More Foolishness

This time, it’s in a letter to the Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section by Isaiah Wilson (USA Col, Ret):

Understanding social dynamics in combat, including race and identity, is necessary for effective leadership and unit cohesion.

The problem with this claim is that in combat, logistics, maintenance, any other support function and in training for these, race is irrelevant, and identity is strictly and solely American. Subdividing our American military members, as it does in civilian life, only divides those members from each other, thereby creating…division, and that works disastrously against preparation and against execution.

Then Isaiah compounded his error.

Perhaps the reason America has struggled in combat is that we have underestimated the role of identity-centered understanding in military operations.

To the extent our military has struggled in combat, there has been too much emphasis on identity-centered understanding and the intrinsically racist and sexist divisions that emphasis creates. For all that, though, our military has not struggled in combat all that much. Our political leadership, though, has struggled mightily with combat, and that has gone to our detriment in nearly every conflict we’ve fought since WWII.

Keep the social justice claptrap out of the foxhole and out of our military in general, and return the training and operational focuses to producing the most lethal soldiers and the most lethal military establishment in the world.

Mischaracterization

The Vera Institutes of Justice’s Santiago Mueckay has one in his letter in the WSJ‘s Letters section.

[T]he Supreme Court has consistently affirmed that immigrants are entitled to due process under the US Constitution.

This is a cynically offered strawman argument. No one is arguing that immigrants are not entitled to our Constitution’s due process protections.

Illegal aliens, though—the ones targeted by rapid deportation efforts—hold themselves outside our social compact, outside our government’s jurisdiction, by breaking into our country in violation of our laws and then hiding from our government. From that, illegal aliens have no claim to, and no right for, any of the protections of our Constitution.

Mueckay will have to play with his dolly without me.