Tailhook ‘91 was a signal event for opening the doors to women in our nation’s combat arms. In spite of a Presidential Commission Report advising against lifting the female exclusion, President Clinton ordered it lifted in 1993 and the services rushed to comply in 1994 — especially the U.S. Navy. How is this social engineering experiment progressing? What has it accomplished in improving our military’s combat readiness? What internal friction has it caused? How has it affected morale in our nation’s armed forces? What has its affect been on imbuing young men with a ‘warrior spirit’ required to fight and win our nation’s wars? Find the answers in the essays found on this page.

A Women-in-Combat Trilogy At the links below you will find three new essays which have been added to the subject of the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq and the radical feminist crusade to portray women-in-combat there. Several months of intensive research have uncovered the fantasy and revealed the truth about our military’s preposterous attempt to place our mothers, our wives, our daughters, our sisters, and other female family members at risk in Iraq in order to serve an agenda of egalitarianism in an environment where it simply does not exist. These weak-kneed ‘perfumed princes’ serve the radical feminist agenda and its political supporters in the Congress and the Executive Branch to the point that they have forgotten who the enemy is. Three new essays expose this moral corruption. The first, The Indian Wars, takes us back to a time when men were men and were not intimidated by political concerns when the survival of our nation’s settlers were in question, under savage attack by murderous, barbarian Indian war parties and confederations. It takes us back to the Age of Andrew Jackson when our forebears fought and defeated the enemy on their land and using their tactics. The second, The Tale of Two Gauntlets, compares two gauntlets. One was a ‘real’ gauntlet run nine — count ‘em — nine times through two rows of about 600 savages for one-quarter-mile while they struck Simon Kenton (a Frontiersman) with hickory switches, clubs, and tomahawks and while he was under sentence of death by ‘burning at the stake.’ He did not whimper. He did not cry for mercy. He did not give in. He did not give up. And he was completely at the Indians’ mercy. He survived. The other ‘gauntlet’ was one of about 30 feet in length through which Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin voluntarily entered and ‘suffered’ the pinching, pushing, and touching of fewer than a dozen or so young naval aviators at the Tailhook bacchanal in Las Vegas in 1991. The direct comparison of these two gauntlets lets us know how much we have lost in virility over the past two hundred years. The third essay entitled ‘Lies, Lies, and More Damned Lies,’ exposes the calumny of our nation’s mass media in presenting the case that women are actually in combat in Iraq. They lie about the casualty count. They lie about the roles females play in combating the ‘insurgency’ there. They lie about the relative danger women face there compared to the ‘real’ combat troops — the fighters. They lie to create the impression that military women operate constantly ‘outside the wire’ (outside the confines of the barricades of the forward operating bases) when in reality most of them are FOBBITs. Those who live in air-conditioned comfort ‘inside the wire’ and have all of the ‘luxuries’ of home — including access to BEAUTY PRODUCTS. And finally, in conclusion, this latter essay describes the life and character of a ‘real’ warrior who engages in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy on his terrain, using his tactics, and actually takes the fight to the enemy and wins — he kills them with dispatch. He knows who the real enemy is. The radical feminists believe the enemy is us — American men!

Read these exposes and learn what it will really take to claim a victory in Iraq! It does not include breaking some fantasy ‘glass ceiling.’ It will take a regaining of the virility that America had in the Age of Jackson.

Jessica Lynch: The Icon of America’s ‘Happy Place’ Now we have the 'real' story of Jessica Lynch with the authorized publication of her book, 'I Am a Soldier Too' by Rick Bragg and a one and one-half hour Primetime national television interview of Lynch by Diane Sawyer. An analysis of the many details in these two sources is provided at the link above. At this link you will find the most important idea, concept, or revelation in the book -- with serious implications for a much more important set of problems facing our nation than the harrowing escapades of a diminutive, blond, blue-eyed girl from West Virginia who joined the Army to see the world -- is presented in the book and the interview. That concept is something Jessica Lynch calls her 'Happy Place.'

As we shall discover in the essay at the link above, this concept of finding a 'Happy Place' took hold of Jessica's parents as they faced the fact that she had been raped and tortured, then the mass media when they chose to subtly down-play the fact that Jessica had been so brutalized by her Iraqi captors, and finally by the American public as we chose to blot from our minds the consequences of women-in-combat, as exemplified by the Jessica Lynch story. And this concept has had a role in the PASSIVITY of America's institutional leaders in defending the Republic from the counter-culture revolution, which has had our nation in its grip over the past three-or-so decades. This concept bodes ill for the future of our nation and its people.

The Jessica Lynch story, the real story, is the revelation of a failed experiment with women in combat. It is an illustration of how far our military has been 'socialized' and turned into a jobs corps for women and minorities -- especially in its 'support tail.' The Lynch story epitomizes, in miniature, what would have befallen our 'tip of the spear' fighting forces if the Clinton administration, the shrill sisters in Congress, and weak-kneed military brass had succeeded in 'feminizing' the entire force as it purged the 'warriors' and the 'warrior ethos' from those parts of the military that succumbed to their politically inspired move to promote 'equality' instead of military readiness. Had they fully succeeded in this endeavor during the 1990s, our children's grandchildren may well have been put at risk of speaking a foreign language and worshipping in a mosque.

The essay at the link above puts all of this together in an 'explanation' in terms of networks -- their dynamic growth and their self-organizing character -- applicable to physical, biological, and complex social systems. Indeed, we find that each of the elements of American civilization -- and that civilization itself -- are social networks that (in a society where freedom of choice for the individual prevails) obey the same power laws of nature that are observed for cells, ecosystems, electric power grids, and many other physical systems, including the Internet and the World Wide Web.

And, of course, the Network Theory 'explanations' lead us to believe that American civilization is, indeed, a self-organizing system which exists on the balance of chaos and order. Just as the 20th century was the century of physics, it is predicted by some that the 21st century will be the century of biology in terms of networks. The essay above raises the possibility that, indeed, the 21st century will be one of complexity and self-organizing systems, but if we are to preserve the America that our Founding Fathers passed down to us, it had best be the century of network theory and experiment applied to American civilization. After all, which is more important as a national policy goal -- finding ways to prolong life (as the Boomer generation seeks to live forever) or finding ways to assure our children and grandchildren's freedoms based on our Founding documents?

Jessica Lynch’s ‘Teletubby’ Navy Active-duty U.S. Army soldiers, as well as ground-combat veterans of previous wars are outraged that the U.S. Army has awarded the Bronze Star Medal to Jessica Lynch for her “...bravery and heart [which] persevered while surviving in the ambush and captivity in An Nasiriya.” “She was not wounded in action, nor did she do anything to deserve a Bronze Star,” said a fellow soldier. “We have hundreds of valiant soldiers here in the 3rd Division who far more deserve more than she received but in many cases didn’t receive anything.”

Jessica Lynch’s ‘heroism’ in ‘combat’ is only one small part of the radical feminist agenda of creating Mythical Modern American War Heroes. There have been countless attempts to elevate the ordinary and mundane in naval aviation to heroic proportions by radical feminists, along with their political and military sympathizers. The creation of these myths has been conscious and systematic.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the mass media as well as the elites of the political and military classes in America are riddled with Symbolic Interactionists. It is they who have created Pvt. Jessica Lynch as the Modern American War Hero. It is they who have promoted the CDR Moneypenny (the anonymous ‘glass ceiling’ breaker), LT Kara Hultgreen (the first female Navy fighter pilot to die in a fighter squadron), LT Ashley (the English-school-girl, and would-be movie heroine), Kirstin (the ‘chicks rule’ you-go-girl), LT Melony Lynch (the female naval aviation recruiting poster-girl), LT ‘Missy’ Cummings (the failed F/A-18 FRS student pilot) and a female Marine crewmember of a C-130 transport to heroine status based on hype, misrepresentation of the truth, falsehood, and creative imagination – in fact, on myth.

Learn the details of this revolutionary movement at the Hot Link above. Also at this link is the revelation that a substantial fraction of the Navy’s mid-level (field grade) naval officers have succumbed to the siren song of a ‘democratized’ command structure. One of the Hollow Force Debaters exclaims that “...I welcome the changes [in the Navy’s proposed new command structure]...the mission is getting accomplished. Even by those limp-wristed, yogurt eating, wall street reading, computer toting, sensitivity training attending, long distance running, teetotalling naval officers of the new millennium.”

Learn also what constitutes the kind of current flag-rank ‘leadership’ which must be purged from the U.S. Navy – in order to allow a new generation of ‘real’ warriors to assume leadership in a Navy which is adrift in ‘politically correct’ social experimentation.

A Pictorial Summary of Thoughts on Women-in-Combat Read this graphic essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) which reveals common sense answers to such questions as: What is there about war that appeals to women?, What is there about war that appeals to young girls?, and What kind of a civilization pretends that women are the equal of men in fighting wars? After a pictorial excursion through the never-never land of radical feminist fantasy, Dr. Atkinson deals with such questions as: What is the true nature of war?, What is the reality of modern warfare?, and why do young men participate in such an endeavor? The graphics alone are worth the ‘price of admission.’

Should America Occupy Iraq? Read this essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) to understand why such an occupation would depend on a military which has been ‘socialized’ beyond belief over the eight long years of the Clintons’ administration. Indeed, the occupation force would be one that is the Clintons’ military, not President Bush’s military — one that has been weakened by reduced standards, affirmative action, and mixed-sex basic training. The dangers that lurk in a foreign policy dependent on protecting Iraq’s borders and controlling its political and economic infrastructure are described and analyzed. The ‘occupation force’ required to carry this out over an extended period of time could result in 50,000 terrorist ‘targets,’ at least fifteen percent of which will be America’s sisters, daughters, wives, and mothers. Wake up America!

My Opposition to Women-in-Combat and How I Got There: A Strange Journey Read this speech by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) given to the Jacksonville, Florida branch of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association on 8 March 2002. A full-house of over 75 USNA alumni and their wives were in attendance. Retired flag-rank officers and others from WWII classes and classes through the ‘70s and ‘80s and a few alums in the mid-90s classes attended. A congenial and spirited question and answer period followed on the subject of the New Age Ethics program at the U.S. Naval Academy. The speech summarizes Dr. Atkinson’s experiences among the elites of the Boomer generation from his immersion in their culture in the mid-1960s as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan through his tour of duty with the Office of the Secretary of Defense on Henry Kissinger’s Verification Panel Working Group on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and culminating in his conclusions concerning this generation of Americans as they grasped the reigns of national executive power in the 1990s. These observations are placed in the context of the current war against terrorism.

War as Entertainment Read this essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) to understand how the war against Islamic fundamental terrorists in Afghanistan has been turned into entertainment by our nation’s mass media, radical feminists who propagandize the contribution to the war effort by women in the military and by those few females who are flying missions over Afghanistan. In addition to reporting from the ‘front lines’ by the rabidly liberal media star Geraldo Rivera, we now have female F-14 back-seat observers who have the best single-seat IMAX theatre seat in the house chortling — chicks rule. Indeed, to them Afghanistan is war as entertainment — war as radical feminist fantasy propaganda!

Black Hawk Down Book and Movie Review Read this book/movie review to begin to understand why women-in-combat is a concept based in fantasy, completely devoid of realistic truth about the nature of combat, and allowed by an American populace with absolutely no comprehension that social engineering (job opportunity and career enhancement) is destroying our nation’s conventional armed forces. The courage, bravery, and unit cohesion of our elite military units (Delta Force, Special Forces, and Rangers) who fought and died in Mogadishu in October 1993 are portrayed from the viewpoint of those who fought there. Their training and ‘warrior spirit’ exemplify what our conventional armed forces strived for in wars past. The fact that we have allowed radical feminists and their servant politicians to ‘feminize’ the latter forces — Navy, Air Force, and Army — has placed America in a position of potential vulnerability in the future.

America’s Wake-Up Call: A Metaphor for Women-in-Combat Read this essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) providing a graphic metaphor which explains the potential vulnerabilities of the U.S. armed forces due to the ‘feminization’ of our combat arms. The metaphor identifies similarities between the Islamic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center which resulted in a catastrophic collapse of the twin towers due to a weakening of the ‘structural integrity’ of a radically new design incorporated into these buildings and the potential for just such a catastrophic collapse into ‘dust’ of a military that has been radically changed by introducing women into combat roles — roles which have been proscribed for good reason over the entire history of Western civilization.

Women-in-Combat After the Terrorist Attack on America Read this essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson , CDR USN (Ret.) to learn of the radical feminist media campaign to (as Sandy Berger Clinton’s national security advisor says) “...make sure that the President does not turn back the gains made during the past eight years.” This campaign is particularly aimed at the issue of women-in-combat. The major national newspapers and magazines recently have published stories lauding the contributions that female service members are making in the ‘war on Osama bin Laden.’ NAVY TIMES is chock full of letters from female sailors who tell us that they are pulling their weight equal to or greater than male sailors. Female naval aviators are sought out and glorified (one, whose mother is trying to sign her up to book and movie contracts) for their role in Afghanistan. Why is this propaganda campaign occurring now, in the wake of the 9-11 attack on America? Read this essay to find the real story. Reality is scoffed at. Illusion is King. Until? Read about what is missing in this debate.

Conversation with a Young Woman and Someone’s Daughter Listen in on a conversation between Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) and a young woman who reveals the motivation some young women have for volunteering for our nation’s combat arms. When he asked her who had encouraged her in these ideas, she said it was her father and her brothers. They had always been very supportive of whatever she wanted to do. And they would have supported her to the very last if she had decided to enter the nation's combat arms. She said that such a 'career path' had a great deal of attraction for her because it would have given her the discipline that she knew would be required of an adult in today's world and it would be a physical as well as mental challenge that she believed she was up to meeting. It would be a wonderful adventure for a young woman like her.

When he asked her if she could she take the life of another human being in combat, she replied, upon a few moments reflection and uncertainty that she did not know whether or not she could

Conversation with a Father of a Female Naval Aviator Listen in on a conversation between Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret.) and a father of an active-duty female naval aviator. CAPT Anonymous is a member of a small but very vocal group of patriotic Americans who are reacting to a primal human male instinct -- a father's strong natural urge to support and protect his daughters. This tendency, thank God, is in all of us. It is part of the family bond that is larger than just the father. It envelops all members of the home and, to a lesser extent to the extended 'family.' It is a part of each of us. We can't help it. It is a moral 'good.' It is an important ingredient in any strong, healthy society.

But there are times and concepts that transcend those of fatherly pride, family cohesion, and love of our daughters. One of these ideas is our national security, that is, the protection of our Constitution, our way of life, our survival against enemies foreign and domestic. Listen in and find solid arguments that support the idea that women-in-combat is folly in our nation’s wars against determined, resourceful, and non-Third World nations.

The Hollow Force Debate I am in the midst of collecting information on the ‘purge’ of the U.S. Navy officer corps, especially in naval aviation, that has been carried out by the Clinton administration over the past eight years. This ‘purge,’ activated as a result of the infamous Tailhook ‘91 affair and its aftermath — opening combat billets to females, has been carried out by civilian bureaucrats in the Pentagon by screening the promotion lists all the way down to the level of LT to LCDR. Any naval aviator who even attended the Tailhook ‘91 bachannal and/or any officer who does not have ‘clean thoughts’ regarding the ‘feminization’ of the Navy’s combat arms has been the subject of this politically-motivated ‘purge.’ Listen in on a conversation between me and several dozen of these young naval aviators (USNA class 1980-ish, that is, LCDRs and CDRs), carried out via e-mail on the Internet. You may be surprised to learn of their attitude toward our nation’s history, their place in it, and their thoughts about what they have survived since the Tailhook ‘91 fiasco. Remember, these people are Boomers but at the ‘young’ end of their generational cohort. These guys were born in the late 50s and early 60s and only young children or teenagers when Bill Clinton and his ’elite’ Boomers were demonstrating against the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s on our nation’s college and university campuses. Listen to them tell us, “your generation lost the Vietnam War,” and “we won the cold war.”

My purpose in this research is to ascertain whether or not the ‘purge’ has been successful. That is, whether or not these young officers are resisters, collaborators, or just plain ‘passive’ to the behavior modification techniques that have been applied to them by the ‘facilitators’ and ‘change agents’ among the ‘power elites’ of their generation — both civilian and military. Click on The Hollow Force Debate link above to read conversations I have had with this cohort of young naval officers who will be the flag-rank backbone of the fleet over the next decade.

Be Not Afraid: A Conversation with‘Anonymous’a Vietnamese-American

Join a conversation with a young man, a former U.S. Marine, who came to this country from South Vietnam in 1975 as a boy of ten with his mother and three sisters. His father, a former fighter pilot in the South Vietnamese Air force was left behind in a 're-education' labor camp and joined his family 13 years later. This conversation should be of interest to all, especially those who may not fully appreciate the research material posted on this Web Site. Please follow carefully the arguments made in this piece. All of us can learn from it.

Loss of the Warrior Spirit The NAVY TIMES ('Left Behind?' pp.18-20, 2/12/01) tells the damning story of how our nation's military leadership failed to send a rescue party to search for LCDR Michael Scott Speicher after he was shot down on the first day of the Gulf War on a mission near Baghdad. CDR Bob Stumpf, USN (Ret.), a squadron commander of a 'sister' F/A-18 squadron, tells us that, "I'm sure [Speicher's Commanding Officer] tried really hard to get a rescue mission. But when you're on the ship, 700 miles away, you can only be told to shut up so many times. It's such a metaphor for what's wrong with the country today. It seems to fit with the whole dismantling of the warrior culture. It [used to be] an unwritten oath that we're not going to leave anyone out there [on the battlefield]. For a stark contrast to this disgraceful situation, view the article I wrote for the FORUM section of the Sunday Washington Times (3/14/99) and the WorldNetDaily.com (3/22/99) entitled, "Loss of trust and confidence." That article describes the faith and trust that a 'fighting man' should have in his leaders -- all the way up the chain of command to the President -- that every effort will be made to rescue him while he is still alive and evading capture.

Mother McGrory’s Military Ms. Mary McGrory, a nationally syndicated columnist and a featured writer for The Washington Post objected vigorously to the kind of SERE training given our military members, including women at the U.S. Air Force Academy. This training, a staple for combat military men ever since the Korean War and a foundation on which the behavior of our Vietnam War POWs rested, has served America well for over 40 years of conflict. But now, when women are serving in combat roles and subject to the kind of brutalization by an enemy that only men had to endure before, we must now ‘soften’ this necessary training. This in the face of the sexual abuse of our first two women POWs in the Gulf Storm War. It is time that America wake up to the damage that modern liberals like Ms. McGrory are doing to our nation’s armed forces. Especially now that we are engaged in a Nontrinitarian War against Jihadistan — an enemy which fights only with its men, not its women. This essay is particularly pertinent to whether or not America should occupy Iraq.

The Danzig-ization of the U.S. Military At this link is an essay by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson that compares Richard Danzig, the Secretary of the Navy, to Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during most of the Vietnam War. It is a continuation of an essay by Dr. Atkinson (see below) which compared Danzig’s predecessor, SecNav John Dalton and ADM Jeremy M. Boorda, the former Chief of Naval Operations with McNamara. ADM Boorda, who committed suicide in the aftermath of his handling of the introduction of the first females into naval aviation under a reduced qualification and training standards regimen and SecNav Dalton’s political manipulation of the Navy’s promotion process related to women-in-combat were compared to the (in)famous McNamara whose perfidy in conducting the Vietnam War will forever go down in history as a betrayal of America’s tradition of trust between its leaders and its fighting men. This essay could well have been titled ‘The Re-McNamara-ization of the U.S. Navy.’ It reveals that Danzig is the re-incarnation of McNamara in nearly all aspects of McNamara’s character and world view. Read this essay to learn of these amazing parallels.

The McNamara-ization of the U.S. Navy At this link is the original essay by Dr. Atkinson, written in April of 1995, just after Robert S. McNamara’s mea culpa book on the Vietnam War. That book reveals that McNamara “...by 1965-66 had concluded that the Vietnam War was militarily unwinnable.” Unwinnable, that is, in the manner in which it was being fought. McNamara appeared on several national TV shows in 1995 promoting his book — crying and whining that “...We were wrong, terribly wrong [in fighting that war].” This essay compares the behavior of ADM Jeremy M. Boorda and SecNav John Dalton in the feminization of the U.S. Navy to that of McNamara’s conduct of the Vietnam War. The parallels are striking. Who will be crying and whining 30 years from now when the feminization of the U.S. Navy reaches its disastrous conclusion during our next war with a resourceful enemy? Note: This essay provides the most detailed description of LT Kara Hultgreen’s fatal accident that exists outside the official Navy accident reports. It is concise. It is detailed. It is the truth. LT Hultgreen’s accident was due to pilot error — not engine failure.

Bob Stumpf’s Testimony on LCDR Michael Scott Speicher Saddam Hussein has finally played the ‘Speicher card’ in an attempt to obtain a ‘bargaining chip’ in the next phase of America’s war on terrorism. Iraq invited the U.S. to send a delegation to investigate the fate of LCDR Michael Scott Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down over Iraq on the first night of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991. This initiative is designed to cause friction in our armed forces at a time when American patriotism and support of our armed forces is at a decade-long high. Despite the fact that we are now learning of the courage and warrior spirit of our fighting men through movies such as ‘Black Hawk Down’ and ‘We Were Soldiers,’ where the credo of ‘Leave No Man Behind’ is emblazoned on the American consciousness, the Speicher episode is a damning account of the betrayal of a downed flyer by our high-level military and political leadership in the Gulf War.

CDR Bob Stumpf, USN (Ret.) reveals the detailed essence of that betrayal in a recent article in the National Review Online. This article is presented at the link, Bob Stump’s recent testimony. Over a year ago, the NAVY TIMES ('Left Behind?' pp.18-20, 2/12/01) told the damning story of how our nation's military leadership failed to send a rescue party to search for LCDR Speicher after he was shot down on the first day of the Gulf War on a mission near Baghdad. CDR Bob Stumpf, USN (Ret.), a squadron commander of a 'sister' F/A-18 squadron, told the NAVY TIMES that, "I'm sure [Speicher's Commanding Officer] tried really hard to get a rescue mission. But when you're on the ship, 700 miles away, you can only be told to shut up so many times. It's such a metaphor for what's wrong with the country [during the 1990s]. It seems to fit with the whole dismantling of the warrior culture. It [used to be] an unwritten oath that we're not going to leave anyone out there [on the battlefield]."

Indeed, the U.S. military has decayed in ten short years from the proud and strong force that it once was. The Clinton/Gore administration was primarily responsible for this decay. But some of our recently-retired and active-duty flag-rank military officers are also responsible for this decay -- from the military leadership who could have sent a rescue mission at the time of Speicher's shoot-down, to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GEN John Shalikashvilli (who vetoed a planned covert mission to comb the wreckage of Speicher's aircraft after it was found in 1993) to the late ADM Jeremy Boorda (then the Navy's personnel chief who approved a 'finding of death' in 1991 when the evidence was inconclusive that Speicher had died) to the Navy leadership who in 1996 'reaffirmed' its previous ruling that Speicher was dead in spite of evidence to the contrary (investigators clearly believed that Speicher ejected and did not die in the crash).

For a stark contrast to this disgraceful situation, view the article I wrote for the FORUM section of the Sunday Washington Times (3/14/99) and the WorldNetDaily.com (3/22/99) entitled, "Loss of trust and confidence." That article describes the faith and trust that a 'warrior' must have in his leaders -- all the way up the chain of command to the President -- that every effort will be made to rescue him while he is still alive and evading capture. That faith and trust is earned, not granted.