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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Who is qualified to enlist?"

27 Comments -

1 – 27 of 27
Anonymous Svigor said...

An implicit goal is that diversity in the armed forces should approximate diversity in the general population.

Press gangs are a tried and true method.

11/5/09, 6:44 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Anybody who wasn't a famous basketball player who grew to 7" over the limit would have been given an honorable discharge."

A Lieutenant Commander who served under my functional authority several years back was a 6' 10" Naval Academy grad. He, too, had been an athletic recruit who had grown. Unlike ENS Robinson, he chose to make the Navy a career, and he was not forced out due to his height.

11/5/09, 7:33 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You actually believe that David Robinson was only 6'5" when he enrolled?

This was during the last time that the military acadamies were trying to be competitive -- it wasn't long after Napoleon McCallum was allowed to play for the Raiders.

11/5/09, 7:39 PM

Blogger kudzu bob said...

I wonder how many kids can't get in because they are, or have been on, ADD pills and/or antidepressants.

11/5/09, 7:57 PM

Anonymous Shawn said...

"However, all else being equal, minorities are more likely to re-up in the military."

Maybe edit to say NAM.

11/5/09, 8:29 PM

Anonymous Jimmy Crackedcorn said...

I wonder how many kids can't get in because they are, or have been on, ADD pills and/or antidepressants.

I was kept out of the Army for being on Prozac. This was back in the time when Eli Lilly was facing lawsuits from ambulance chasers over allegations that Prozac caused people to turn violent. Other than that I had no surgeries, was in great shape, and scored 99th percentile on the ASVAB. I suspect there are a lot of good kids being kept out of the military for minor medical conditions in favor of barely literate GEDs.

11/5/09, 9:52 PM

Anonymous Jimmy Crackedcorn said...

From the New York Times on the terrorism at Ft Hood:

Fox News quoted a retired Army colonel, Terry Lee, as saying that Major Hasan, with whom he worked, had voiced hope that President Obama would pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, had argued with military colleagues who supported the wars and had tried to prevent his own deployment.

Nope, it had nothing to do with Islam. Nothing at all.

OTOH, Rachel Maddow might just have had her Bill Maher "we're the cowards" moment. She turned the issue into a problem of "murder in the military." Yes, it's the military that causes them to be violent, not their religion!

11/5/09, 10:32 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The military should focus on overweight, but smart recruits. Feed the recruit a low carb diet in boot camp where it will be impossible for the recruit to eat carbs. At the end of six months, the recruit should make weight.

11/5/09, 11:27 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pills -- common to get a waiver
Weight -- they have fat camp

The overall numbers are not good.

11/5/09, 11:53 PM

Anonymous Thomas said...

Hell, forget the enlisted ranks. It looks as though the Army let a Muslim fanatic in as an officer, if the current story trickling out about today's events at Ft. Hood is to be believed.

11/6/09, 12:15 AM

Anonymous Ben Franklin said...

NOTE THAT THE FORT HOOD SHOOTER MAJ. HASAN, WAS THE SON OF IMMIGRANTS FROM ISRAEL, AKA PALESTINE OR THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES. FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:


Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist


His mother’s obituary, in The Roanoke Times in 2001, said she was born in Palestine in 1952. It described her as a restaurant owner “known for her ability to keep sometimes rowdy customers out of trouble and always had a warm meal for someone who otherwise would not have anything to eat that evening.”


Major Hasan had two brothers, one in Virginia and another in Jerusalem, his cousin, Nader Hasan said. The family, by and large, prospered in the United States, Mr. Hasan said. The former imam at a Silver Spring, Md., mosque where Major Hasan worshiped for about 10 years described him as proud of his work in the Army and “very serious about his religion.” The former imam, Faizul Khan, said that Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed. “He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said. Mr. Hasan, 40, a lawyer in Virginia, described his cousin as a respectful, hard-working man who had devoted himself to his parents and his career.

11/6/09, 2:22 AM

Anonymous headache said...

Ben Franklin,
So he wasn't getting any action on the side and this is why he freaked out? Reminds me some shit I read about how Germans became nazis coz there was no free sex and nude bathing, and now that they have all that, courtesy of the US, they are peaceful.

11/6/09, 3:36 AM

Anonymous Ben Franklin said...

No headache, the point is that Maj. Hasan was the son of immigrants from Israel (apparently following hard on the 1967 war) and that he was so extreme in his Islamic views that he wanted a wife who dressed as if he lived in Saudi Arabia.

11/6/09, 6:19 AM

Anonymous Usually Lurking said...

You actually believe that David Robinson was only 6'5" when he enrolled?

I remember seeing an interview with The Admiral where, after playing a little piano, he said that he grew from 6'1 to 7'1 in 12 months. It is why he did not have much interest in Basketball when he was young, because he was not all that agile or extremely tall.

11/6/09, 6:45 AM

Anonymous Ben Franklin said...

HERE IS MORE, FROM AN AP ARTICLE, HASAN LISTED HIS NATIONALITY AS “PALESTINIAN.” I’M GUESSING YOU WON’T SEE THAT MENTIONED ON TV OR THE RADIO.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_fort_hood_shooting_suspect

Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.

"I got the impression that he was a committed soldier," Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan's desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.

"I don't know why he listed Palestinian," Khan said, "He was not born in Palestine."

Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.

11/6/09, 7:45 AM

Anonymous Corpral Acorn said...

How does the IDF avoid enemies in their midst like Maj. Hasan?

Do they just not let non-Christian/non-Jewish Arabs enlist?

11/6/09, 7:55 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe increasing minority enlistment is a good thing. Otherwise, in the event of a major war it will be mostly whites dying for their country and very few minorities. Whites have enough demographic problems as it is without reducing their numbers through war. I mean, think about the Civil War, where almost all of the casualties were whites of Northern European descent. What a demographic disaster that must have been at the time.

11/6/09, 8:33 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yup. Muilticult and diversity is working out real well for another 25+ people in America...

11/6/09, 9:27 AM

Anonymous Jimmy Crackedcorn said...

“He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said.

I know of a few countries he could've moved to where he could find plenty of women like that.

Or then maybe all of these women just recognized that he was batshit crazy. If he had found a wife and bourne children it might now be them who were dead.

And this causes one to wonder: do Muslims practice sex-selective abortions like certain other groups, or do a fair number of them practice polygamy on the sly? If so we could be looking at a lot more Hasan's in our future. In their home countries, where they are already violent, their violence might be held in check by the fact that they're among their own. But in the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, Sweden...?

It's important to remember when politicians talk up the need for a police state that we've chosen the police state - there were always other options, that the Left wouldn't want us to hear.

13+ American soldiers are dead because of Emanuel Celler, Ted Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and the 1965 immigration act. There are tens of thousands more dead for the very same reason.

11/6/09, 10:54 AM

Anonymous Dave R. said...

I didn't see any discussion, however, of whether it's better to, say, have a 120 IQ Explosive Ordinance Disposal tech who doesn't re-up after his initial term because he wants to get a degree in a mechanical engineering than one who doesn't have that opportunity.

A fair general question, but a poor example. The armed forces have already answered that particular question to their own satisfaction; EOD's are universally high IQ.

.....

Its interesting that the distribution of races in military occupation specialties is not representative even of the military's overall composition. The combat arms are disproportionately white. Some of that may be IQ, but as much or more is choice by enlistees. Someone joining for a single term out of patriotism or desire for adventure (often working- to middle-class and white) is more likely to apply for a combat specialty, while someone enlisting for a career (often lower-class and minority) may be more likely to apply for a non-combat specialty.

11/6/09, 12:35 PM

Anonymous rob said...

Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed.

Wow, the first 'beta' spree killer that 'Whiskey' won't mention every other post.

11/6/09, 1:38 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hispanics are underrepresented among military recruits. In 2007, Hispanics made up 17.0 percent of the general population (ages 18 to 40) but only 11.4 percent of Army enlistment contracts and 15 percent of Navy enlistment contracts.



Of course it's an open question what percentage of that 17.0 percent were actually Americans, even in the loosest sense of the term "American".

11/6/09, 3:42 PM

Blogger flenser said...

Maybe increasing minority enlistment is a good thing. Otherwise, in the event of a major war it will be mostly whites dying for their country and very few minorities.


Let me cite JS Mill in refutation of that argument.



"Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest."


"Above all, the grand and only effectual security in the last resort against the despotism of the government is in that case wanting: the sympathy of the army with the people. The military are the part of every community in whom, from the nature of the case, the distinction between their fellow-countrymen and foreigners is the deepest and strongest. To the rest of the people foreigners are merely strangers; to the soldier, they are men against whom he may be called, at a week’s notice, to fight for life or death. The difference to him is that between friends and foes — we may almost say between fellow-men and another kind of animals: for as respects the enemy, the only law is that of force, and the only mitigation the same as in the case of other animals — that of simple humanity. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three-fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies. An army composed of various nationalities has no other patriotism than devotion to the flag. Such armies have been the executioners of liberty through the whole duration of modern history. The sole bond which holds them together is their officers and the government which they serve; and their only idea, if they have any, of public duty is obedience to orders.

11/6/09, 3:48 PM

Anonymous Richard Hoste said...

What happens when you're already in the army and say, become obese or an alcoholic? Could the Muslim shooter have gotten out of hid deployment that way?

11/6/09, 9:03 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

They may, but not nearly to the extent of the Chinese. They have more children, so they are probably more sanguine about the birth of a girl, even though they consider males more desirable.

11/7/09, 4:10 AM

Anonymous Jimmy Crackedcorn said...

They may, but not nearly to the extent of the Chinese. They have more children, so they are probably more sanguine about the birth of a girl, even though they consider males more desirable.

The irony being that if you're a man your daughters carry more of your DNA than your sons do. But then in the Islamic world your wife's often a close relative, anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter so much.

11/7/09, 6:14 PM

Anonymous Jimmy Crackedcorn said...

TO the question of how many Muslims serve, relative to their share of the population: this New York Times article, an attempted defense of Muslim-American patriotism, notes that only 7 Muslims have died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (from a combined US death toll of 5100). Muslims, IOW, comprise over 1% of the US population but less than 1 in 700 of deaths in the 2 wars.

The article also tries to subtly imply, by mixing Arab-American with Muslim-American, that Medal of Honor recipient Michael Monsoor was Muslim, when in fact he was a devout Catholic.

11/9/09, 10:47 AM

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