Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Ground combat not PC

Sunday, April 30, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

Time and time again leading military observers have warned the Pentagon that too much time and energy is being expended on social activities. Paratroopers, infantrymen, Marines and other combat troops don't appreciate being baby sitters and social workers in foreign countries. These are exactly the roles they have had to play in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Pentagon officials quickly reply that American military forces are the best in the world. But how long will they be able to say this and mean it? Why is it so difficult to recruit enough people to fill the ranks and keep them in the world's elite forces?

Less than three years ago a high-level Pentagon committee led by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker reported after a five-month study. The report told us the troops "almost all said that basic training was easier than expected, that discipline should be more strongly emphasized and enforced, and that the requirements and standards should be made more consistent across training units within a service..." Most of the committee's report was filed someplace and forgotten.

You can bet that Marines coming out of boot camp weren't being quoted. This is probably because men and women don't go through Marine boot camps together. About the same time the report was being prepared, Assistant Army Secretary Sara E. Lister told an audience, "I think the Army is more connected to society than the Marines are." Then she added, "The Marines are extremists. Whenever you have extremists, you've got the risk of total disconnection from society, and that's dangerous." She didn't say the Marines couldn't fight and accomplish their missions. Lister could have had some credibility if she had also noted that the Marines aren't failing to meet their recruiting needs.

Very simply, the White House and a majority of people in Congress are so busy being politically correct they have forgotten two very important matters. First, ground forces are trained to fight and combat isn't a social affair. Second, young Americans with the competitive nature and physical ability needed for challenges aren't joining the infantry or other ground units that are now assigned to social work or to keeping the peace between foreign civilians who hate each other.

Five years prior to the Kassebaum Baker report, in late 1992, a 15-member Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces rejected the pleas of a few to allow women to participate directly in ground combat jobs. Although they recommended they should serve on some combat ships, they restricted them from serving on submarines and amphibious vessels because of cramped quarters. Commission member Elaine Donnelly pointed out that "equal opportunity is not the principal purpose of the military."

Eight years ago Marine Capt. Rick J. Messer, in the "Marine Corps Gazette," took a look at the continuing push to make our military forces gender-neutral. Messer wrote, "Don't be deceived: these activists do not have combat effectiveness foremost on their minds. Their concern is strictly political/social and their solution is designed primarily to make the numbers right. ..." Again the politicians weren't listening and the Pentagon is forced to follow their dictates and Army recruitment dwindles and its young officers continue to turn in their uniforms for business suits.

The Los Angeles Times expressed concern in a recent editorial saying, "With all-volunteer armed forces, Americans depend on the few to defend the many. When the few become even fewer through shrinking retention rates and recruiting shortfalls, attention must be promptly paid. This is the country's problem, not just the military's."

This year another warning has come in Stephanie Gutmann's book, "The Kinder, Gentler Military," which asks: "Can America's gender-neutral fighting force still win wars?" The politically correct decision makers will ignore it as they have all other suggestions that would strengthen ground combat units. Personally, I believe it has enough to offer to spend some time reviewing the book in my Tuesday column.