Pace's Wisdom

Pace’s Wisdom

Saturday, March 17, 2007

General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a remarkable man. Look at his biography:

General Peter Pace will assume the duties as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 30, 2005. He served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2001 to August 12, 2005.

General Pace was born in Brooklyn, NY and grew up in Teaneck, NJ. A 1967 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, he holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration from George Washington University and attended Harvard University for the Senior Executives in National and International Security program. The General is also a graduate of the Infantry Officers' Advanced Course at Fort Benning, Ga.; the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, in Quantico, VA; and the National War College, at Ft. McNair, Washington, DC.

In 1968, upon completion of The Basic School, Quantico, Va., General Pace was assigned to the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division in the Republic of Vietnam, serving first as a Rifle Platoon Leader and subsequently as Assistant Operations Officer. He was later assigned to Marine Barracks, Washington DC, where he served in a number of billets, to include Security Detachment Commander, Camp David; White House Social Aide; and Platoon Leader, Special Ceremonial Platoon.

General Pace has held command at virtually every level, and served in overseas billets in Nam Phong, Thailand; Seoul, Korea; and Yokota, Japan. While serving as President, Marine Corps University, then Brigadier General Pace also served as Deputy Commander, Marine Forces, Somalia, from December 1992 - February 1993, and as the Deputy Commander, Joint Task Force - Somalia from October 1993 - March 1994.

After an assignment as the Director for Operations (J-3), Joint Staff, Washington, DC, then Lieutenant General Pace served as the Commander, U. S. Marine Corps Forces, Atlantic/Europe/South. He was promoted to General and assumed duties as the Commander in Chief, United States Southern Command in September 2000.

As the Vice Chairman from October 2001 to August 2005, General Pace served as the Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, Vice Chairman of the Defense Acquisition Board, and as a member of the National Security Council Deputies Committee and the Nuclear Weapons Council. In addition, he acted for the Chairman in all aspects of the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System including participation in the Defense Resources Board.

General Pace's personal decorations include: Defense Distinguished Service Medal, with two oak leaf clusters; Defense Superior Service Medal; the Legion of Merit; Bronze Star Medal with Combat V; the Defense Meritorious Service Medal; Meritorious Service Medal with gold star; Navy Commendation Medal with Combat "V"; Navy Achievement Medal with gold star; and the Combat Action Ribbon.

General Pace and his wife, Lynne, have two children, Peter and Tiffany Marie.

Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/pace_bio.html

On Christmas Day, 1992, the most proficient soldiers in the US Army at the time left Fort Drum, NY, to risk their lives saving starving Somalis in the Horn of Africa. General Pace was there with his US Marines, and soldiers from Fort Drum helped the US Marines download all of the incoming equipment at the Port of Mogadishu for operations in the war-torn country off large transport ships. US Marines were tasked with guarding the port, as well as providing security for the full-scope of the facility. The US Marines guarding the entrance to the port were sometimes shot with Russian-made AKMS assault rifles by Somali al Qai’da insurgents, and when a Marine was shot other Marines quickly took the place of the fallen so that the security of the facility would not be compromised. The US Marines also secured and provided security for Mogadishu Airport, critical to mission success in Somalia. This was General Pace’s work. I remember it well, because I was in the Port of Mogadishu with the expeditionary force and these operations were the foundation of our axis of advance in seizing Mogadishu. It was really a classic US Marine/US Army Joint Task Force operation.

There is only one line in General Pace’s biography that is important to the soldiers that he commands:

General Pace was a US Marine Commissioned Officer Rifle Platoon Leader in Vietnam. The most important duty that any Commissioned Officer in the US Armed Forces can ever undertake is that of Platoon Leader of an infantry platoon in times of war. That sole experience shapes the construct of the leader from that point forward for the rest of their career. It tells us that General Pace was in the trenches engaged in direct combat action against an armed enemy while commanding a Platoon-sized element during war. No other position in the US Armed Forces is as important as the Platoon Leader position. Platoon Leaders in war really begin to understand what it takes to train and lead combat forces to victory. The Platoon Leader is the key to success on the modern unconventional battlefield.

Recently General Pace made comments about homosexuality in the US Military and he called homosexuality “immoral” behavior. General Pace knew that by doing so he would reap the whirlwind of the media. But as a leader of soldiers that lives the US Military values, General Pace has the duty and obligation to study, and critique if necessary, the culture of the US Military to ascertain the viability of the total force. That is his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The US Military is not some university campus where all behaviors are encouraged and even expected and tolerated by all participants. The US Military is tasked with protecting the national security of the United States. That is a tough mission requiring the toughest realistic training and even tougher discipline. If an Army is undisciplined and untrained, that Army will be liquidated by armies of hostile nation-states that are.

An Army concerns itself with only one concept. That concept is “battlefield utility”. Leaders of soldiers that go to war only concern themselves with those things that will bring utility to the battlefield, and nothing else. The modern unconventional battlefield creates its own standards, and those soldiers in armies that are unprepared for it will die on that battlefield.

Battlefield utility is equipment maintenance, marksmanship training, communications, land navigation and common-tasks training. Those are the soldier skills of readiness that bring an army utility on the battlefield. Common-tasks are skill sets every soldier that expects to go to war must perfect. Common-tasks training includes training to reduce stoppages of a soldier’s primary weapon, first-aid, coping with hostile terrain, weather, utilizing special equipment to enhance battlefield survivability in a chemical, nuclear and biological warfare environment, using radios, maps, as well as many other skills. A soldier’s day is consumed with such training because the modern unconventional battlefield sets the standard for survivability. As soldiers conduct such training over a period of months and even years preparing for the battlefield, soldiers do not need nor deserve to be distracted with culture war issues that are engaged by the general populations of the nation-state. Soldiers are too busy to be bothered with such distractions, and culture-war issues only fracture battlefield preparations that are carefully planned and implemented by military leaders.

American soldiers should not be engaged in any cause that deviates from the American flag. The US Constitution is void of any guarantee or right to have sex. Sexual behavior is entertainment between humans. Military readiness functions provide no flexibility for entertainment, only tough, realistic training preparing soldiers for war.

The US Military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was a mistake when it was implemented service-wide. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is the insertion of the American culture war into the US Armed Forces. Since sex has no logical utility for military readiness, the insertion of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy into the framework of military personnel disposition and recruitment is nothing more than the implementing of Bolshevist class-warfare into the heart of America’s national defense. It is a cause brought into the military institution that has no military utility, and is not supported by the US Constitution as a guaranteed right. There is no consensus on homosexuality in the United States, and the US military should not be exposed to communist class-warfare techniques in a psychological operations type way.

The revolutionary Bolshevik homosexual movement in the United States has been seeking recognition for homosexuality from every US institution across the board. By forcing the US military into accepting homosexuality, revolutionary Bolshevism can then claim further legitimacy in the nation-state. The homosexual movement, like any other revolutionary cell, incrementally forces its way into targeted institutions and then demands loyalty to its agendas under threats of coercion and political violence. Since the US military should not be an outlet or facilitator of the culture war because the American culture war is such a grey area, great damage to the military institution can result from its willing or unwilling participation to these ends. That is not to say that the US military may eventually be forced to change its policy towards homosexual behavior through policy created by pro-homosexual and pro-Bolshevik political forces, but merely serves as the recognizing of what is to come should that occur.

The US Armed Forces always ranks at the top of the American best-respected institution list. American citizens from all walks of life join the US military because it has always been an institution that was protected from the class-warfare contamination present in so many other American institutions. Should homosexuality be allowed in the US Armed Forces, it would be viewed by competitors as a taking of sides to a cause alien to what the US military is and should be. Even though other countries have allowed homosexuals to serve openly in their armed forces, that doesn’t mean the United States should, and there have been no scientific studies published that clarify the damage or even worthiness done to the military institutions of the state from such policies. Utopian intellectuals want the changes made, they want homosexuality inserted into every American institution as evident in the culture war, but there have been no scientific studies of what such a policy would do to the US Armed Forces and US national security.

Sex belongs in the bedroom, not on the battlefield. Any policy that seeks to make sex a special right in the US Armed forces will have immeasurable impacts on military readiness in the short term and potentially very damaging effects in the long term. The US military should not be a battlefield for America’s culture war. US soldiers have too much to do to prepare for real battlefields that they will face in the 21^st Century.

It is for the reasons above that I side with General Pace’s determination that homosexuality and military readiness is incompatible. General Pace’s determination that homosexuality is immoral is found in the absence of proof of such morality. If homosexuality is moral, from what evidence do its advocates derive that it is moral?

American soldiers, like the US Constitution, don’t concern themselves with what Americans do in their bedrooms, homosexual or heterosexual. The US Constitution tells us that there is no guarantee to have sex by any American that is enforceable by the US government. By inserting the Bolshevik-homosexuality movement into the US Armed Forces, you will be forcing vast populations of American volunteers to sign onto a revolutionary cause that has no consensus in the United States. Open homosexuality in the US military is nothing more than a Bolshevik loyalty oath.

The results of such a policy will be marked deteriorations in recruitment of new soldiers, paralyzing social and political agendas forced upon military leadership, and reduced national security capability. I predict that those will be the scientifically measured effects of such a policy for the US Armed Forces.

This is why every great General understands that the equipping and training of an army in preparation for war is not about sex.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

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