Mommies Paradise

The Army drops its IQ…again. Apparently the percentage of new Army recruits with high-school diplomas has dropped from 94% in 2003 to 70.7% percent in 2007. The Pentagon has a goal of 90%. And of those with a diploma only 44.6% score in the upper 50th percentile on the Armed Forces aptitude tests, down from 56.2% in 2005.

And so…

In order to meet recruitment targets, the Army has even had to scour the bottom of the barrel. There used to be a regulation that no more than 2 percent of all recruits could be “Category IV”—defined as applicants who score in the 10th to 30th percentile on the aptitude tests. In 2004, just 0.6 percent of new soldiers scored so low. In 2005, as the Army had a hard time recruiting, the cap was raised to 4 percent. And in 2007, according to the new data, the Army exceeded even that limit—4.1 percent of new recruits last year were Cat IVs.

I know that any branch of the military is not made up of free thinkers but must they be dumb too? Dumb scares me more than smart. What will this do to the already high statistics of the abuse of female soldiers in the Army?

And who are these people who are graduating from high school but can’t really pass an aptitude test? Even more fallout from our lacking education system.

That aside, the author sites four clear issues with this whole idea of a stupid Army:

1. Is that really fair to the “downtrodden?”

2. High school dropouts drop out of the military too, henc more recruitment of dumb people.

3. “A dumb Army is a weak Army.”

4. Soldiers need to be particularly bright given today’s approach to “battle.” We don’t fight big battles anymore, where the reds are on one side and the blues are on the other and someone yells Charge! and everyone runs in. We live in a world of insurgencies and ground covering. Soldiers are face to face with people and so must have people skills. Dumb people don’t have people skills in the sense that we are talking today.

The Army’s 2006 field manual on counterinsurgency, which was supervised by Gen. David Petraeus (who is now trying to put its principles into action as U.S. commander in Iraq), emphasized that successful counterinsurgency operations “require Soldiers and Marines at every echelon to possess the following”—and then the authors recite a daunting list of prerequisites, including a “clear, nuanced, and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict,” an “understanding of the motivation, strengths, and weaknesses of the insurgent,” rudimentary
knowledge of the local culture, and several other admirable qualities.

I don’t know. I am not a fan of war and I hope that my son never makes the choice to join the military. Given our current regime and executive power players, I can’t imagine why any smart person would join the Army. But I also think that it is just asking for trouble to recruit from the most low hanging of fruit.

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Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. When I started to write this I went looking for some specific death rate statistics prior to legalized abortion. Depending on who you believe the number is 10,000 annually between 1960-1970 or something like 120. The larger number reflects a common pro-choice viewpoint based on estimations since many deaths would not have been reported as abortion induced.  The smaller number is a number which is inconsistent throughout the pro-”Life” propaganda. What is consistent is the sentiment that not that many women really died, so that isn’t a big deal. I am of the firm belief that the death of any woman is one too many. Wouldn’t that make someone really for “Life?”

Prior to the 1973 Roe decision women died because it was decreed that they were not smart enough to make decisions about their own bodies. Hundreds or thousands of women were forced to go through with unsafe medical procedures with little hope of medical assistance should anything go wrong. Women were motivated to perform abortions on themselves. Women died.

Roe vs. Wade saved lives. Even if it was one or one million.  No woman should be forced into slavery and oppression because of a selfish and cruel group of ignorant humans who are simply well organized.

I am young enough that I do not remember an American nation where contraception was unavailable and the right to terminate a pregnancy was forbidden. There was a Planned Parenthood clinic one block from my high-school where we all went for our birth control pills and we could receive free pregnancy tests. We could go in any time and get information. It was always understood that we had options. And no one would tell our parents. I don’t recall anyone talking about Roe vs. Wade in my classes but admittedly I was pretty bored in school and paid little attention.   Someone could have brought it up but I may have been in such a deep coma from the boring day-to-day drivel of too old teachers (who also taught my mom at the same school) that I missed the good stuff.

It honestly never occurred to me that I didn’t have that choice, should I need it. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that it dawned on me that the right to choose was a controversial one, to say the least. That is when the anti-choicers started hanging out on the street in front of my high school. For a few months they would show up a couple of days a week protesting, with the picture of the bloody fetus. You know the one. The one with the picture of a very late term fetus but with the words “Your Baby at 2 WEEKS” or some such nonsense. I still can’t figure out why they chose our location as opposed to the actual clinic down the road. I wrote these folks off as religious zealots and just kind of dumb old people. I just assumed that all of us young folks knew the deal. I was not yet clued into the true power of these folks nor was I politically motivated yet.

It wasn’t until I went on to college that I became ever more bewildered and incensed by the Pro-”Life” movement. There I met a woman who was incredibly motivated in her unwavering and scary support for the “Life” movement. This woman was smart. She was motivated to succeed in her education.   She had career goals. She seemed nice enough. She was young. She drove this older car and the entire back of the thing was covered in crazy “abortion-is-murder” bumper stickers, including a version of the baby as fetus picture.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that here was a well read, seemingly smart woman who was not only anti-abortion as it pertained to her own body but who was also unfailingly anti-choice for every woman in the world, no matter the circumstances. I was shocked by her unwavering lack of compassion for women who were not as privileged as she was. She was the typical Orange County girl. Blonde, blue, Right, blah, blah… (disclosure: I am blonde and blue but I grew up hippy-commune style and I have curves so I don’t really fit in the OC). There simply wasn’t any room in her mind or heart to empathize with any other viewpoint. It was almost as if she had a vehement disdain for all women, even herself, and refused to accept the idea that women deserve the right to have a choice when it comes to their own body. That was shocking to me. I quietly wondered what this woman would do if she found herself in a situation that at best would severely limit her ability to achieve her goals or at worst could threaten her life.

Thank you Roe for giving me the opportunity to not be a parent before my time.

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