The Czar knows how smart you readers are, and will not hesitate to get you talking smart stuff with one another. For example, the Czar got a great letter from Island Dweller (and who doesn’t?) as follows:

Oh Sultan of the Snowdrifts:

Can you or any other members of the court explain to me how the viewpoints set forth in the quote below contribute one iota toward getting that 155mm shell to land precisely on its target, that well-deserved 1000 pound bomb to come wafting through some Taliban warlord’s bedroom window, or a sniper to put that bullet precisely where it’s supposed to go – in other words, combat efficiency, which is what we are supposed to get in our military establishment – and not gender sensitivity?

National Review Online
October 29, 2013
Sterling Beard

Jessica L. Wright, the acting under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said today that the Defense Department must maintain its commitment to diversity and inclusion, which contribute to mission success.

She asserted that diversity helps civilian and military employees perform well because they “represent the nation in our workforce.”

The Defense Department not only talks “about diversity in terms of race and gender, and ethnicity, but it is much more than that in my mind,” Wright said. She declared that diversity included “your thought process, how you grew up, [and] what you can add to the greater good because of your background.”

Wright, the very model of a modern retired major general in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, was speaking Tuesday on best practices for inclusion and diversity at an event hosted by the German Marhsall Fund of the United States.

The webpage for the event, titled “Mission Critical: Transatlantic Security and Diversity,” declared, “it is a security imperative for military leaders to proactively advance diversity and inclusion (D&I) best practices,” because of the “rapid demographic change [and] advances in gender and LGBT equity and a new generation of veterans in NATO countries.

Via American Forces Press Service.

So the Czar strolled over to the cool weapons room (not the weapons look cool…or that the weapons room looks cool…just that the weapons themselves operate at low temperatures) and asked the team’s project manager, Operative MC for his opinion.

Operative MC, as you know, has been furious with the way the President has wrecked our nation’s armed forces, so the answer would be at least informative if not outrageously entertaining. We got both, as MC went off like a firecracker:

The short answer is, it ■■■■ing doesn’t. It is far from a “security imperative”, and at best is a “nice to have”, sort of like an extra pack of M&Ms in your lunch box. It is an argument through assertion (as most diversity arguments are) and is totally ungrounded in experience or testing. If the gay guy is a good shot, give him a Barrett and a bucket of .50 BMG and let him get busy. The rest of it is bullcrap.

I’d add more, but my outrage bucket is a little full now and I need more blood pressure meds first.

Unrelated thought to throw out there. Edward Snowden didn’t find that treasure trove by himself. As a sysadmin, he would be the ideal conduit out of a SCIF for this information, but he didn’t find it himself. He didn’t have the access, and it’s doubtful he’d know just where to look. Someone high up with broad knowledge of IC activities collected all this stuff for him.

Ah! Mystery and intrigue—just the sort of thing we thrive upon here at the Castle.

As you know, the Czar’s long-standing viewpoint on gays in the military goes along with MC’s: it is absolutely unrelated to warcraft.

We should not concern ourselves with sexual orientation in the military, any more than we should worry about whether a corporal’s favorite color is blue, or whether a major hated clowns as a child, or if a warrant officer once visited a store that sold fresh duckmeat. None of this protects our country or defeats our enemies.

What is it with the Left’s continuous obsession with this? Gays aren’t joining the military to party it up and have sex with each other—and if they are, they were terribly misinformed by the recruiter. Allow the Czar two conceits: first, allow him to quote himself:

Take nine heterosexual Marines and one homosexual Marine and put them into the same room. The Czar should not remotely be able to figure out who the gay Marine is, if he’s even really there. We should see ten American Marines, who stand to attention, snap to a salute, have crisp, neat uniforms and perfectly shined black boots. When asked if they are ready to fight, they should growl out ’Sir, yes, sir!” and then hit ten out of ten on the rifle range.

We should similarly expect to see ten American soldiers, berets perfectly canted, shoulders level and square. We expect to see them scramble for their tanks, and hit one target while aiming at the next. With airmen, we expect to see a plane prepped, fueled, and engines on as the pilot races for the ladder. With sailors, we expect to see lines cast, props turning, and missiles on line. Which ones were the gay ones? Who the hell could tell: we only saw American military professionals doing the best jobs in the world.

The second conceit for which we beg your indulgence is that the Czar will answer his own question.

The reason the Left obsesses about gays in the military is because they know, deep down, this is the only part of military life they sort of understand. They see little value in defending our country, or understand why weapons are important and training so essential. How much better if those soldiers were deployed to forcing kids to exercise, or removing religious people from government, or disappearing folks who expose fraud, you know? But the military is what it is, and some of us kind of know a gay guy here or there, and how awful it must be to serve in such a terrible job like the military, whatever, et cetera, καὶ τὰ λοιπά, yada yada and so on.

Of course, this is totally incorrect. But when asked to decide between LGBT issues in the military (such as unisex uniforms for the USMC) or weaponry (remember, the President thinks the Army uses AK-47s), the DoD will actually be forced to deny the President’s involvement in the new cover issue.

The problem is this, as both ID and MC will likely agree: for every four years we have a Democrat in the White House, it takes a Republican successor 8 years to undo the damage to the military.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.