Death Before Dishonor

Today's commentary was engendered by last night's promotion of the US Navy SEAL program by NBC nightly news. The report on the super-elite of the navy chronicled their tough training and the desire of President Obama to produce more special operations forces necessitating new measures to ad numbers to the selective force. One method of boosting membership that is being employed is using non-military coaches for a three month physical training regimen in Illinois before the SEAL selection begins. I find this confounding- with military budgets already in the hundreds of billions of dollars, why would the Navy have to look outside its ranks to find physical trainers? In World War II, every member of service received P. T. without the need to hire specialists from the outside to help them sweat. And that begs a more fundamental question- does simply raising the numbers not automatically detract from a unit's selective nature. To raise grades in a classroom setting, simply turning Cs and Bs to As does not make the students who generated them any smarter. It simply lowers the value of the A. I will also mention Eisenhower's esoteric objection to special forces: that a general would rather have super-motivated, athletic patriots in the ranks of conventional units, strengthening them than mission-specific elites off on their own, consuming resources and perhaps acting as cowboys, freebooters, or as surrogates for external spy agencies (read as the Central Intelligence Agency). Ike felt that beyond the need for paratroopers that he used and endorsed that diverting great soldiers into special forces sapped the cohesion of the mission as a whole. JFK, on the other hand, was a great proponent of special warfare units with his fascination with counter-insurgency. In today's chaotic world with the threat of extra-national terrorism and the need for soldier trainers who can function abroad screaming out for soldier linguists, I come down on JFK's side on this mark. I wholeheartedly support the Green Berets, who serve this task of helping Iraqi and Afghan forces stand up and I commend all who would attempt the rigors of US Army Ranger training, Air Force forward observer or para-rescue school, Marine Force Recon duty, or Navy UDT (underwater demolition team) or SEAL training ordeals, but I have to ask why with the supposed admiration NBC displayed for the SEALs why that network has not bothered to present extensive coverage of the SEALs who are being court-martialed for alleged punching a known al-Qaeda terrorist when they captured him in Iraq? I am also certain that those scholar warriors seeking to join the SEALs must now ponder a little harder with brother SEALs in the dock for serving bravely and doing their duty and an anti-military agenda spilling from the arch-leftist in the White House.