“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
– Mark Anthony in ‘Julius Caesar’
There have been times during the kumbaya-feminazi dark ages (1992-2000) when I really felt like a dinosaur … a cultural anachronism … who still believed in duty, honor and country. John Wayne was a role model and guys like Audie Murphy and Rocky Versace were proof that ideals, courage and principle could and would be personified.
I suffered the sin of pride at achievements that would be denigrated by left-wing elitist purveyors of political correctness: Eagle Scout, Green Beret, Black Belt, trophies and promotions. I thought I was making myself a better man, but to leftists my accomplishments deserved only their scorn.
When I read Peggy Noonan’s “Welcome Back, Duke” in the Wall Street Journal my involuntary response to the stimuli was a tear. Please read that column!
Noonan wrote, “It is not only that God is back, but that men are back. A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since Sept. 11.”
Noonan noted, “I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe. … And their style is back in style. We are experiencing a new respect for their old-fashioned masculinity, a new respect for physical courage, for strength and for the willingness to use both for the good of others.”
Dr. Robert Humphrey’s “Warrior Creed” capsulated what Peggy alludes to:
Wherever I go, everyone is a little bit safer because I am there.
Wherever I am, anyone in need has a friend.
Whenever I return home, everyone is happy I am there.
Stephanie Gutman, author of “A Kinder Gentler Military” observed, “Although the courage of the servicemen taking part in the current operations is beyond question, the fact remains that U.S. military leaders have been in the grip of an identity crisis.
“For years, they have presided over a demasculinisation, a hollowing out of military policy, that I have heard described as America’s dirty little secret. But it is a secret that bin Laden knows.”
We know he knows because he said so. In May 1998, he told an ABC television reporter, “We have seen, in the last decade, the decline of the American government,” said bin Laden. “This was proven in Beirut, when the Marines fled after two explosions.
“This was also repeated in Somalia. After a few blows, the soldiers ran in defeat and America forgot all the media propaganda about being the leader of the world. … The U.S. is a paper tiger.”
The fascinating and contradictory reality is he was kinda-sorta right – however, in a classic case of his reach exceeding his grasp, he has almost single handedly done what decades of political correctness cancer prevented. He awakened a sleeping atrophied giant and breathed fire into his soul.
There is a great line in an old Charlie Daniels song in which he sings, “Those ‘outside people’ best leave us alone … Because we’ll all stick together … and you can take that to the bank … Yeah the cowboys and the hippies and the rednecks and the yanks. You just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I think you’re finally going to understand.”
Noonan wrote, “Those businessmen on Flight 93, which was supposed to hit Washington, the businessmen who didn’t live by their hands or their backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said goodbye to the people they loved, snapped the cell phone shut and said, ‘Let’s roll.’ Those were tough men, the ones who forced that plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.” God Bless Ms. Noonan.
I recently found an old piece I wrote back in 1997 (before I started writing for WorldNetDaily).
It referenced a Rowan Scarborough article in the Washington Times that had generated a lot of listener response on my radio talk show.
A paid adviser on sexual harassment to then Army Secretary Togo West recommended that the military eliminate its “masculinist” tendencies and adopt an “ungendered vision” in which units look to Alcoholics Anonymous, religious orders and other groups as models. What the hell was that?
OK, I confess to a prejudice. I am a product of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg: Infantry Officer schools, Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces and more. We were taught the “Spirit of the Bayonet” was to “KILL, KILL, KILL!” Despite the introduction of VOLAR (the all volunteer Army) we were still taught our job was to kill the enemy and blow up stuff. We were told we were responsible for “the welfare, discipline and tactical deployment” of our troops. Self-esteem would be a product of tactical and technical proficiency, not some kumbaya, outcome-based psychobabble.
Togo’s “expert” said the Army must combine its “aggressivity” with compassion and cultivate idealism and moral conviction instead of manly “posturing.” What? That moronic academic feminist elitist didn’t have the foggiest flipping concept of what the Army does or what the job is.
Madeline Morris, a Duke University law professor, offered her recommendations in a lengthy Duke Law Journal article: “There is much to be gained and little to be lost by changing this aspect of military culture from a masculinist vision of unalloyed aggressivity to an ungendered vision combing aggressivity with compassion.”
What unmitigated arrogant bovine excrement! Actually there is very little to be gained and a great deal to be lost – like national security – and it was.
“Surely if armed force is ever to be deployed, then idealism and moral conviction are preferable motives to macho posturing” she wrote. This pretentious, myopic academic prom queen had her head so far in rectal defilade that it would have required major surgery to extricate it.
Charles Moskos, a leading military sociologist, made one of the few reasonable, salient observations in reviewing her claptrap. “People who don’t like soldiers should not be asked to make rules for soldiers.” Amen!
Morris argued that to change the culture is to switch from a reliance on masculinity to the use of idealism. Hellfire and damnation, woman! This witch hasn’t the faintest concept of duty, honor and country. Her academic puke is an insult to all those who have served, bled and died for her right to get away with demonstrating her unbridled pretensions ignorance.
“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
Who let the dogs out? Osama bin Dirtbag did. John Wayne is coming back and right shall be might.