The Patriot Post® · Lib Policies Torpedo Navy Morale
The Navy has plenty of destroyers – but low morale may be the biggest one of all. Stressed and stretched thin, most sailors say they’re fighting another kind of enemy: distrust and dissatisfaction. For most service members, the last six years have been an emotional roller coaster – not only because of the external conflicts, but because of the internal ones that threaten to tear apart an already fragile fighting force.
In a survey of 5,536 Navy personnel, only 27% say morale is “good” or “excellent,” a freefall from past responses, where strained troops still managed to keep their spirits up. Now, a half-decade deep into the President’s social experiment with the military, the scars are starting to show. Almost half of enlisted troops said they “distrust senior leaders” – an opinion shared by 40% of officers. And the wave of pessimism threatens to affect more than just the Navy.
From uncertainty over their retirement to the frustration with “excessive political correctness,” most of our brave men and women barely recognize the military they gave up their lives to serve. Instead, sailors say they harbor widespread doubts about the men commanding them, “complaining of poor leadership and a disciplinary environment that tolerates absolutely no mistakes.”
What they mean is no politically incorrect mistakes. What the Obama military does tolerate, unfortunately, is a brave new world of sexual liberalism and religious censorship – both of which are tearing at the fabric of America’s fighting force. Sexual assaults and suicides are through the roof since the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010 – and suddenly, the biggest cheerleaders for repeal are nowhere to be found. The Pentagon downplayed the effects of open homosexuality when it was implemented in 2011 – something it will have a tough time doing now, with the rate of male-on-male assaults at a record high. While the media highlights the female victims, the Pentagon’s 1,400-page report explains that service men are just as affected – if not more so.
Now, four years later, the administration is scratching its head at the sky-high suicides and sexual attacks. Defense officials are racing to reassure people that they’re doing everything they can to get to the bottom of these issues – only to inject more policies that accelerate both. They put political correctness ahead of national security and then seem surprised when both the nation and the people that protect us are at risk.
According to the Washington Times, the survey “was released amid complaints by some aviators about excessive political correctness as the military seeks to stamp out sexual harassment and misconduct in an increasingly gender-integrated Navy.” Obviously, these are complex and emotional issues – from personal safety to private beliefs. If we want to solve these crises, a key component to addressing them is the same vibrant faith this administration is trying to stamp out. Is this really the time we want to tell service members they can’t rely on God?
Christians in the Cross-fire in Iraq
What was once the cradle of Christianity may be the death of it for believers in the Middle East. Driven out by fear (or worse), Iraqi’s Christians are vanishing by the thousands, as ISIS hunts down non-Sunni Muslims, and especially Christians, like an insatiable predator. Undeterred by the world’s sporadic airstrikes, the radical group is rattling Baghdad’s gates – mere miles from entering the city that so many American soldiers died defending.
Less than 10 kilometers may be all that stands in the way of Baghdad and the extremists who killed as many as 1,000 Iraqi troops in the last handful of days. “Things are so bad,” Canon Andrew White posted on Facebook. “All the military air strikes are doing nothing. If ever we needed your prayer, it is now.” The Iraqi priest is one of a number of Christians left in the warzone, whose only hope is local soldiers who say they would “take off (their) uniforms” if ISIS attacked Baghdad.
“Christianity in Iraq is finished,” say reporters like Daniel Williams, who spent 10 days with the suffering in hiding. “It is not simply that these Christians have gone through tremendous trauma. It is not only because they lost everything, including their homes and businesses, and in some cases spent days and even weeks in detention while being badgered to convert to Islam, where they saw babies taken from mothers’ arms to be held for ransom and busloads of young people ferried off into the unknown… No, it is because, for Christians in Iraq, the past three months have been the climax of 11 years of hell,” Williams wrote.
Plagued and persecuted in ways no one has experienced since Jesus’s time, Christians are not just being targeted – they’re being massacred. Those still in the country don’t have a way out. They’re sitting ducks for the savage Islamists intent on wiping them – literally – off the map. Yet so far, White’s pleas have gone relatively unnoticed by the Obama administration. President Obama was just at the U.N. Security Council meeting – yet made no mention of the Iraqis at the tip of the spear.
The situation is so dire, White explains, that there are hardly any Christians in Iraq who haven’t had a family member killed by ISIS. Yet the same President who hasn’t called Pastor Saeed Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, in two years of his wrongful Iranian imprisonment has made no move to defend Christians here either.
Although it would take a substantial effort and ground commitment to carve a way out of the country for the cornered Christians, it is entirely possible – with the world’s help – to shepherd ISIS’s prey out of harm’s way. The U.S. could establish a corridor to move them into Kuwait, or press the U.N. to create an international convoy to safety. It’s not a question of is there a way to get the Christians out, it’s a question of is there a will to get them out.
The Doe before Roe…
She never wanted an abortion. So it was one of her life’s greatest regrets that Sandra Cano, the plaintiff in the second most important Supreme Court case on life, became the impetus behind the greatest expansion of legal abortion in American history. Cano, the “Mary Doe” of Doe v. Bolton, is far lesser known than Roe v. Wade, which is usually credited with opening the floodgates to millions of unborn casualties.
As LifeNews explains, “the Doe decision saw the high court define ‘health’ to include ‘all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age,’ every possible exception to objections.” For years, Sandra tried to overturn the decision – unsuccessfully. “It’s a nightmare to be connected to a case that I never wanted to be connected to,” she explained recently. “Doe v. Bolton allows abortion up to the ninth month. This case takes children’s lives.”
[Yesterday], after news of her passing, the pro-life community honored Cano’s tireless work to reverse the verdict that paved the way for abortion-on-demand. “Sandra’s work to overturn that devastating decision that was based on lies will not end with her death,” Father Frank Pavone said. “When life ultimately triumphs over death, Sandra will share in that victory.”
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.