The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Too Many White Guys in U.S. Military?

Posted on | March 8, 2011 | 51 Comments

Being stuck in Kabul with crappy bandwidth is, apparently, a privilege that all those crackers are hogging:

The U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change recruiting and promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat, an independent report for Congress said Monday.
Seventy-seven percent of senior officers in the active-duty military are white, while only 8 percent are black, 5 percent are Hispanic and 16 percent are women, the report by an independent panel said, quoting data from September 2008. . . .
“This problem will only become more acute as the racial, ethnic and cultural makeup of the United States continues to change,” said the report from the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, whose more than two dozen members included current and former military personnel as well as businessmen and other civilians.

My first reaction on reading this report was to think of Smitty, a squid stuck in landlocked Afghanistan. Too white, too male: Send him home!

My second thought was: “Military Leadership Diversity Commission? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Who dreamed that up?” Answer:

Under the provisions of The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, Section 596, Public Law 110-417, Congress established the Department of Defense (DoD) Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC).

So this provision got jammed into the defense budget and now, two years later, we get this report — which provides the Obama administration an excuse to start messing around with the military under the guise of “enhancing diversity.”

My third reaction? Imagining our enemies laughing their butts off.

Category: Military

Comments

51 Responses to “Too Many White Guys in U.S. Military?”

  1. Joe
    March 8th, 2011 @ 9:09 am

    If NPR is going to call us all racists, at least they could use five “a”s when they do so.

    H/T to Glenn Reynolds for this find.

  2. spot_the_dog
    March 8th, 2011 @ 6:08 pm

    Boo white oppressor. Boo.