{"id":6002,"date":"2017-11-15T11:01:50","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T10:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6002"},"modified":"2017-11-15T11:18:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T10:18:05","slug":"the-purpose-of-the-us-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/6002\/","title":{"rendered":"The Purpose of the US Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few stories have caught my attention over the past day or so, all on the subject of the US military. Here’s the first<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Facing low recruitment levels, the U.S. Army quietly lifted its ban on allowing people with a history of mental illness, self-mutilation and drug abuse to serve in the military \u2013 despite warnings from the industry about the risks involved.<\/p>\n

The new rules green-light recruits who have bipolar disorder, depression and issues with cutting \u2013 a process in which a person takes a knife or razor to his or her own skin\u00a0\u2013 along with those who bite, hit or bruise themselves intentionally.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What could possibly go wrong? Then there was this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An active-duty service member has received gender-reassignment surgery, the Pentagon said Tuesday, amid ongoing debate over whether transgender troops should be allowed to continue to serve in the military.<\/p>\n

Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White said the surgery was done Tuesday in a private hospital and was paid for by the military’s health coverage because the doctor deemed it was medically necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thirdly, this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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A leading organization of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans wants the Department of Veterans Affairs\u00a0to change its motto\u00a0because, the group\u2019s leaders say, the words first issued by Abraham Lincoln \u2014 \u201cTo care for\u00a0him<\/em>who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan\u201d \u2014 are outdated and, more important, they exclude the many contributions made by military women.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy excluding women,\u201d Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Executive Director Allison Jaslow wrote in her letter to VA, \u201cit \u2026 communicates to women veterans that they are unwelcome outsiders.\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

If a woman feels that her service is not valued, her sense of deserving mental health care also will suffer. This is not to say that feeling undervalued necessarily leads to suicidal thoughts, but rather that feeling this way can create barriers to seeking support.<\/p>\n

Developing a sense of belonging, through specific outreach from VA and by using more inclusive language in its motto and messaging to veterans, would help close this gap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, what these three stories show is the real purpose of the US military, at least in part – a part which is growing larger as time goes on. One would be forgiven for thinking, as traditionally was the case, that the purpose of the US military was to defend America’s interests against foreign enemies. Even if we’re going to buy into the NeoCon rubbish about spreading liberal values throughout the world by bombing places like Iraq (I confess, I fell for it), you can at least make the argument that bombing places and killing people is what the military is for, even if the causes are somewhat questionable. Whatever you thought of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the military appeared be doing what militaries do: wreck stuff and kill people.<\/p>\n

I suppose the US military still performs that role in some capacity, but a large portion of it now appears to have been turned over to something different. In part, the purpose of the military is to serve as a vehicle (one of many) for progressives to enact their deranged fantasies as part of an overall aim of undermining society and the institutions on which it depends as far as possible. Now perhaps I’m wrong in this, but one thing is for sure: the purpose of the US military is no longer fighting enemies in the hope of winning. It may still do so, but this will be in spite of the new direction, not because of it.<\/p>\n

But the story doesn’t end there. Obviously America is still keen to go around smashing things up and killing people and they’re not daft enough to think they can do that if they have a load of drug addicts, trannies, and anxious women making up the squads and platoons. So they’ve sort of separated the military in two, from what I can tell: on the one hand you have the military the public hears about which is basically a social welfare program with all its attendant progressive virtue-signalling; on the other hand you have bands of special forces roving around in places like Niger for decades at a time doing whatever they like without the civilian government in Washington having the slightest idea why they’re there (or even where Niger is). The ZMan has talked about this in one of his podcasts, and when he said the government – meaning Congress – has lost all control of the military he is right. But you can be sure that wherever there are American forces in places we’d find surprising, killing people and blowing stuff up, there won’t be many lunatics, transexuals, or women around.<\/p>\n

The other effect of this split in the military is the increased use of mercenaries, contractors, and foreign troops to carry out what would previously have been done by regular American forces. Proper fighting is best done by tough, young, aggressive men and that doesn’t change just because progressives have filled the military with just about everyone else. One way or another, the fighting will still be done by those who do it best and if that means those who would ordinarily join the army go and become mercenaries, that’s what they’ll do. If the US military is deploying somewhere it will still need fighting men, and if they’ve been forbidden from including them in their ranks they’ll simply hire them on location or enlist their services by other means. But as we saw in Iraq, this leads to even less transparency, accountability, and control over what is being done in America’s name. Occasionally I hear rumblings about the use of contractors and mercenaries, but we haven’t had anything like the Blackwater scandal<\/a> for a while. I suspect this is because senior people in the military know they are now more dependent on these people than ever before and are keeping a lid on things. Eventually something will go horribly wrong and there will be a public outcry (especially from the SJWs whose policies have brought this about), and everyone will be reminded how the US military operates in practice. Until then, it’s worth remembering that the US military is not what people think it is, and it doesn’t serve the purpose they think it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few stories have caught my attention over the past day or so, all on the subject of the US military. Here’s the first: Facing low recruitment levels, the U.S. Army quietly lifted its ban on allowing people with a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,44,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6009,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002\/revisions\/6009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}