agenda: the intent is to 'feminize' the entire U.S. military, including its 'tip of the spear' infantry combat troops.

There were heroes, in the tradition of America's fighting men, even in the 507th Maintenance Company of which Pvt. Jessica Lynch was a part when it was ambushed. But the mass media never picked up on their stories. One such hero is Pfc. Patrick Miller. Mike Wallace on '60 Minutes' told this story [35] on 6 November 2003, fully seven months after the false story of Jessica Lynch's 'heroism' was hyped across the nation. "At sunrise, Iraqi troops ambushed the lost soldiers, firing from both sides of the highway. The Americans sped up to escape the attack, but the Humvee that Pfc. Jessica Lynch was riding in smashed into the back of a jack-knifed American tractor-trailer. Less than a mile behind Lynch, Pfc. Patrick Miller was driving the last truck in the convoy. During the attack, he floored the accelerator, trying to steer and duck bullets at the same time."

"Miller says he had not used his weapon at that point. 'I used my truck on one of 'em,' he says. 'An Iraqi jumped out in the middle of the street, and I ran him over.' Iraqi bullets pounded Miller's truck, which also carried Sgt. James Riley and Pfc. Brandon Sloan. 'I knew that we were taking a lot of incoming just from the sounds that were coming around us,' Miller says. 'It was bouncing off the trucks, bouncin' off the hood. I went to stick my hand out the window to adjust the mirror so I could see 'em comin' from behind. And as I got my hand to the window, the mirror just shattered."

"At that moment a bullet hit Sloan in his forhead, killing him instantly ... Bullets then ripped into his truck's transmission, and it lost power. Miller and Riley jumped out and ran forward to where Lynch's Humvee had slammed into the tractor-trailer. Lynch was unconscious and appeared to be dead. All four others inside were [assumed] killed."

"[Two other soldiers] were taking cover in their tractor-trailer. Their weapons had jammed and they were pinned down. But miller ran on toward the dump truck. '[Johnson] yells, 'Miller! Get down here. You're gonna get hit,' Miller says. And I said, 'I gotta go.' And I just kept going."

"Miller took a bullet in his arm. He says there were a 'whole bunch' of Iraqis firing on them. 'All I could see was bullets that were hitting the dirt around my feet.' Just when it seemed the situation couldn't get any worse, it did. Miller saw a group of Iraqis setting up a mortar position in front of the dump truck. He says it could have wiped them all out. To prevent them from firing, Miller dove behind a horseshoe-shaped mound of dirt called a berm, across the highway from the Iraqis. But it was seven Iraqis against one American - seven Iraqis who were in that mortar pit just 25 yards away."

"What did [Miller] do? 'One guy, like, jumped up to where I could see him, and he had a mortar round in his hand, getting ready to drop it in the tube,' he says. 'And as he jumped up, I just raised my rifle up and shot, and he fell over. It was the first shot he fired in the incident ... But after that first shot, his rifle jammed. He had to pound on it with the palm of his hand, after every shot, to get the next bullet loaded into the chamber. He kept on re-loading and shooting. 'I was kind of getting a rhythm down, count like seconds and then look up,' he explains. 'And you could see somebody else trying to load it [the mortar]. So, I was starting to count, and when I'd get to the number, I'd look up. And somebody else would be trying to load it, and I'd shoot. I did that probably seven times total. I counted the last time, and when I looked up, there wasn't nobody there.'"

"Everybody knows about Jessica Lynch, but nobody knows about Patrick [Miller]. 'And he did an amazing thing,' [Shoshana] Johnson says. 'He saved our lives. If that mortar had hit that vehicle we were underneath, we'd be gone. And so would Jessica, because it would have been a chain reaction. It had all the fuel, we'd be dead.'"

"Iraqi gunmen surrounded the group and took them prisoner. They went into captivity ... and were rescued 21 days later ... For now, Miller has been working anonymously in the motor-pool at Fort Carson in Colorado. Three months after the crash, The Washington Post [the same newspaper that trumpeted the first false story on Jessica Lynch's 'heroism'] referred to [Miller] thusly in an article on Jessica Lynch: 'One soldier whose name could not be learned, took cover behind a berm. Iraqi soldiers were on the other side in a mortar pit. He killed a half dozen of them, a defense official said. Soon though, he was surrounded by a couple of dozen armed Iraqis and is believed to have been killed on the spot. 'He didn't have a chance,' said the official."

"Baltimore Sun reporter Tom Bowman revealed the name of the unsung hero. Bowman had learned that out of the 150,000 U.S. soldiers sent to Iraq, Miller was one of only 90 to receive the Silver Star for valor."

Col. Heidi Brown [Commander of the 507th] explains why, out of 2,000 soldiers under her command, Miller was the only one she recommended for one of the Army's highest awards. She says, 'Private First Class Miller did things during war that no other soldier underneath my command did. He risked his life to save his comrades and he absolutely did." In the long tradition of the U.S. Army, Miller was heroic - but not in the New Age of the Mythical Modern American War Hero, as championed by the nation's feminized mass media.

Col. Brown also has an idea why the Pentagon had first mistakenly described Lynch as a fierce warrior who'd been shot and stabbed fighting off Iraqis. The Americans there had heard an Iraqi radio transmission describing a blond American fighting to her last breath before she was shot and stabbed to death. Now Brown believes they may have confused Lynch with another blond soldier in her unit, Sgt. Donald Walters, whose body was later found shot and stabbed to death. 'The Iraqi reports had, whether it was the actual Iraqi, the language, or the translation, used, 'she' instead of 'he' and that is my understanding of why there was confusion in this,' she says."

It turns out that this view of the Lynch/Walters story is correct. It surfaced only long after the celebration of Jessica Lynch's 'heroism' was firmly entrenched on the American consciousness. Mrs. Walters, Sgt. Walters mother, observed [36] that the hometown celebration of Jessica Lynch "...served only to highlight the contrasting treatment of her dead son, who fought in the same unit ... It was, fellow soldiers have told her, Sgt. Donald Walters who performed many of the heroics attributed to Pvt. Lynch in the fanfare of publicity designed to lift the nation's morale, and Sgt. Walters who was killed after mounting a lone stand against the Iraqis who ambushed their convoy ... Yet few, if any, of the Americans watching Pvt. Lynch's homecoming ... have even heard her son's name ... The fighter that they thought was Jessica Lynch was Donald [Walters]. When he was found he had two stab wounds in the abdomen, and he'd been shot once in the right leg and twice in the back. And he'd emptied his rounds of ammunition [at the enemy]. Just like they said Jessica had done at first."

"Sgt. Walters, a 33-year-old military cook ... blond and slim but not a photogenic female warrior, had been serving with the ill-fated 507th Maintenance Unit ... the U.S. Army released a detailed report into the incident which makes it clear that a lone American fighter did, indeed, hold out against the Iraqis - but that the soldier was not Pvt. Lynch. It says that following the ambush, Sgt. Walters may have been left behind, hiding beside a disabled tractor-trailer, as Iraqi troops closed in. The report confirms that he died of wounds identical to those first attributed to Pvt. Lynch."

"Mrs. Walters and her husband are now struggling to persuade the U.S. military to acknowledge fully their son's bravery. Sgt. Walters has been posthumously awarded the bronze medal [the same medal awarded to Jessica Lynch], but his relatives argue that higher honors are deserved. The army says the investigation into the incident is now closed ... 'I can't imagine him being left out there in the desert alone,' said Mrs. Walters, who is still haunted by images of her son's lone stand ... 'Perhaps the army don't want to admit to the fact that he was left behind in the desert to fight alone,' she said. 'It isn't a good news story.'" This is the norm in today's media-oriented choosing of our combat heroes. It follows a pattern developed by the counter-culture Boomer generation over the past three-or-so decades as they moved into control of both the mass media and the upper echelons of the U.S. military. Read the essay at the link: 'Who Chooses America's Heroes' to learn this truth.

Conclusion - War is Hell, Get Used to It America is at war. Very little in the lives of most Americans has been changed by this fact. The behavior of politicians has changed little from pre-war days; they act as if the war were only a 'campaign issue' for the next election. The popular culture rushes on from 'raves' and binkys to Paris Hilton and filmed sex acts in 'streaming' video on the Internet, rewarded by guest interviews on the Late Night shows. From 'Teletubby' grown-ups to Metrosexual males, life goes on as usual - a perpetual adolescence. Radical feminists still tout the 'gender wage gap' without regard to the Marxist origins of their proposed solution to their perception of an oppressive patriarchy. Young men face no chance of conscription for duty in our armed forces and many think in terms of building a bright future through a college education. Boys, however, are still short-changed in school and college in favor of girls. Law schools believe that churning out more lawyers - over half women - is the solution to enforcing 'egalitarian' regulations and laws. Pre-war America goes on just as if 9-11 had not occurred.

But there is a segment of U.S. society which is directly and heavily engaged in the War on Terrorism of Global Reach. The individuals who serve in our armed forces, including the over-deployed Reserve and National Guard forces are directly and personally aware that America is at war. More than 9,200 soldiers have been medically evacuated [36a] from Iraq between 19 March and 30 October 2003. Philip Gold reminds us that "These people cannot be efficiently replaced. And their loss has profound and dangerous implications for the Army, for Iraq, and for the world."

"Of the 2,000-plus troops evacuated for wounds, far fewer than normal will return to duty. In prior wars, wounded soldiers often went back to their units, forming a veteran core, or were assigned to supporting units and training commands. But in Iraq, soldiers are now wounded less by gunshot, thanks to improved body armor, than by improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades. The results are often catastrophic."

"Obviously, no army engaged in deadly contact can function without a steady stream of replacements. The Problem lies in generating those replacements ... a combat unit worn down to 70 percent of its strength loses effectiveness. The soldiers still fight. Bt 30 percent casualties means units can no longer maneuver and cover each other as effectively. The work load remains the same but fewer soldiers are available to do it. Probably a goodly chunk of the leadership has been lost. Cumulating fear and grief take their toll."

Gold reveals how we are attempting to fight a 12-division war, including the rotation pattern now envisioned, with only a 10-division army. "Yes, [the current rotation schedule] can be done with eight divisions relieving each other, but the cost in personnel is enormous ... They get out. Active and reserve, they already are ... Whether we should have gone into Iraq is no longer the issue. We're there. We won't be leaving any time soon. Therefore, we must face the possibility this venture may break the United States Army and, in so doing, tempt our enemies to take advantage of the situation. What's the plan?"

Philip Gold is correct. War planners and our politicians have not awakened to the dire condition they have jumped into. America is at war. And we are acting as if nothing has changed - except maybe to find 'creative' ways to do more with less and rely on high-technology to get us off the hook. This is a fantasy. The leaders of this nation, including our military leaders must start mobilizing for war - prepare the American people for the sacrifices that they must make and the burdens they must shoulder in order to win it.

At least one citizen realizes that America is at war - and isn't afraid to say so publicly. Of course, being just an ordinary citizen, he can pronounce this fact without harm to a 'career,' but it is important that someone 'announce' this fact. Barrett Kalellis reasons thusly [36b], "...surely just as World Wars I and II were multinational conflicts fought in several 'theaters,' worldwide terrorism uses insurgent forces from many countries to instigate acts of violence all across the globe, mostly against noncombatants. Unlike the previous world wars, waged largely for expansionist and political gains, World War III [Note: Others would say WWIV, giving the Cold War status as WWIII] is being fought by foot soldiers trained and sent into battle as surrogates, sponsored by ruling parties in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Libya and other Islamic countries."

"These adversaries are ideologically driven zealots, either sectarian religious jihadists or secular anti-Western, anti-Israel, nationalist fanatics, and are united by their common Arabic and Muslim culture ... Sophisticated, extremist networks finance these murderers as they plot and carry out their violent and often suicidal missions. Like a demented worldwide franchise operation, terrorist cells are supplied with explosives for car and truck bombs, small arms, grenades, shoulder firing missiles, mortars and other war material to wreak havoc on innocent civilians or coalition forces."

"Whether [we can achieve our goals] depends on U.S. staying power and whether we still believe anything is worth fighting for. Sadly, American society at the beginning of the 21st century has little stomach for protracted conflicts, let alone ideological ones. We are a self-absorbed people, and our psychological metabolism urges us to get even faster from point A to point B, without knowing what to do with the time we save."

"In the land of the 10-minute oil change, the 20-minute fast food meal, the Pentium IV processor and citizens with the attention span of a humming bird, overseas wars have to be resolved quickly, lest disillusionment and remorse set in ... One wonders if Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry Truman ever needed to consider an exit strategy in their day ... People opposed to the ... mission in Iraq are sounding more like the events of September 11, 2001 were only a distant bad dream [see the essay at the link: 'America's Happy Place' to understand this mind-set]. They offer the illusion that deep-rooted conflicts can be resolved on the cheap, and that we can then go back to business as usual."

"To prevail in any war, you first must know your enemy. Americans must understand the worldwide network of terrorists is not going away until we stamp it our. World War III has already begun."

Victor Davis Hanson, the esteemed classical scholar and author of many books on the warrior ethos of the ancient Greeks, has written a book, which accepts the inevitability of war and how it must be waged against the Islamic terrorists. Hanson calls for 'resolute action and victory' against terrorism, while waxing indignant over the nation's 'cultural elite,' people who as a general rule lead lives rather different from those of most Americans [37]. "What [Hanson] brings to the public discussion [of the Iraq war] is a philosophy of war not meant for the weak-kneed or faint-hearted. Hanson does not celebrate war, but accepts it as a fact of life, a part of the human condition that no amount of idealistic preaching or good intentions can will away. We are doomed to conflict and bloodletting ... The most powerful section [of the book] describes the fighting on Okinawa [in WWII] and explains how it led, almost inevitably, to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese on Okinawa, Hanson says, knew that they couldn't win; their aim was simply to kill as many Americans as possible, to demonstrate how costly an invasion of the mainland would be ... Hanson's conclusion is unassailable: 'The reasons for Hiroshima ... are inexplicable without remembrance of Okinawa."

This conclusion is directly applicable to the situation America faces in Iraq. If we do not as a nation rediscover the toughness of our leadership, civilian and military, that was exhibited during World War II against a brutal and ruthless Japanese enemy, we will not prevail in the war on terrorism - which requires that we succeed in at least 'neutralizing' Iraq. The Wall Street Journal describes the brutal assassination and murder by Saddam Hussein's guerrillas of other Iraqis who cooperate with us in our attempt to 'democratize' Iraq. It describes the assassination of judges, policemen, and other Iraqis who show support for our efforts there [37a]. "The insurgents are borrowing a page from the bloody guerrilla campaigns that have in recent decades destabilized places such as Vietnam, Algeria, Chechnya, and Mozambique. By killing some of the Iraqis working with the U.S., it's believed they are trying to intimidate others from doing so, increasing the odds that the nation-building process will fail here and allow the militants or their allies to seize control ... Assassins in recent weeks have shot several ... [Iraqi] officials." And while the enemy applies these murderous techniques on civilians, we have weak-kneed military top brass who, fearful for their careers, attempt to court-martial our 'warriors' who attempt to frighten guerrilla-friendly detainees in order to gain information regarding assassination attempts on our officers' and ambushes of our troops. An armed force with such high-level leadership will not prevail in the war on terrorism."

With that conclusion firmly in mind, we drift back to the 'West Affair.' The final action by the Army in the 'West Affair' was to impose a $5,000 fine as a result of a final decision by Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of the 45h Infantry Division [37b]. Odierno "...decided against court-martialing West ... [but] ordered that the punishment be made part of West's permanent file, effectively ending his military career, but allowed West, 42, to retire next spring after 20 years military service without any loss of pension benefits." How absolutely magnanimous of the general! Completely destroy a true 'warriors' career, fine him $5,000, and 'let' him retire - as a signal to America's future enemies that we do not have the guts, courage, nor will to win a war against a ruthless, resourceful and dedicated enemy.

This ending is a disaster for Lt.Col. West, the U.S. Army, and the entire U.S. military. It is a signal to everyone in the U.S. military that its high-level leadership is only interested in their own careers. Their 'cover your back-side' actions in the 'West Affair' reveals the weakness of today's high-level military leadership. If military (and civilian) leadership of this kind were the norm during World War II, we would all be living under the yoke of either Hitler's Nazi socialism and/or fanatic Japanese nationalism.

This ending of the 'West Affair' is a disaster for the American people. If our nation is really AT WAR, and we are, then this conclusion sends a signal to the Islamic terrorist enemy (and any other potential enemies with global reach) that we do not have the courage or will to take the actions necessary to win. It is a signal that we are not serious about giving our military the tools necessary to win. It is a signal, in the end of ends, that our culture has been 'feminized' beyond our ability to recover the 'warrior ethos' that enabled us to win every major war in our young nation's history.

Lt.Col. West's attorney, a retired Marine, states this aspect of the case perfectly [37c]. "The problem with today's Army is that the top brass seem to have become paranoid about making common sense decisions without the 'advice of counsel' ... Those counsel usually have no idea what it means to command troops in combat ... Had true Army leaders been allowed to handle this without benefit of counsel ... West would still be in command, would have been privately congratulated, and told to stay out of the interrogation business in the future ... That would have been true Army leadership. Those type of leaders are still in the Army. It's just that they have been subverted by job-satisfying lawyers who seek to play a larger role in the command."

The 'lawyering' of command decisions, all the way down to the choosing of targets (as described earlier), is not the whole problem. The real problem is that the present-day military high-level leadership is not willing to take the career risk of the 'common sense' decisions necessary at the field level on the ground to win. They have been Colin Powellized [read affirmative actioned and bureaucratized to point of impotence - that is 'feminized'] to the point that a true 'warrior' with the true 'warrior spirit' (such as Lt.Col. West) simply cannot reach the two, three, and four-star ranks. Warriors, like Lt.Col. West, who before the incident "...[had] a bright future. Perhaps a brigade command in his future," are humiliated by immediate removal from command of their units, intimidated by lawyer-threatened court-martial, and see their careers destroyed by a military whose top-level leadership is simply not capable of assuring victory in the war against Islamic terror - much less against a looming Chinese threat.

We should be aware that retired Generals have supported the 'feminization' of the Army -- both while on active duty and while retired. With regard to the 'West Affair,' Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey - the former commander of the light armored division that carried out the panzer-like sweep of the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard during the first Iraq War - supported the 'cashiering' of Lt.Col. West in this war [37d]. "Gen. McCaffery, a leader in the community of retired Army officers, was pleased by Odierno's decision." McCaffery, who served the Clintons' presidency in both terms was the Army officer who was famously 'insulted' at the White House by a female Clinton aide and suffered the insult magnanimously in his quest for a place in the political spotlight. McCaffrey was a vocal supporter - both while on active duty and retired - of women in combat. Of course, these military-political sycophants will do anything toe curry favor with their political 'mentors' of choice.

The Nov/Dec 2002 issue of my Eternal Vigilance journal reviews the James Kittfield book, 'Prodigal Soldiers,' in which Gen. McCaffrey is a leading figure. The book flagrantly exagerated the role of women in the Gulf Storm War [37e]. "The book has a surprising subtext. The book treats women in the military in a way that implies women actually engaged in combat and were indispensable to the winning of the war. In fact, the book follows the line of radical feminist propaganda in which women were characterized as 'heroines' for events that were simply ordinary. The Index contains 19 lines on the role of women in the Desert Storm War -- surmounted only by the topic 'Persian Gulf War' which had 37 lines and 'Desert Storm Operations' which contained 21 lines. The 'women' index had far more than 'Race Relations' (11 lines) and one more than those addressing the role of the 'Marines' (18 lines). Of course the Navy's contribution (30 lines) was mostly on 'negative' subjects such as the Tailhook 'scandal' and its opposition to Goldwater-Nichols, and the Lehman era of the Navy's global Maritime Strategy."

Gen. McCaffrey's lauding of the female soldier exemplifies the high-ranking military officer of the 1990s with aspirations of a position of influence in the political arena after retirement. "The book is of special interest, not for what it tells us about these officers, but for what is contained between the lines. For example, McCaffrey's early career included the authorship of a paper on the expanded role of women in the All Volunteer Force. It was an optimistic piece. True to form, he later spoke positively about the role played by the 1,000 or so women in his 25,000 man division during the war. They had '...endured some of the worst field conditions he had ever experienced, and while a higher percentage of women than men had been unable to deploy from Fort Stewart because of various medical problems, McCaffrey had yet to have a commander bring a problem concerning female soldiers to his attention. Some of his hard-bitten commanders even volunteered that the female soldiers had a calming influence on the men, who seemed to behave better and were less likely to show cases of nerves around women.' Not even the case of the 40-ish woman who insulted McCaffrey at the White House under Clinton's reign could shake that impression -- providing cover for Bill Clinton in his Commander-in-Chief role."

The troops who would fight to the end for the Col. Wests of our military will rapidly lose confidence in those who lead them into battle. The troops under Lt.Col. West's command "...testified to his positive, proactive leadership style. The soldiers felt like a team and would go out of their way to support him and many stated they would [fight] for him again." That kind of leadership cannot be bought. But it can be destroyed - from within - by a 'feminized' military command structure. America's political leaders must learn that we cannot continue to 'glorify' the young Colin Powells [the military 'politicos' and military bureaucrats] in the military and pillory the real 'warriors' - those who are capable of winning our nation's future wars - the Lt.Col. Wests.

When we learn that terrorists in Iraq are tracking targets - such as Lt. Col. West and his troops - and the ambushes [38] against them show signs of effective spying, it is time for America's civilian leaders to face the reality of this war. Our military must be purged of the bureaucratic 'ticket-punchers' who have acceded to the 'feminization' of our armed forces by the politicians who are too timid and fearful of the shrill sisters over the land who vote lock-step for the wimps who cower at the rustle of a skirt - or a female decked out in pretend-masculine attire. We must insist that the U.S. military be given the tools, including those used by Lt.Col. West on the battlefield to obtain information from enemy detainees that can save the lives of America's sons in harm's way.

We must insist on keeping, honoring, and promoting the Lt.Col. Wests in our armed forces and free them to fight this brutal guerrilla war in such a way that we have a chance to win it. If we do not, American civilization will go the same route the ancient Greek empire traveled - to dissolution, disintegration, despair -- and will disappear. Feminized, weak, and corrupted beyond reclamation. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Footnotes: 1) Scarborough, Rowan, "Army files charge in combat tactic," The Washington Times, 29 October 2003. 2) Scarborough, Rowan, "West's attorney cites woes in queries: Detainees brag of not talking," The Washington Times, 2 December 2003. 2a) Scarborough, Rowan, "'Great news' for West in assault case: Article 15 recommended," The Washington Times, 11 December 2003. 3) Scarborough, Rowan, "Colonel in Iraq refuses to resign," The Washington Times, 31 October 2003. 4) Durant, Will, "The Story of Civilization, Volume II, The Life of Greece," pp. 554, Simon & Schuster, 1939 and 1966. 5) Ibid, pp. 470. 6) Ibid, pp. 566-568. 7) Ibid, pp. 467-469. 8) Hallpern, Orley, "4th [Infantry Division] officer faces discipline for alleged abuse of Iraqi," Cox News Service, 19 November 2003. 9) Venticinque, Lou, "More West, less Lynch," LETTERS, The Washington Times, 23 November 2003. 10) Hackworth, David, Col., "Fire the perfumed princes now," Defending America, WorldNetDaily, 11 November 2003. 11) Kalellis, Barrett, "The university and its discontents," The Washington Times, 30 November 2003. 12) A veteran 'raver' on the Internet at: http://www.livingart.com/raving/articles/azravescene0, viewed on 3 December 2003. 13) Furedi, Frank, "The children who won't grow up," 29 July 2003, http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000DE8D.htm. 14) Bess, Allyce, "MET·RO·SEX·U·AL : What make the man?" The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 14 September 2003. 15) Tiger, Lionel, "You've Got Male!" The Wall Street Journal, 20 August 2003. 16) Egan, Jennifer, "Romance 2.0: How Internet dating is re-engineering flirtation, seduction, relationships and the love-seeking self," The New York Times Magazine, 23 November 2003. 16a) de Borchgrave, Arnaud, "Over the cuckoo's nest," The Washington Times, 2 December 2003. 16b) Lafayette High School Commencement Program, Rockwood School District, Chesterfield, Missouri, 2003. 16c) Toppo, Greg, "The face of the American Teacher," USA TODAY, 2 July 2003. 16d) Hernandex, Nelson, "Survey at Naval Academy Finds More Dissatisfaction: Midshipmen Less Happy With Their Training," The Washington Post, 13 December 2003. 16e) Editorial, "The Crying of the Admirals," The Washington Times, 3 November 1995. 16f) Maddox, John D., "Time to play 'Taps' for military leadership?" FORUM, The Washington Times, 18 August 2002. 16g) Conlin, Michelle, "The New Gender Gap: From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex," BusinessWeek Online, 26 May 2003. 16h) Roberts, Carey, "Marx and the gender wage gap," The Washington Times, 14 December 2003. 17) Ibid, Durant, Will, pp. 566-568. 18) Duin, Julia, "Fewer Americans in church: Lack of relevance cited," The Washington Times, 11 April 2002. 19) Wilson, James Q., "Bookshelf: The 11th Commandment Seems to Be 'Judge Not,'" A book review in the Wall Street Journal of the book, Moral Freedom by Alan Wolfe, Norton, 5 April 2001. 20) White, Gayle, "Homosexual support splits Baptists," The Washington Times, 19 April 2001. 21) Fishburne, Bill, "Living on Borrowed Time: The American Episcopal Church," The Asheville Tribune, 19-26 April 2001. 22) Duin, Julia, "U.S. Episcopalians pursue alternative: Gay issue provokes splintering," The Washington Times, 6 December 2003. 23) Grossman, Cathy Lynn, "What's next for the catholic church: U.S. leadership falters as scandal spreads," USA TODAY, 16 April 2002. 24) McGeary, Johanna, "Can the Church Be Saved,?" TIME Magazine, 1 April 2002. 25) Novak, Michael, "The Culture of 'Dissent,'" National Review Online, 29 March 2002. 26) Grenier, Cynthia, "Feminist Bible 'decoding,'" The Washington Times, 6 December 2003. 26a) Szczepanowski, Richard, "Cracking the 'Da Vinci Code,'" Catholic Standard, 11 December 2003. 27) Kantrowitz, Barbara, Underwood, Anne, "The Bible's Lost Stories," NEWSWEEK, pp. 49-59, 8 December 2003. 28) Woodward, Kenneth L., "God's Woman Trouble," NEWSWEEK, " pp. 60, 8 December 2003. 29) Ibid, Durant, Will, pp. 469. 30) "America has more lawyers, in actual numbers and in ratio to total population than any other country on earth. We are the most litigious country on the planet, probably the most litigious in history. And we have the world's highest imprisonment rate, higher even than the former Soviet Union's and South Africa's." Ruggiero, Vincent R., "Warning: Nonsense is Destroying America; The Role of Popular Culture in America's Social Problems," pp. 15, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1994. 31) Phillips, Kevin, "Fat City: Americans have good reason to hate Washington," pp. 49, TIME Magazine, 26 September 1994. 32) Taylor, Jr., Stuart and Thomas, Evan, "Civil Wars," NEWSWEEK, pp. 43-51, 15 December 2003. 32a) Scarborough, Rowan, "Ex-Navy pilot loses libel suit, again," The Washington Times, 13 December 2003. 32b) Allen, Jodie, "Are men obsolete?' U.S. News.com, 23 June 2003. 33) Bragg, Rick, "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 121-124, 2003. 34) Loeb, Vernon, "Combat Heroine: Teresa Broadwell Found Herself in the Army - Under Fire, in Iraq," The Washington Post, 23 November 2003. 34a) Naval Inspector General, "Report of Investigation, Case No. 951297, 'Integration of Women into Carrier Air Wing Eleven,'" pp. 198, 10 February 1997. 35) Wallace, Mike, "Jessica Lynch's Hero," '60 Minutes, CBS-TV, CBSNews.com, 6 November 2003. 36) Coman, Julian, The Sunday Telegraph, UK, http://www.rense.com, 27 July 2003. 36a) Kalellis, Barrett, "Terrorism: Wor ld War III by any definition," FORUM, The Washington Times, 14 December 2003. 37) Gewen, Barry, "War is Hell: Get Used to It," a review of the book, 'Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We live, and How We Think," by Victor Davis Hanson, 28 September 2003. 37a) Dreazen, Yochi J., "Shadow Assassins: Insurgents Turn Guns on Iraqis Backing Democracy," The Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2003. 37b) Loeb, Vernon, "Army Fines Officer for Firing Pistol Near Iraqi Detainee," The Washington Post, 13 December 2003. 37c) Scarborough, Rowan, "Officer avoids court-martial," The Washington Times, 13 December 2003. 37d) Ibid, Loeb, Vernon. 37e) Atkinson, Gerald L., "Book Review," 'Prodigal Soldiers,' by James Kittfield, The Eternal Vigilance journal, Atkinson Associates Press, November/December 2002. 38) Shanker, Thom, "U.S. is Worried Foe is Tracking Targets in Iraq: Signs of Effective Spying," The New York Times, 29 November 2003. 39) Hodder, Ian, "Women and Men at Çatalhöyük," Scientific American, pp.77-83, January 2004.

a topic about Feminization of America!!!

I believe this deserves the rarely used:

DAVE SIM/CEREBUS PING!

(ill try to read this "rant" later)

Lt.Col. West punished two soldiers for doing what he did, and then demanded a get-out-of-jail-free card for his own misconduct.

He who cannot command himself has no business commanding others.

5 posted on 12/01/2004 1:57:26 PM PST by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!)

The Persian King Cyrus asked the Lydian King Croesus what he must do in order not to have to fear the Greeks in his kingdom rising up against him. Croesus replied: "[T]o make sure of their never rebelling against you, or alarming you more, send and forbid them to keep any weapons of war, command them to wear tunics under their cloaks, and to put buskins upon their legs, and make them bring up their sons to lyre-playing, harping, and shop-keeping. So you will soon see them become women instead of men, and there will be no more fear of their revolting against you."

Herodotus.

West's conduct would not have merited a second glance during World War II.

West's conduct would not have merited a second glance during World War II.

West would not have been an officer in World War II.

12 posted on 12/01/2004 2:08:18 PM PST by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!)

A must read for every American. It is the enemy within that will defeat us.

The problem with what West did is that it became public. Normally, the Army would have looked the other way on this if it could have. But because someone ratted him out, the Army had to do something because what he did was a technical violation of the Law of War to which our military is supposed to be bound.

The writer is overreacting.

Actually, there were African-American officers during WW II.

West would not have been a combat arms officer in the 4th ID.

18 posted on 12/01/2004 2:18:37 PM PST by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!)

I served under COL Heidi Brown during Operation Iraqi Freedom-she is definitely class-one of the finest officers I have ever served under (male or female). However, the article erroneously describes her as the commander of the 507th Maintenance Company. COL Brown commanded the 507th's parent unit, the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade.

Also, West had punished two men for violating the same rules with respect to treatment of prisoners that he did. At that point, the Army had to act to keep the chain of command intact--nothing causes problems for morale faster than "do as I say, not as I do."

20 posted on 12/01/2004 2:21:52 PM PST by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!)

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