The War On Nerds: SAPR Edition

Our group commander held a CC call in our agency auditorium the other day.  I always make it a point to arrive late to group CC calls and lurk around the entranceways, seeing how our group CC is likely the most long-winded individual ever to be trusted with the authority to gather people into an auditorium and talk at them.  This allows me to make as many bathroom breaks and/or early departures as necessary.  For instance, this call was executed in two stages: the first stage lasting 40 minutes; the second, after a brief intermission, going for 2.5 hours.

Until I actually get in trouble for treating “mandatory” calls as optional, the lurk-in-the-entranceways strategy seems like an optimum strategy.

During stage one, the group CC talked about Sexual Assault, Prevention and Response (SAPR).  These lectures are now a semi-permanent feature of all military-ish formations, much as mandatory harangues about “sexual harassment” went on in the years between, roughly, Tailhook on one end, and Monica Lewinski on the other.  Our group CC puts an above average amount of energy* into this, and during this particular call he told us a story.

The story was about testimony he heard during what I took to be SAPR “facilitator” training that he had attended.  (I’m not clear whether he was the beneficiary of this training as a volunteer, or whether he received it by virtue of being an O-6.)  The testimony was from a female second lieutenant who told of being almost the victim of a sexual assault.

As retailed by our group CC, her story went like this:  newly assigned to our installation, the LT was going about attending the usual slate of orientation briefings when she received an email from a major (“I don’t remember his name; let’s call him ‘Major Smith’,” said our group CC) that went something like this:  “Hi, welcome to our base, hope you like it hear, drop me a line if you ever want me to show you around.”  The LT wondered why she was receiving this email.  She carefully checked his organization – all emails from military addresses come with the rank and organization in the “Reply To” line, and in any case, any member of the DOD can be looked up on the Global Address Book – but no, he was not in her chain of command, nor was he from any other organization with a direct professional interest in base newcomers.

Other emails soon followed in like vein:  perfectly friendly if overly-familiar, free of any suggestiveness or innuendo.  I didn’t catch whether or not she replied to any of them, but if she did she was soon routing all his emails straight to the Junk Mail folder and deleting them unread.  Eventually, he contrived to introduce himself in person, and she was soon avoiding him physically.  In one instance, she spotted him at some base assembly or other, and actually hid in the bathroom afterwards for half an hour with the intent of avoiding him.  It was to naught; when she emerged from the bathroom, he was waiting for her with, “Hey, good to see you again!”  Again, he made no threats or sexual remarks.

Eventually, she filed a formal complaint with the Equal Opportunity Office, but was unaware if anything came of it.  She noticed when his name showed up on a list of selectees for promotion, and at that point went to her own commander.  The commander apparently called the major’s previous installation and asked about him, learning that, yes, they had had some complaints about behavior like this, but nothing was actionable beyond counseling.

The lieutenant was eventually invited to tell her story of being “groomed” for sexual assault and/or rape to people attending SAPR facilitator training, where our group CC heard it.  It wasn’t immediately clear why he was telling the story to the peonage, but he stated emphatically that his reaction when confronted with a like situation would be to warn the would-be rapist, “I may not be able to prove it in a court of law, but I know what you’re about.”

Several thoughts about this:

• The dynamic has been well described in this corner of the ‘sphere:  a low status or unattractive man – you can take my word that the rank of major, in and of itself, carries little cachet in the Air Force – takes notice of a woman of middling attractiveness.  But because he’s a chickensh!t (hey, I can relate!) he doesn’t approach her directly, but rather, with whatever intention, tries to insinuate himself into her “friend zone” so he can try to “convert”.  Meanwhile, the woman, perceiving the loss of status by interacting as a peer with a low status man, and believing that better opportunities are being crowded out, seeks to discourage further interactions, and enlists allies to that cause with words like “creep”, “stalker”, and now, apparently, “rapist”.
• As a general matter, I’m disinclined to take sides in this contest.  I’m done with vicariously white-knighting for women with whom I don’t actually have a relationship.  But I would like to point out that this kind of behavior is statistically unlikely to lead to a favorable outcome, and at some threshold gives social ineptitude a bad name.  The adage, “Don’t crap where you eat,” comes to mind here:  under the present regime, our best bet is to ignore women at work unless they approach us — and perhaps even then.  (Yes, I appreciate that it is easy for me to say this, being safely married.)
• The last I checked in on sexual harassment law, “unwelcome conduct” must be of a “sexual nature” to be legally actionable from an EEO perspective.  Is that still true?  If so, and since by her own account the lieutenant’s pursuer never said or did anything sexual, it’s not clear the EEO office had any recourse.  But over the last few years, commanders have put in place their own much broader policies, and they can and do issue no-contact orders at their own (unlimited?) discretion.  I assume that this particular major was eventually a recipient of such an order, although I do not remember that from the group CC’s narrative.
• I note without comment that the lieutenant here was immediately suspicious of the major’s first unsolicited email.
• I’m obviously a supporter of “profiling”, “stereotypes”, or any other name we wish to give statistical generalizations.  But I do insist that the generalizations be backed up by actual evidence.  I have over the years seen several profiles of rapists, and “beta” (or, if you prefer, “bad beta”) was not among their characteristics.  Does anyone have any new evidence on this front?  Was the lieutenant, or whoever put her on the SAPR curriculum, or our group CC aware of such evidence?  Or was the chain of reasoning merely:  a woman doesn’t like a man’s behavior!  Therefore, he must be rapist!  Q.E.D.!
• Did it not occur to anybody that, having had his background investigated at both this installation and the previous one, and having been found free of even an allegation of rape, that the major might be, you know, not actually a rapist?
• Am I to believe that the only thing standing between this major and being libeled as a wannabe rapist before several hundred people was that my group CC had forgotten his name?  Because wouldn’t accusing a man, by name, in a public assembly, of planning a crime, for which our group CC admitted he had no actual evidence, itself be against the law?  It certainly shows a reckless disregard for the man’s reputation.

* Most senior officers, like most humans, would just as soon tell the truth when doing so doesn't cost them anything. But some fraction of them enthusiastically propagate lies as a tool of social dominance. This is what I mean by "energy".

SAPR Day: the Confession of “Jack M.” and the Infantilization of Women

One of the videos played during the morning briefing on SAPR Day was a USAF-produced dramatic reenactment of the rape confession of “Jack M.”  The confession supposedly appeared in a publication called the Manhattan Spirit.  Although I can find no website for this publication, you can read the text of the confession here.

Jack M. Re-enactment

Taking his story at face value, “Jack” is an admitted if now-repentant sociopath.  And while the Dark Lord himself would likely shrink from his defense, Jack’s behavior is the logical end-point of detaching sex from relationship.

However . . . the Commander’s Curriculum Guide had this to say:

This is a real example of how offenders think. It is a good example of how they manipulate by insulating victims, justify their behaviors and even place blame on victims. It is also a good example of how a normal social situation, meeting people at a bar, drinking and socializing allows offenders to hide in plain sight and continue their criminal behaviors.

It is important to highlight that we are not focusing on the victim’s behavior here. If the audience goes straight to “why did she?” “she should have…” then they are missing the focus of this Stand Down Day. Encourage the audience to focus on the offender’s behaviors. There would not be a rape if a rapist is not present. If he didn’t rape this woman he would have found another to rape. This film will be further discussed in the facilitated small group discussions.

Anne Munch’s response reminds us to not judge the victim’s behaviors because we were not there.

The motivation behind most sexual assaults (from touching to rape) is power and control. A person can take control, humiliate, intimidate or act out power by raising a fist to someone or they can sexually assault them. Rape isn’t committed because someone can’t stop themselves during a sexual encounter or it’s a mistake- offenders intentionally perpetrate. “No” does not matter to them.

So first of all, it is not to defend Jack or justify his behavior that I point out the obvious shortcomings of this as an exercise in moral reasoning.  The role of the object of Jack’s attention here goes beyond the usual “playing the drunken slut” behavior;  someone can be stupid, reckless, and compromising and still be the victim of a vicious crime.  Nor is it merely a matter of forensic guilt, though that plays its role; many crimes escape punishment for lack of justiciable evidence.  And I will stipulate that the girl didn’t have fun, didn’t participate sexually, didn’t want to happen what actually happened.  These, by themselves, are not enough.

By way of analogy, and considering the context, let’s turn to the words of the Code of the United States  Fighting Force, once known as the Fighting Man’s Code of Conduct.  While it no longer carries the force of law, it is still taught as an ethical guide for American prisoners of war.

Article I: I am an American, fighting in the armed forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

Article II: I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

Article III: If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

Article IV: If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

Article V: When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service, number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

Article VI: I will never forget that I am an American, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

So, in defense of the nation, and in keeping faith with her comrades, a female soldier is to never surrender of her own free will while she yet has the means to resist, and to continue resisting by all means available.  She is to make every effort to escape, accept no special favors, and resist to the utmost of her ability.  Yet it defense of her own virtue*, she is expect to do . . . what?

The Air Force is holding up as illustrative a woman who having been told exactly what Jack’s intentions were, walked under her own power from the bar to Jack’s apartment, lay down on Jack’s couch, and, while fully conscious, bore Jack’s penetration without so much as a “no”, let alone a cry for help.  She then proceeded to spend the night in his bed, and depart the next morning without complaint.  It is not even clear that she considered herself a victim of anything more than a lousy date, let alone a crime.

Sorry, but this won’t do at all.  I’m going to insist on more effort that this.  No, not a Thermopylae Pass level of  resistance (though, in fact, some women offer that), but morally speaking, that cry for help is the difference between rape and fornication.  By that standard, this girl didn’t even rouse herself to French levels of valor.

The point of SAPR Day is to encourage bystander intervention.  Now, I have elsewhere confessed to my personal threshold for intervening on behalf of someone who isn’t related to me by blood or marriage.  But as a general matter, what moral claim does anyone have that motivation of others exceed the motivation of themselves?  I submit that they have no such moral claim.

SAPR Day will have to mark me “Present” for this one.

* For those of my readers you who no longer believe in virtue, or believe it irrelevant, feel free to substitute the words "sexual sovereignty" or whatever else you want. My point still stands.

SAPR Day 2014

So, the USAF devoted an entire day to Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR).  It consisted of a morning briefing, a movie, and a three-hour afternoon small-group facilitated discussion.

I’m going to reproduce a selection of the slides from the briefing, slides that were ordered from the Chief of Staff and intended to be consistent across the entire Air Force.  Some snarky commentary may be involved.

So, we’re already off to a discouraging start.    Since victims are presumably identifying actual offenders out of lineups, the announcement that the Air Force is going to help the rest of us in “identifying offenders” sounds vaguely like what it other contexts (but not this one) has been called “McCarthyism”, or “profiling”.

Next slide:

Wait, what?  Apparently, some other graphics got mixed in with the slides!  That’s a WWII era propaganda poster about how the Japs are coming for our women.  Let’s try again:

Let’s zoom in a bit:

So, under “Potential Perpetrator Characteristics/Indicators”, we see:

• Hold traditional gender role stereotypes;
• Endorse statements used to justify rape (“rape myths”);
• Hold adversarial beliefs about relationships between men and women; and
• Use powerful rationalizations to excuse their behavior as non-criminal.

No, sorry, that’s a WWI era poster about how the Kaiser is coming for our women.  But . . . I’m starting to notice a pattern here.

A clearer view of the previous slide.  I’ll have more about what “rape myths” are in a subsequent post.  But I bet it would be a surprise to people who follow, say, James Dobson, that they are actually rapists because they believe in “traditional gender roles”.

But then, whoever we don’t happen to like at the time are always about to have their wicked way with our women.

But enough about beliefs.  Let’s look at behavior:

I’ll have more about this in subsequent posts (SAPR day having provided a month’s worth of blogging material), but a couple of points here.  The first is that the “Behavior Progression” is more or less what any guy interested in any girl would do, be his motives honorable or malevolent:

• Plan contact points;
• Create opportunities; and
• Exploits change meetings.

I am grateful, and not for the first time, that I’m already married.  Single guys today are going to have to wait for the official AFI on approved courtship methods.

As for the “Grooming Methods”, many of them look like ordinary bar game, the whole point of which is to secure consent and measure receptivity, not perpetrate rape.

But apparently, seduction is also an enemy trait:

I’m pretty sure that’s intended as a caricature of a Jooish Freudian psychoanalyst betraying the virtue of his innocent client.

Next slide:

Some points about Airmen:

• “Knowing what constitutes consent”:  the briefing doesn’t actually explain what constitutes consent in today’s environment, especially consent that can’t be retroactively withdrawn.
• “Confront inappropriate behavior and are willing to intervene”:  I’ll have more on this later but will pause to note the irony that, while the victim’s behavior is never to blame, somehow third parties are now responsible.

And while I’m at it, I’m all for investigators “improv[ing] information collection,” but what does it mean for them to “empower victims”?

Damn!  I’m pretty sure this poster’s caption translates to “Commie basterdz paw ur womenz,” but I would appreciate an expert translation.

The following slides cite the 2012 Workplace and Geneder Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (link below).  I have read criticisms of this survey and the way it has been used, but I would appreciate any links to commentary that my readers can recommend.

That’s pretty specific for a number that includes both reported and unreported incidents.  According to the notes, the “3259” are sexual assaults against active duty Air Force personnel only, but that number isn’t actually in the survey that I can find., It is apparently an extrapolation from the survey.  The survey says:

“Completed surveys were received from 22,792 eligible respondents. The overall weighted response rate was 24% . . . .  Overall, 6.1% of women and 1.2% of men indicated they experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012.” 

Page 19 says that these numbers were 3.1% of AF women and 0.5% of AF men.  Page 61 says that among AF female victims, alcohol was involved in 52% of incidents, force was used in 63% of incidents.  (Weirdly, considering the occasional insistence that men are victims too, the survey results don’t include male victim data at nearly the resolution for which it has female victim data.

From the Commander’s Curriculum Guide, a set of briefing notes that accompanies this slide show:

Risk reduction techniques (like telling potential victims to act a certain way or to not do certain things) may reduce risk, which is wise, but it does not stop offenders. At every opportunity alcohol has to be named as the weapon that it is. We must point out the fact that it may be skillfully used by the predator, often in what most would consider a non-hostile environment. When alcohol is viewed as the cause (or at least a part of the cause) its presence provides the perfect alibi for the predator. Explanations for sexual assault/rape that emphasize risky situations (drinking, dress, etc.) imply that danger is ‘natural’ to these circumstances as opposed to deliberately chosen by coercive individuals in order to maximize their potential for predating. ((Bourke, J; Rape: Sex Violence History. 2007)

So it seems like the Air Force can’t quite make up its mind about alcohol.

Next slide:

Parenthetically, I want to point out how Powerpoint has really harmed the art of propaganda.  Most of these slides are pretty bloodless; the posters of yore, in contrast, are lurid and colorful.

Anyway, where was that slide . . . oh, here it is:

Slide 82 of the survey says that 73% of female victims did not report the incident, for a 27% report rate.  That’s consistent with an overall report rate of 24%, since men report far less often.  But I assume the Air Force doesn’t need survey numbers to estimate the reports, since they presumably have, you know, actual reports.

Slide 73 says that among Air Force victims, 43% were neither stalked nor harassed, 21% were both stalked and harassed, 7% were only stalked, and the number only sexually harassed is “NR”; however, since the other services’ columns add to 100%, my inference is that the sexual harassment only number is 29%.  That makes 50% of cases that involve some sexual harassment.  It is on the strength of this that the military now says that sexual harassment “leads to” sexual assault.

Here are some questions I had that the survey didn’t address:

• Racial demographics of perpetrators and victims.  It may be that the survey didn’t collect this, but that kind of oversight strikes me as desperately incompetent.  It may be that the survey collected the information but didn’t report it because there were no significant differences between races – but if not, then why not say so?  As is, it looks like they’re hiding something.
• The survey makes a point of reporting how many active duty personnel experienced sexual assault prior to joining the military; the number is 27% for Air Force women (p. 143).  But the survey says nothing about what the overlap is between this number and the number reporting sexual assault since joining the military.  That might help develop a profile of victims as well as perpetrators, but despite the ease of its calculation, we aren’t told.
• The survey makes no mention (and I will return to point later) whether or not the victims verbally objected to the unwanted sexual contact, a.k.a. “assault”, let alone whether the perpetrator honored the objection.  Apparently, the “one free grope” rule that Cllinton enjoyed is Old and Busted.  From the survey (p. 1 – 2):

For the purposes of the 2012 WGRA survey, the term “unwanted sexual contact” means intentional sexual contact that was against a person’s will or which occurred when the person did not or could not consent, and includes completed or attempted sexual intercourse, sodomy (oral or anal sex), penetration by an object, and the unwanted touching of genitalia and other sexually-related areas of the body . . . .   Of the 6.1% of women who experienced unwanted sexual contact, 32% indicated the most serious behavior they experienced was unwanted sexual touching only, 26% indicated they experienced attempted sex, and 31% indicated they experienced completed sex.

My personal opinion is that, for women, the breasts fall pretty unambiguously in the “other sexually related areas” category.  But because this is undefined, it’s left to mean whatever a woman thinks it means.  That’s not unreasonable – if someone doesn’t want to be touched, he/she shouldn’t be touched.  But combined with the New Hotness that the first offense is immediately actionable, it leaves the potential for a lot of people to be caught in the shifting standards.

Here are the citations from the Commander’s Curriculum Guide:

2012 DoD Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA) http://www.sapr.mil/public/docs/research/2012_Workplace_and_Gender_Relations_Survey_of_Active_Duty_Members-Survey_Note_and_Briefing.pdf

Lisak, D. & Miller, P. (2002). Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists. Violence and Victims 17,1. p. 73-84.

Lonsway, K., Archambault, J., Lisak, D. (2009). False reports: Moving beyond the issue to successfully investigate and prosecute non-stranger sexual assault. National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women. 3 (1). http://www.nsvrc.org/publications/articles/false-reports-moving-beyond-issue-successfully-investigate-and-prosecute-non-s

McWhorter, S.K., Stander, V.A., Merrill, L.L., Thomsen, C.J., & Milner, J.S. (2009). Reports of rape reperpetration by newly enlisted male navy personnel. Violence and Victims. 24 (2): 204-18. www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA519627

Sadler, A., Booth, B., Cook, B., & Doebbeling, B. (2003). Factors associated with women’s risk of rape in the military Environment. American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 43: 262-73.

http://www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org/docs/Sadler_Military_Environment.pdf

Last of all:

Golly, the SAPR office could recycle a lot of this stuff.  Just replace the Hammers and Sickles with, I dunno, crosses I guess.

The cadets are a lot smarter than the grown-ups

This Christian Science Monitor article reports on the results of focus groups from the Service Academies on the subject of sexual harassment:

The focus-group comments of the cadets offer some insights into why the cadets themselves think the problem is pervasive, and how to best handle it.

When sexual harassment and assaults are prosecuted on campus, they think it might be a good idea to publicize them a bit more, even while protecting the anonymity of victims.

“When these things happen, my concern is, Are they being at all like hushed up?” one West Point cadet told Pentagon interviewers. “I think if we wanted to raise awareness and like say that this is a problem, why isn’t it being publicized when it does happen, even anonymously?”

Pentagon researchers also wanted to know from cadets whether they thought unwanted sexual contact was a problem perpetrated by many fellow cadets, or by a few problem cadets.

Female cadets at West Point noted that in some cases, there are one or two well-known seniors in a company “that has made passes at most of the plebe girls. And they all have this uncomfortable feeling around him.” That said, one female cadet added, “I don’t think there are a lot of males here like that.”

Except . . . “making a pass” does not, in and of itself, constitute sexual harassment, and certainly not sexual assault.  But let the academies forbid fraternization between classes if they wish.

Female cadets also reported struggling with how to best handle put-downs and sexually harassing comments, while still being “cool.”

“If someone touches you,” one female cadet explained, there is an unspoken understanding that “you don’t want to be like that girl and freak out about it.” The question is how to let a fellow cadet know, “Hey, that’s not cool, don’t do it,” she told Pentagon interviewers.

“You almost have to make that character judgment and decide in your mind if you think it’s worth it.”

Or perhaps, decide whether you kind of liked the attention, or whether objecting will enhance your status or diminish it.

Okay, I’m being a little snarky here. I'm prepared to offer social support to anyone whose moral virtue is assailed by sexually boorish advances. But while I understand a woman's imperative to discriminate among such advances, she's on her own as far as I'm concerned. The nerds would never get away with what the cool kids do. 

Because female cadets are far outnumbered by their male counterparts, one female cadet reported struggling with feelings of “maybe I am overreacting.” She continued, “So I don’t know what to do when everybody else seems to be okay with it.”

While many women said they feel comfortable speaking up when they feel harassed, they also recognized that many female cadets also blame themselves when they experience unwanted sexual touching. “It starts to seem like the victim’s fault for not being assertive,” one said.

It is entirely possible that many female cadets (and male cadets, for that matter) do wrestle with this question in good faith.  What are your boundaries?  How do you object to which levels of transgression?  I think part of a young woman’s education ought to be how to escalate their objections in ways that don’t make every slight, quite literally, a federal case.

A clear theme that comes through in the survey, too, is that cadets of both genders feel that because the physical standards for female cadets are not as strenuous as those for male cadets, the men may have less respect for the women.

“The only thing I can think of is because some standards for women are lower,” one male cadet told investigators. “My summer training, what I did last summer, girls aren’t allowed to go to it because it’s a male-only role.”

“I think I saw it during ‘Beast’ a lot,” said one female cadet, referring to the grueling summer training for freshmen. “If the female is slowing down the squad because they’re having a harder time carrying the ruck, it sparks that negative mindset, like ‘Why are the women in the military? Our entire unit is slowed down.’ I can see frustration with that.”

Another female cadet noted that because the physical standards are different for men and women at the academies, it is possible for women to get higher scores than men – even though they might not have to do as many push-ups or run a mile as quickly. “That eats him alive,” said one female cadet of a male cadet friend of hers.

Well said.

Unfortunately, the adults seem to be obsessed with grinding their own axes:

The study also found that “the rates for crude and offensive behavior – this is your typical locker room talk – and for sexist behavior on the 2012 survey – those were high,” said Elizabeth Van Winkle, deputy branch chief of the Defense Manpower Data Center, which conducted the focus groups with students at the academies.

Between 80 and 90 percent of women indicated that they had been the object of sexist comments in the past 12 months. Defense officials sought to bore into those figures to see if they were really accurate.

These sorts of sexist comments are particularly troubling to Pentagon officials because, “There is a strong positive correlation between the experience of sexual harassment and the eventual sexual assault of people in military units,” said Nathan Galbreath, the Pentagon’s senior executive adviser to SAPRO.

“And so we think that because these two problems are on the same continuum of harm, getting at that sexual harassment – the crude and sexist behavior – is part of the prevention work [for] sexual assault.”

Kind of like the claims from my last post about “serial predators,” this assertion of harassment-assault correlation is not, this article at least, back by the citation of any actual data.  But even if such a correlation exists – and it well might – it doesn’t prove that harassment causes assault, nor does it prove that reducing harassment will reduce assault.  They’d be better off going after the alcohol and slinky clothing.

Until the Pentagon allows women to compete with men for the same combat jobs in the military, that culture of disrespect will continue, says Greg Jacob, a former US Marine and policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network, in an interview. “Until women become full-fledged members of a team, and the more women get promoted up the chain of command – that’s really the culture change that we’re looking to see happen,” he says.

Idiotic on so many levels.  For decades, women meeting promotion boards have been selected at higher rates than men.  And I’m pretty sure that sexual assault wasn’t nearly as much of a problem when women served in segregated units.

Sex Assault’s “New Paradigm”

From the Christian Science Monitor:

US military's new tactic to curtail sexual assaults: nab serial 'predators'

To combat sexual assaults, military officials shift tactics to focus on ferreting out serial predators. Here's why they're increasingly convinced that relatively few people in the ranks commit the bulk of such crimes.

Caveat:  the article deploys the weasel words “sexual assault” throughout; we the readers are encouraged to assume “rape”, but in fact this category covers everything from rape to ass-grabbing.

By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / February 24, 2014

Washington

The Pentagon, under pressure to show progress on bringing down rates of sexual assault, is putting new emphasis on ferreting out serial predators within the ranks, as military officials become increasingly convinced that relatively few people are responsible for the bulk of sex crimes.

The new direction is being driven by anecdotal experiences of some commanders, as well as by research showing that in certain semi-closed settings – such as college campuses – as many as 90 percent of sexual assaults are committed by serial offenders.

“We think it tends to be, more often than we’ve believed before, ‘serial predators’ with more than one victim,” retired Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward, who earlier this month left her post as director of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said in an interview. “If you get rid of just one of these predators, it’s pretty significant.”

Some perpetrators have dozens, sometimes hundreds, of victims in a lifetime, says [former director of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office retired Maj. Gen. Margaret] Woodward, citing studies by psychologists who are now doing consulting work with the Pentagon.

This is either true or it isn’t true.  On the one hand, I’m leery of contract psychologists pushing the Next Big Thing, but on the other, it’s not inherently implausible that drunken sluts are a minority taste.

However . . .

This necessarily involves a revamped approach – one that turns away from education campaigns that caution potential victims to use the “buddy system” or to dress conservatively on nights out, and more toward aggressive investigation of suspects in order to find other possible victims and help resolve 'he said, she said' claims.

This is important because the latest research finds that most sexual assaults are not simply a result of "mixed signals" stemming from, say, an evening of heavy drinking. “Understanding and accepting that [idea of serial perpetrators] make people understand that ‘he didn’t just drink a little too much,’ ” says Woodward.

But that is, in fact, the profile.  From the Dayton Daily News (via Military.com):

Seven of the alleged Wright-Patterson assaults occurred in dormitories, five in military housing and 20 occurred off-base, according to Office of Judge Advocate data. The reported offenders were 26 active-duty airmen and six reservists, statistics showed.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base reported 32 alleged sexual assaults involving adult victims from 2010 to 2013, according to the 88th Air Base Wing Office of Staff Judge Advocate.

Fourteen of the reported victims requested prosecution of the alleged perpetrators, 11 victims did not. Three who reported assaults recanted the allegations, and the status of five others was not known, according to figures.

Among the reported victims, 15 were active-duty service members, three were reservists, four were military dependents and 10 were "non-base connected civilians," Wright-Patterson reported.

Eight of the victims were between 18 and 20 years old, 16 were between the ages of 21 and 24 and eight were 24 or older or the age was unknown.

Twenty-six of the reported incidents involved alcohol, five did not and it was unknown if alcohol was involved in one incident, authorities reported.

So while exactly none of these alleged assailants were “serial perpetrators” over the last four years, 81% of the incidents involved abuse of alcohol.  I don’t slight the satisfaction that comes from seeing one’s enemy receive his comeuppance, but wouldn’t it be better all around if these 26 women didn’t elevate their risk of victimization by their behavior?

Returning to the CSM article:

Today, military law enforcement officers investigating sexual assault crimes are increasingly being trained to dig into the history of the accused, rather than mainly into how the alleged victim behaved in the hours before the alleged assault.

“Obviously you’re going to investigate the incident, but we need to investigate the alleged offender, too,” [Pentagon consultant Dr. David] Lisak says. “Are there any other victims?”

“The biggest thing I’ve seen in our investigators is going from a bias toward investigating the victim,” he says. “If you go into the case with the mind-set that false allegations are rare but [that] perpetrators will perpetrate more than one crime – now that’s power. You may actually find incidents in the perpetrator’s past. It’s easier to prove five assaults than one.”

Looking again at the Wright-Pat data, anywhere from 9% (the recantations) to 34% (the requests not to prosecute) of the 32 initial reports were, legally speaking, false.  That’s not exactly “rare”.  But I will stipulate that smart “serial predators” might be seeking out or creating the circumstances where the boundaries of consent become blurred.

The shift toward digging harder into the backgrounds of sex-crime suspects may in turn put less emphasis on potential victims and their behavior.

“For many years, the way we tried to combat sexual assault was we taught our potential victims to be ‘harder targets,’ if you want to call it that,” [commander of the Eighth Fighter Wing at Kusan Air Force Base, Col. S. Clinton ] Hinote says. The admonishments were never to walk alone, always to have a buddy, don’t get drunk, don’t go out with people you don’t trust, or don’t wear provocative clothing.

“Some of these are unwritten rules, but everyone knows the rules,” Hinote says. The problem “is that if a victim violates one of these unwritten rules and comes forward, there is a possibility that someone might say, ‘Well, what were you wearing? Were you drunk? Did you go out without a buddy? Did you have a plan for getting home?

Except knowing the rules and following the rules are two different things.  For instance, I’m pretty sure that all the men know that “sexual assault is really, really bad” by now.  And yet at least some men are still doing it, and some women are making themselves vulnerable to it.

“This can pretty quickly transform into victim-blaming,” he adds.

Actually, no.  The reason these questions are important is because the criminality of the event depends entirely on the victim’s communicated state of mind.  Nobody is trying to “blame the victim” in the sense of saying, “you deserved what happened to you.”  What any good faith investigation is going to try to find out is, “are you the kind of person, and do you live the kind of life, that makes your expressed or implied consent in this instance likely or unlikely.”  Because that is what will determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.

If investigators find other victims, “that will bolster credibility in a ‘he said, she said’ scenario,” notes the Air Force’s Woodward.

True enough, and I entirely agree that the “sexual history” of the accused ought to be no less at issue than that of the victim . . . but no more either.  And it bothers me that they are presented here as alternatives rather than complements.

Random Thoughts . . .

From Military.com:

Obama to Award Medal of Honor to 24 Army Vets

Associated Press | Feb 21, 2014

WASHINGTON - Seeking to correct potential acts of bias spanning three wars, President Barack Obama will award the Medal of Honor to 24 Army veterans following a congressionally mandated review to ensure that eligible recipients were not bypassed due to prejudice.

The Pentagon said the Army reviewed the cases of the 6,505 recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars and found an eligible pool of 600 soldiers who may have been Jewish or Hispanic. The Army also worked with the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, the Jewish War Veterans of the USA and the American GI Forum, the largest Hispanic-American veterans group, to pinpoint potential medal recipients.

I don’t claim to understand, forensically speaking, the demarcation between the DSC and the CMH.  But how many of those 5905 white Gentile DSC recipients might have turned out to qualify for the CMH under the Pentagon’s current standards had their cases received the same reconsideration as the Jewish and Hispanic candidates?  I’ll bet a lot more than 24.

Foreign-Made American Flags Banned by US Military

Fox News | Feb 21, 2014

Under a new law signed as part of the 2014 omnibus appropriations bill, any flag purchased by the Defense Department is required to be 100 percent made in America. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who wrote the legislation, said he did so for economic as well as symbolic reasons.

The legislation has been historically difficult to pass in part due to trade agreements, as well as the fact that flags made in China, the largest importer, cost significantly less than ones produced in the United States. An estimated $3.3 million worth of American flags are imported from Beijing each year.

Dale Coots, marketing manager for Annin Flagmakers, in Roseland, N.J., said the new legislation is a positive step, but says other issues regarding flag imports remain unresolved, including the Federal Trade Commission’s lack of enforcement on flag labeling.

"An American flag is considered a textile," she said. "And a lot of flags that sell online don't have any origin label, which is required under U.S. law."

Annin Flagmakers, which has produced American flags since the 1820s, will not benefit from the new law because the company employs more than 500 workers. The federal government only takes bids from small businesses in flag purchases, she said.

This is mostly meaningless in the big economic picture, but I’m curious whether or not the 500-worker cap on flag manufacturers has been applied to the Chinese companies with the same rigor it has been apparently applied to American companies.  But if the cost is a problem, wouldn’t lifting this cap be the way to go?

Obama Tells Pentagon to Plan for Afghan Pullout

Associated Press | Feb 25, 2014 | by Julie Pace

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has ordered the Pentagon to plan for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of this year should the Afghan government refuse to sign a security agreement with the U.S, the White House said Tuesday.

Better late than never.  Yes, cutting your losses is hard.  Do it anyway.

Defense Budget Would Cut Troop Pay and Benefits

Feb 24, 2014 | by Brendan McGarry

The U.S. Defense Department is proposing limiting troop pay raises, reducing housing allowances and cutting funding for commissary stores because of automatic budget cuts, officials said.

The proposals to curb personnel costs, which the officials said consume a rising share of defense spending, include limiting troop pay raises to 1 percent, reducing housing allowances by an average of 5 percent,

According to my final leave-and-earnings statement, my housing allowance was almost 20% of my salary, although in ranged to almost 25% depending on my rank and where I was living.

cutting some $1 billion in commissary subsidies -- which will likely mean higher prices for troops and retirees

Commissary shoppers pay cost plus 5%.  But that 5% surcharge, if I understand correctly, may not be used for operating expenses.  It only funds construction.  That may have something to do with why our commissary seems perpetually under construction, but only three of the twenty registers are open at a time.

-- and higher health care fees for some retirees.

"The savings will enable us to sustain a well-trained, ready, agile, motivated and technologically superior force," Hagel said during a briefing Monday afternoon at the Pentagon. "Although these recommendations do not cut anyone's pay, I realize they will be controversial."

I’m not sure “not cut anyone’s pay” means what Hagel thinks it means.

Underworked

From Military.com:

Air Force Lt. Doubles as NFL Cheerleader

Apparently, some people are saying that Lt Quaco’s extra-military avocation is not “representative of [Air Force] standards”, but what I want to focus on is that while some enlistees sometimes have after-hours employment delivering pizzas and such, I’m not aware of any precedent where an officer holds two full-time paid positions simultaneously.   Mormons cadets in the Service Academies are allowed to resign without prejudice to fulfill their mission obligations and return, and newly commissioned Academy graduates have been given leaves-of-absence to pursue NFL careers before returning to serve their military obligations.  But in these instances, the officers did one thing at a time.  I’m pretty sure that the Air Force is giving Lt Quaco low-demand make-work to allow her cheerleading time.

The Morning After

From NBCNews.com:

'Huge win for victims of sexual assault': Congress sends defense bill to Obama

By Donna Cassata, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The women of the Senate who led the fight to change how the military deals with sexual assault in its ranks are hailing passage of a comprehensive defense bill that now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The legislation would strip military commanders of their ability to overturn jury convictions, require a civilian review if a commander declines to prosecute a case and require that any individual convicted of sexual assault face a dishonorable discharge or dismissal. The bill also would provide victims with legal counsel, eliminate the statute of limitations for courts-martial in rape and sexual assault cases, and criminalize retaliation against victims who report a sexual assault.

The bill also would change the military's Article 32 proceedings to limit intrusive questioning of victims, making it more similar to a grand jury, a change backed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and McCaskill, grilled the chiefs about whether the military's mostly male leadership understands differences between relatively minor sexual offenses and serious crimes that deserve swift and decisive justice.

"Not every single commander necessarily wants women in the force. Not every single commander believes what a sexual assault is. Not every single commander can distinguish between a slap on the ass and a rape because they merge all of these crimes together," Gillibrand said. [Emphasis added.]

Lots of good (i.e., bad) stuff here.  As near as I can tell, Congress is addressing the difference between “sexual assault” and rape by punishing them the same?  They continue to turn morning-after regrets into criminal rape?

Like everything else our government does these days, this legislation is evil and stupid.  But it isn't like I have a dog in this fight, after all. The counterpart to my advice on how to avoid rape -- don’t be a drunken slut -- is my advice on how to avoid false rape accusations -- don’t patronize the company of drunken sluts. It's really that simple.

Questions:

• For how many other offenses is a dishonorable discharge required by federal law?
• For how many other categories of victims is legal counsel provided?
• For how many other categories of victims are there limitations on cross-examination?
• Does the legislation prevent the overturning of all courts-martial convictions or only for sex assault?
• Does the legislation require civilian review of decisions to decline prosecution for all criminal allegations, or just sexual assault?

Diversity and Honor

From the Colorado Springs Gazzette, via Military.com, an article describing how law enforcement works, not according to the theoretical niceties of the Constitution, but in real life:

Honor, Deception Amid Air Force's Cadet Spy System

Facing pressure to combat drug use and sexual assault at the Air Force Academy, the Air Force has created a secret system of cadet informants to hunt for misconduct among students.

Cadets who attend the publicly-funded academy near Colorado Springs must pledge never to lie. But the program pushes some to do just that: Informants are told to deceive classmates, professors and commanders while snapping photos, wearing recording devices and filing secret reports.

For one former academy student, becoming a covert government operative meant not only betraying the values he vowed to uphold, it meant being thrown out of the academy as punishment for doing the things the Air Force secretly told him to do.

Eric Thomas, 24, was a confidential informant for the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI — a law enforcement branch of the Air Force. OSI ordered Thomas to infiltrate academy cliques, wearing recorders, setting up drug buys, tailing suspected rapists and feeding information back to OSI. In pursuit of cases, he was regularly directed by agents to break academy rules.

The whole article is a compelling story (Aquilla remarked that it read like an episode of NCIS), but I should also note that USAFA released a response to the article that casts Thomas in a somewhat less favorable light than implied by the Gazzette. (Weird, though, that the response isn't on the USAFA/PA website; while I can vouch for its authenticity, this is apparently the only place on the web where the statement appears in its entirety.)

But what I want to comment on is this:

The records show OSI uses FBI-style tactics to create informants. Agents interrogate cadets for hours without offering access to a lawyer, threaten them with prosecution, then coerce them into helping OSI in exchange for promises of leniency they don’t always keep. OSI then uses informants to infiltrate insular cadet groups, sometimes encouraging them to break rules to do so. When finished with informants, OSI takes steps to hide their existence, directing cadets to delete emails and messages, misleading Air Force commanders and Congress, and withholding documents they are required to release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The program also appears to rely disproportionately on minority cadets like Thomas.

Whatever we might think of "FBI-style tactics", this last part isn't hard to figure out. The article doesn't come out and say so, but I'm betting that "insular cadet cliques" means ethnic minority gangs, against which White informants would be pretty useless. But the issue that goes unaddressed is: how are these students gaining admission to the Air Force Academy in the first place.

The likely answer is that USAFA's long-running pursuit of "!Diversity!" resulted in lower standards, and this is the predictable consequence. If challenged on this, I would predict USAFA would respond that running covert operations against the cadets (and faculty too, apparently) to "separate the wheat from the chaff" is an acceptable price to pay for increased diversity. Kind of like how abrogating the 4th Amendment is an acceptable price to pay for immigration from Muslim countries.

An alternative possibility, though perhaps less likely, is that even facially neutral standards that ignore class and family background are picking up more undesirables, and these are disproportionately minority.

A Hostile Work Environment

From the Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno:

It is time we take on the fight against sexual assault and sexual harassment as our primary mission.

I had a talk with a squadron commander down at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX, ground zero in the current frenzy over sexual assault in the Air Force.

Φ: It must be mentally taxing to wake up every day viscerally afraid of what you will read on the front page of the paper.

CC:  It’s a hostile work environment.  Over the last two years I have seen my boss, his boss, and multiple other squadron commanders been relieved of command, their careers essentially over.  I have been involved in two courts martial and scores of letters of reprimand (LORs) and admonishment (LOAs).  For our enlisted Military Training Instructors (MTIs), these can prevent them from reenlisting, essentially casting them out of the service with 15 years in.

Φ: How has this impacted the ability to find MTIs?

CC: A few years ago, being an MTI was a good career move, so we had more volunteers than opportunities.  Now, nobody volunteers, and the Air Force has to “non-vol” people to the assignment.  And even then, a fair number of non-vols suddenly come down with disqualifying physical ailments that prevent them from serving.  So the Air Force Personnel Center burns through a lot of people to keep the place staffed.

Φ: I have to say, as someone who confines his sexual assaulting to his own house, that I have trouble understanding the mentality of the guy who wakes up and thinks that rape is a good idea.

CC: Rape is almost never involved.  Almost all of these relationships are consensual as normal people understand the word.  But they are nonetheless improper by Air Force regulations.  Trainees are off-limits to instructors.  They usually get started at the end of Basic Training.  An instructor will slip a trainee his number with a give-me-a-call-sometime.  Which the trainee, besotted with the status and power of her MTI, will of course do.  She will be in “tech school” (specialty training) by this point, but is still off-limits to MTIs.

Φ: My impression is that illicit relationships usually come to light when they go bad, as they often do.  Is that the case here?

They can go bad in several ways.  The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) runs a hotline where anyone can call to report an MTI, and twenty or so agents whose full time duty is to investigate the claims.  The reporters are often the trainees claiming an affair with their MTI, but it can also be an angry wife.  The MTIs are also reporting on each other, which is the primary way the scandal has spider-webbed as it has.

Φ: Are there any repercussions on trainees for their role in the affair?

CC: Only if we can prove that they lied about the affair, which is a practical impossibility, even if the claim itself is found to lack merit.

But that kind of dynamic has come to permeate the training environment over the last couple of years.  There has been an explosion in the number of rules governing what MTIs can do and not do, and a whole different attitude towards enforcement.  There are a million ways in which an MTI can get into trouble.

Here is an example.  I had to write a “letter of counseling” documenting an infraction for an MTI for having “tossed” mail at a trainee during mail call when the rules say that mail must be “handed” to trainees.  Now, there was no evidence of malicious intent here:  the MTIs are handing out mail to fifty people and trying to get it done quickly.  So he’s tossing mail in their laps as they sit around the room.  All it took was for one trainee to take issue with this for the MTI to get in trouble.

Another mail-related example:  the regulations say that trainees are to be given time to read their mail each evening.  An MTI consulted with his flight about how to balance this with the need to clean the barracks prior to an inspection the next morning.  The consensus was that they should get the work done first, but one dissenter decided to report the MTI for not allowing enough mail-reading time.

Sometimes this reporting is malicious.  In one case recently, we had a female MTI, good at her job and popular with most of the trainees, run afoul of a couple of people who decided they were going to get her fired.  So they carefully kept a log of her minutest infractions.  None of this was a secret.  The other trainees told us they were doing this, they admitted their intent, but at the end of investigation, it didn’t matter.  The MTI was fired, and the trainees are now part of our Air Force.

Φ: I don’t have a well-developed theory of military training.  I only know what it was like when I went through it.  But I am concerned about the kind of airmen this new kind of training environment is going to produce.

CC: I don’t think anybody knows the answer to this question.  We’re probably going to find out as these people go about their careers.

Φ: What kind of metrics do you track that measure the effectiveness of your training at producing quality airmen.

CC: There is a complete failure to keep quality metrics at any phase of this process.  We in basic training don’t measure anything except the rate at which our airmen complete the program.  But the problems begin in recruiting.  Air Force recruiters are evaluated on their ability to meet certain quotas of enlistments, but the quota is considered met as soon as the recruit steps on the bus to head to Lackland.  There are therefore no incentives to recruit quality or match it to appropriate career fields.

Φ: What are the consequences of this?

CC: Let me give you an example.  The Air Force puts a priority on creating battlefield airmen:  Air Force Special Operations, mainly combat rescue and combat control.  People are recruited into this career field before they arrive at Basic.  Once at Basic, while they receive much the same training, they are subjected not only to a more demanding physical fitness regimen, including swimming.  But in my experience, many of these recruits discover that the requirements of Special Operations aren’t quite like playing HALO on the XBox.  But they’ve already signed a contract.  They can’t just transfer out of Special Ops.  But they can fail out of it.  Suddenly, we find people unable to pass the PAST* test that they were able to do before arriving.

Φ: So people are sandbagging it.

CC: Probably, but we don’t know.  It could be recruiters are fudging the numbers in order to get recruits who meet particular demographic criteria into the program.

Φ: Demographic criteria?

CC: Oh, yeah.  Recruiters have quotas, but they also get double points for matching certain minorities to particular career fields.  They can get the word:  “This month we’re having a two-for-one sale on Asians in CCT.”

Φ: Umm . . . Asians?

CC: Or . . . whatever.**  And we in Basic have the opposite problem:  we get fit guys whose recruiters didn’t tell them about Special Ops who learn about it when they get here and ask for a transfer.  But they already have contracts to go into other fields, so we can’t just move them over.

Φ: What are the physical standards for basic trainees like?

CC: They are strictly controlled.  Once upon a time, if a trainee flight fell out of line, it was common for the MTIs to pack them in a room and tell them that they would do calisthenics “until the walls sweat.”  Now they can’t tell recruits to do more than 20 seconds of calisthenics at a time, although as training progresses they can be assigned multiple 20 second rounds in a session.

Every so often, we still get trainees who drop dead in the San Antonio heat.  There is a bit of theater about it:  we identify trainees who have or had certain conditions, and require them to wear a yellow ribbon around their arms during PT.  Of course, they still have to do the PT, and treatment for any problems is the same whether they have a ribbon or not, so it has exactly zero impact.  But it does give the commandant something to point that says, “I’m doing something to prevent trainees dropping dead during PT.”

Φ: Kind of a metaphor for the military’s approach to sexual assault, come to think of it.  I would have thought that people with health problems would have been screened out. 

CC: Not all health problems are disqualifying, but yes, the front-end screening isn’t as extensive as it perhaps should be.  There is some medical screening during the recruiting phase, but much more once they get here.  For instance, I had to tell one recruit he was H.I.V. positive.

Φ: How would you characterize the quality of your recruits overall.

CC: Historically speaking, they’re pretty good.  The average age of our recruits is higher than it was, as is the education level.  Whatever my other complaints, recruiters are sending us guys with college degrees now.

Φ: Umm . . . yeah, that’s the crappy economy working to your benefit.  Recruiters don’t have much to do with it.

CC: I guess that’s a fair point.

* BTW, for reasons I’m too lazy to research, the PAST test is easier now than when I took it in ‘95.  Back then we had to swim 1500 meters and run 3 miles, vice 1000 and 1.5.

** This squadron commander is a good and honest man, but he is unencumbered by any political or ideological  loyalties of which I am aware.

The Invisible Perpetrators

As I implied in an earlier post, I saw the movie The Invisible War, about sexual assault in the military.  Our director screened the film at work, with a recorded recommendation by the Chief of Staff.

The film focuses on the experience of a dozen female (and two male) victims, especially the harrowing tale of Kori Cioca, a wisp of young woman brutally attacked by her supervisor while on active duty with the Coast Guard.  Significantly in these cases, none of the alleged perpetrators were ever charged with a crime.

Although the movie is shot through with distortions of military law and policy, I have not found even a disreputable source like me that impeaches the credibility of the victims themselves.  Still, I couldn’t help noticing that not one of the alleged perpetrators was specifically named.  It’s just speculation of course, but I can imagine two possible reasons for this.  Unlike, say, Mark Furman, who called out Michael Skakel in his book Murder in Greenwich, the filmmakers may lack the courage of their convictions.  I can’t say that I blame them; with a dozen victims, none of whose charges were considered by their chain of command to be sufficiently supported, the odds are that at least one of their stories will collapse on close examination.

The second possible reason is that certain (how can I put this?) commonalities among the perpetrators would, um, muddy the film’s message about the evil and heartless chain of command.

But having said all this, the film certainly left me with the impression that the armed services, under pressure from feminists to fully integrate females into all aspects of military operations, have by so doing created an environment in which not only do women not have sufficient protection from sexual assault, but also one in which it is very difficult to bring the perpetrators to justice.  Like the victims themselves, I would have to think hard about recommending military service to any young woman.

The film opens with a montage of recruiting commercials directed at women.  Most old commercials look hopelessly dated, and the efforts at recruiting women in earlier decades look comical to modern tastes.  But it was interesting to watch their evolution.  Whereas once the ads emphasized the compatibility between femininity and military service, contemporary commercials take the “grrrl power” angle:  today’s women can “man” (is this word still acceptable?) a machine gun, too!

Except . . . the women in the movie are demanding something that no other serviceman (oops again) has:  a law enforcement body, independent of command channels, that investigates and prosecutes sexual assault.  I don’t actually have an opinion about this demand or its effect on readiness, but I would point out the contradiction:  women demand admission to male institutions on the grounds of equality, then demand special consideration.  But nowadays, this is beside the point.

The film mocks the military’s various “training” efforts aimed at combating sexual assault.  Like most propaganda, some of these efforts deserve a good round of mocking on their aesthetic merits, but it’s worth pointing out that, in contrast to the related experience of these particular victims, most sexual assault involves the abuse of alcohol by both victim and perpetrator, and social situations that are frankly indistinguishable from the average hookup.  I understand the frustration of the women in the movie, some of whom were brutally attacked in their own quarters, that what happened to them would be characterized as “date rape,” but regrettably, the bad behavior of too many women have changed men’s baseline expectations, and not for the better.

Panetta: “Please, Brer Fox, Please Don’t Throw Me In That Briar Patch!”

A memo from SECDEF Leon Panetta with the subject line, “Implications of Ongoing Fiscal Cliff Negotiations,” is circulating among DOD agencies.  The memo is reasonably informative on a point of particular interest to me:  no immediate change to operations are planned in the event we go over the “fiscal cliff'”, i.e., execute the budget cuts planned last year as part of the negotiations over the debt ceiling; however, civilian furloughs may become necessary later in the year.

But this line left a bad taste in my mouth:

Our civilian employees should keep in mind that the Administration remains focused on working with Congress to reach agreement on a balanced deficit reduction plan that avoids such cuts.

The way I see it, the office of the Secretary of Defense is dual-hatted, and Panetta is called to fill two distinct roles.  The first role is political:  he represents the administration to the public on matters military.  The second is role is leadership:  he runs the DoD and manages the soldiers and civilians of the Armed Services.

In the political role, it is entirely appropriate to begin his sentences with a phrase like, “The Administration is committed . . .”  That’s what politicians do.  I may kinda suck when it’s the administration of the other party, but there it is, and it would be naïve of us to think he’s somehow not going to do Obama’s bidding.

But the memo in question is being passed down the chain of command.  We’re not reading it in the press; we’re reading it in official emails passed along by our commanders.  In that context, it’s inappropriate to engage in what is essentially political propaganda, trying to convince us that Obama is somehow on our side, and I can’t recall any previous SECDEF pulling this stunt in my 21 years of government service.

It’s especially inappropriate in this case since the statement is a bald faced lie, and Panetta almost certainly knows it.  Obama is quite happy to go “over the cliff”; it’s almost exactly the mix of tax hikes and defense spending cuts he wants anyway.

And while I am loathe to admit it, they’re pretty much what we need.  Yes, they will be painful.  But the pain is coming anyway:  we are all of us living beyond our means and have been doing so for the last 12 years if not longer.  Plenty of politicians, many of whom voted to set up this “cliff” in the first place, whinge on about how across-the-board cuts aren’t “smart”.  Perhaps not, but they’re honest cuts, not “budget agreements” with vague promises of cuts nine to ten years away.

Panetta should spend his memo time explaining how he is prioritizing DOD missions, not peddling Obama’s bull.  He should be ashamed of himself.

Compassion and its Enemies

West Point dropout Blake Page, backed by Mikey Weinstein and his, um, donor base, has been hurling some big accusations kinda short on specifics. But this part jumped out:

[Page] began as a chemical engineering major but switched to management. He said he has been a good student, though he had some problems in his second year after his father committed suicide.

This detail about his father's suicide is context that should have been in the opening paragraph, not buried in the middle of the article. Speaking for myself, I don't really have much interest in "proselytizing", i.e., telling people about Jesus. I admire those who do, but I don't personally care about other people enough to go to the trouble, and I don't consider myself a sufficiently compelling representative of my faith to expect anyone to listen to me if I did.*

On the other hand, if you come to me in pain**, this is what I have to offer. Don't expect non-sectarian answers to Life's Big Questions. There aren't any. Tell me to go away, and I will; like I said, I've got better (or more fun, anyway) things to do. But it is absurd to come to me for help and then accuse me of violating your rights when I give it.

Cadet Page went through a rough time, sufficiently rough that it put the demands of a ChemE degree beyond his reach. I don't actually know the extent to which he sought out the counseling of his academy instructors. I do know that those instructors, knowing his pain and seeing its effects on his performance, would have considered it their job to offer it. Weinstein's agenda notwithstanding, this is not in and of itself against law or policy. When Page himself becomes an officer -- and I fully expect he will return to the army, given the current constellation of forces -- he will be able to tell any who will listen about the healing power of Science. And, we, of course, will be equally free to tell him to go away.

* No, this isn't an invitation to point out my spiritual or theological shortcomings. I already know about those.

** If you aren't in my immediate family, please don't do this. Yes, I will be there for you. No, I won't want to.

An Officer and a Lady . . .

From the Fayetteville Observer (via Military.com):

AF General Touts Women's Role in the Military

Let’s assume for a moment that the “touting” herein is in good faith.  The problem I have with these kinds of speeches and the reporting of them is that the first sentence reporting a contrariwise speech – “AF General Criticizes Women’s Role in the Military” – inevitably says that the general was relieved of command by the end of the day.  So notwithstanding their knowledge of the truth of the matter, what else is an AF general likely to say about women in the military except to “tout” it?

[AFMC commander Janet C.] Wolfenbarger, the U.S. Air Force's first female four-star general, spoke about the advancement of women in the military Monday night as part of the Fayetteville State University's Chancellor's Distinguished Speaker Series.

To the best of my recollection, I have never heard a female cleric speak on any subject that wasn’t a variant of, “Look at me!  I’m a woman preaching!”  That may not be strictly true in the case of female generals, but it’s pretty close.

Wolfenbarger was among the more than 150 women who entered the Air Force Academy in June 1976, the first time women were allowed in the U.S. service academies.

Several male cadets were concerned about the admission of women into the academy, Wolfenbarger said.

"Their fear was that standards would somehow be lowered as a result of women being a part of the student body and that consequently their experience would some how be diminished," she said. "I, along with my female classmates, spent the next four years proving that the standards did not have to be lowered . . . ."

Um . . .  yes they were.  And there are no end to the USAFA alumni who assess the current kinder ‘n’ gentler regimen as being much easier than it was.  These changes are advertised as making the training environment more “professional”.  Maybe, but if a general is saying it then I assume it’s a lie.

Army ROTC cadet Tara Jaime, a junior majoring in sociology, said the general's comments about the advancement of women in the military were profound.

Yup, sociology.  Just the sort of education the future leaders of our high-tech military need.

Today’s Military

I wrote a post a while back quoting without comment one day’s worth of headlines from articles collected by Military.com, a site that, whether they intend to or not, documents the armed forces’ apparent slide into leftism.  This prompted the following exchange in the comments.

Elusive Wapiti:  A depressing collection. [These events] are indicators that the military is rapidly moving away from being the "bastion of conservatism" it was alleged to be when Clinton was president.

Samson:  Really? Colour me overly optimistic, but it seems to me that these are policies enforced from on high, not necessarily in line with the feelings of the rank and file.

This called to mind several observations I’ve made about young people in the military recently.  As you know, I started a new job last year.  For the first few months, while I awaited my security clearance, I was sequestered away with a score or so of new hires, mostly civilian, and mostly recent graduates.  This was a fairly novel experience for me, at least in the 15 years I’ve been married.  And it exposed me to a few cultural trends that I hadn’t especially noticed before.

As regular readers may recall, I’ve mixed it up with commenters about the prevalence of premarital cohabitation.  So I might as well start by admitting that it’s a lot more common than I realized.  It’s less common among junior officers, although I’m not sure if that’s moral or structural:  officers are expected to move every 3-4 years, which makes it more difficult for relationships to just hang in limbo.  The pressure is on them to close the deal if they expect a woman to follow them from one end of the country to the other.  But I’m pretty sure that almost every one of the civilians had an LTR story that involved cohabitation.

Young civilians are also much more candid with politically incorrect racial views than when I was a twenty-something, and not just among whites.  They expect to discuss these things openly, and even in the presence of minorities, in a way that I would have been afraid to.  The cry of “RACIST!” is now more often a punch line than a charge to be taken seriously.  That said, I reserve judgment about whether these kids are the shock troops of HBD awareness, or rather they just get a thrill out of shocking grownups in general.

But the military guys are another matter.  They were all very professional – and I don’t mean that as a compliment.  In all the joking around and wide-open political discussions we had, I can’t recall once where they joined in.  They were straitlaced, humorless, and . . . kinda boring.  If the lot of them had an independent thought in their lives, they had it beaten out of them.

The Christians among us have our secret handshakes, as you can imagine, and thus we enjoy a bit more opportunities for the camaraderie of shared culture.  But in general, I don’t see much evidence of resistance.  They think whatever they’re told to think.

Faggotry Ruins Everything

I see USAFA now has a sodomy club.

I was watching the John Wayne movie The Green Berets.  There is a scene in which Sgt Petersen (Jim Hutton) is adopted as surrogate father by a little Vietnamese boy running around the Montagnard camp.  When Sgt. Petersen realizes the boy doesn’t have a place to sleep, he pulls him into the cot with him.

Ray Kellogg obviously felt completely confortable in 1968 directing this scene without a hint of impropriety or sexual overtones.  It’s kind of jarring to see the scene today, and thought provoking how jarring it has become.  I would be shocked to see such a scene, directed in this way in this context, appear in a movie today.  I think that fact is pretty hateful.

Slouching towards Bankruptcy

I don’t mean to pick on Congressman Mike Turner; this is just representative of the problem:

This month, the House passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (HR 4310). As a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, I worked closely with members of the Committee to craft a bipartisan bill that advances our national security objectives, establishes a robust national missile defense, and ensures that veterans and their families maintain access to the care and benefits they have earned through their service. This bill protects veterans and military families from a proposal by the Obama administration to increase most TRICARE enrollment fees and co-pays, and prevents the Administration from implementing new fees.

Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, across-the-board cuts known as a “sequester,” are scheduled to take effect next January, due to the failure of the bipartisan “super committee” to agree on a plan to cut federal spending. I voted against this law, which raised the federal debt ceiling and created the so-called “super committee,” because these cuts would place our national security at risk and have a detrimental effect on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and our regional economy. Funding for the Department of Defense will be slashed by $500 billion, and certain domestic programs face an automatic eight percent across-the-board cut. The federal government must learn to live within its means and balance its budget, but our servicemen and women and their families need not shoulder the burden for Washington’s failure to budget responsibly.

Don’t tax you.  Don’t tax me.  Tax the feller behind the tree!

Look, I’d be happy this provision puts more money in my pockets, except for the fact that it’s the same process that has paralyzed our government in the face of trillion dollar deficits.  We just can’t afford all the stuff we’ve been getting anymore, and to argue that the military should be exempt from cuts is wildly wrongheaded.

On the other hand, we have Obama, who thinks that only military benefits should be cut:

As reported here, the House Armed Services Committee recently forwarded the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2013 (HR4310) to the full House for a vote. The bill added back many of the cuts proposed by the White House, and ignored the DoD’s request to increase TRICARE Fees for military retirees.

While most expect it to pass in the House, it is also assumed that the Senate will not pass the current version. And, of course the President would surely veto it if it happened to make it through the Senate. On Wednesday the Office of Management and Budget that confirmed that the President would veto the bill. The OMB statement states, “If the cumulative effects of the bill impede the ability of the Administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources, the President’s senior advisors would recommend to the President that he veto the bill.”

So President $4T-and-counting has decided that now It’s Time To Take A Stand against excessive spending?

Leon Panetta hasn’t covered himself in glory, either.  On the one hand, military retirees should not expect to be insulated from skyrocketing health care costs, and indexing our Tricare premiums to those costs would be fair even if we weren’t facing a budget crisis.  But Panetta’s defense of those cuts – “hey, you’re still getting below-market rates on healthcare!” – is disingenuous.  Lifetime healthcare is part of our deferred compensation and has been, in one form or another, for a long while.  Saying that Tricare fees are “below market” is to lower the bar considerably.