Long War in Africa is Tomorrow's War Too

Let's stick with the long war in Africa today, as last night I came across this jewel from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, The Islamic State’s Strategic Trajectory in Africa: Key Takeaways from its Attack Claims. 

This heat map is superb and shows that the issue in northern Mozambique is a side show.

From the IS point of view, their main effort is Nigeria and the Sinai.

The Sinai is almost an, "of course..." but everyone should remember that it is the Egyptian military is the only thing keeping Egypt from falling to the Muslim Brotherhood again. As we've seen in Turkey, the West putting faith in modernizing military leadership can only get you so far.  

Nigeria is where the prize is, and not just for oil. Are you up to speed in Nigerian demographics? Let's start with just religion. 

In 2010, the population was 49% Christian and 48% Muslim.  Now?

Where will that stand at 2050?

Now let's look at numbers.

Where will that be by 2050?

~410 million - larger than the United States.

History is far from over and the future has all sorts of horrors it will visit on the planet.

Know the intersection of demographics, economics, and religion and how they relate to future conflict ... and they will all lead you back to Africa.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Show Up

The latest edition of The Economist has a sublime article that requires the military professional's full attention; Faces of the Future - an article I obliquely referenced on Sunday's Midrats.

In budgets, any estimates more than 3-5 years out is simply 8-Ball conjecture. Elections and economies are fickle things. 

For strategy and Fleet planning, you need to think at least 10-years with a stretch to 20 off in the mist.

Demographics? Well .... that has about the same timeline. No one 20-30 years ago would have had a clear picture of the falling birth rates overall - Malthusians were still the rage - but people were close. Though the exact numbers have a very wide standard deviation - I think the macro ranks and positions are probably a lot closer. That is where you need to ponder.

So much of our thought about the global system remains in the mechanism of the Cold War. Look at 1950. 5 of the 12 nations are European. Swap Russia for the USA (yea, we're #3!) - and 5 of the 12 are NATO. None are in Africa. If you throw in Japan - you could argue that 5 of the 12 most populous nations are serious allies of the United States. Freedom's block is at 6.

Today, what are the numbers? Well, we're still #3, but the only European nation is Russia - and they are really an Eurasian power, and not "Western." No one else from NATO is there, and Japan just makes it in. So, that brings us from 5 super-friends to one, and she is getting a bit long in the tooth.

That brings us to 2050. Don't snicker; 2050 is to now what 1976 is to us. Not that far. So, in 2050, how are we doing? We've dropped down to #4 - knocked off by Africa's fast riser Nigeria - and ... we are out of friends.

Time to make some new ones, but the only real candidate that is an auxiliary of both the West and the Anglopshere - India. Brazil? Outside shot at best. Mexico? Not quite, they want the Southwest back.

Other things to ponder: Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Congo - does anyone here see any chance for these nations to grow their economies greater than their population? Without that magic, you will have that toxic mix of poverty and - with the exception of Bangladesh - endemic ethnic conflict.

That doesn't even get in to the incredible demand for resources as basic as food and clean water - not to mention energy and quality of life products. The ecology? Fugetaboutit. Better than average odds that the balance of those nations will wind up making China's ecological nightmare today look like paradise by comparison.

Also note, all of those nations except for Ethiopia and Congo have significant coastlines. Trade, piracy, fisheries, natural resources in EEZ, and so on and so on. Migration? We have yet to see the pressure for migration.

Even if the Western Pacific by mid-century is a lake of eternal peace - the demand for long-dwell, multi-mission naval assets with reach for hard and soft power projection - and the logistics chain to support them - is going to be a keystone to the #3/#4 largest nation - and by then still the largest navy.

Building off that theme - our friend James Holmes over at TheDiplomat has a must read if you just want to run away from the future, A Machiavellian Age of Sea Power;

We cannot shift our burden to another ambitious seafaring power the way Britain, the weary titan, handed off its duties to the United States starting a century ago. Neither China nor India, the most likely candidates, yet possess the capacity or evinces any desire to take up this burden.

And again, the Maritime Strategy directs us to do all of this at a time when our capacity to found and lead coalitions is on the wane. It’s been said that he who has the gold makes the rules in alliances and coalitions. If the United States has less and less gold — and ships, and manpower — to contribute to preserving freedom of the seas, it will be less able to get its way in coalition circles than in bygone decades.

Oh yes my friends; it has only begun to get interesting out there.

It is going to get sporty; do try to keep up.

Demographics, Migration, and the Coming Crisis

Tomorrow we're going to beat up on LCS some more with the FFG RFI because we can't beat up on the Little Crappy Ship every day, regardless of how much fun it is.

No, today we're going to return to a more serious topic - one that has no easy fix and will not get better with time in our lifetime.

This is a story slowly unfolding that will not have a happy ending. We are only in the second chapter, and everyone is already tired ... but you cannot put the book down and there are many chapters to go.

The waves of humans crashing on to mostly Western Europe's shores are not going anywhere. These masses of military aged, unaccompanied men with nowhere else to go are not just going to blend in to their new found land. No.

Let's start all official is a surprisingly clear eyed report from UNHCR;

...refugees and migrants in Libya are predominantly young men (80%), aged 22 on average and travelling alone (72%). Women tend to transit towards Europe over a short period of time and many of them, particularly those from West and Central Africa, are victims of trafficking. The number of unaccompanied and separated children travelling alone is rising, and now represents some 14% of all arrivals in Europe via the Central Mediterranean route. These children come mainly from Eritrea, The Gambia and Nigeria.

Refugees and migrants in Libya tend to have a low level of education, with 49% having little or no formal education and only 16% having received vocational training or higher education.

These are not refugees from Syria. Those are people who don't have the skills to do any job in a modern economy.

They come from diverse backgrounds but can be grouped into four different categories:

Nationals of neighbouring countries (Niger, Chad, Sudan, Egypt and Tunisia). Most of them report travelling to Libya for economic reasons, and many engage in seasonal, circular or repetitive migrations.

Nationals of West and Central Africa countries : mainly from Nigeria, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Cameroon. They report having left largely for economic reasons. Some are victims of trafficking, in particular Nigerian and Cameroonian women, and some might be in need of international protection.

Nationals of Eastern Africa countries: from Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. They reported making the journey for a range of reasons, including political persecution, conflict and poverty in their countries of origin.

Individuals from other regions: Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Bangladeshis and others. Some flee conflict and violence while others are looking for livelihood opportunities.

Look at the graph at the top. The supply is not going to slow, and with each passing year, these uneducated, untrained, unskilled people will continue to bulge from nations that do not have the educational or economic ability to gainfully prepare them for a modern economy, much less employ them.

European nations are fully developed. As with all developed nations, they cannot employ their own unskilled workers in their modern economies - what on earth will they do with more unskilled people? People who have no desire or ability to assimilate?

In an already crowded continent, a stabilized or even shrinking population would be very manageable, as technology will help maintain a standard of living. Those nations will not survive these masses of "the other" in the numbers they are coming in and still be the civilizations they once were. They will simply debase themselves in line with the unassimilable nations the masses are coming from. We are already seeing it from London to Malmo to the suburbs of Paris. If the numbers were smaller and the people more inclined to assimilate, it wouldn't be a problem.

Are nations required to commit suicide? No. Already we are seeing a growing percentage of the voting population firmly say "no." As the hard lessons of mass immigration of the last few years are hitting Western Europe, those people are starting to shut their borders - and the Eastern Europeans want nothing of it. If their mainstream political parties do not do anything, the people will turn to others. By the time they do that, all the easier solutions will no longer be an option.

How bad will it be? How tough will these nations have to be if they want their societies to survive?

Half the world’s nations have fertility rates below the replacement level of just over two children per woman. Countries across Europe and the Far East are teetering on a demographic cliff, with rates below 1.5. On recent trends, Germany and Italy could see their populations halve within the next 60 years.

The world has hit peak child, says Hans Rosling at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Peak person cannot be far behind.

For now, the world’s population continues to rise. From today’s 7.4 billion people, we might reach 9 billion or so, mostly because of high fertility in Africa. The UN predicts a continuing upward trend, with population reaching around 11.2 billion in 2100. But this seems unlikely. After hitting the demographic doldrums, no country yet has seen its fertility recover. Many demographers expect a global crash to be under way by 2076.

Even Elon Musk is worried - but he's not fully up to speed on the global challenge. 49 years to 2076 is both a short and a long time. A lot can happen. I won't be around to see it, but my kids will.

If, as I believe they will, nations move to protect themselves, then those nations with high birthrates and low economic potential will have no outlet for their demographic stress.

I see a lot of blood in line with what we see today in Syria & Yemen. Poor, desperate people slaughtering each other over what ever excuse there may be to remove their "other." The more modern nations involved from the edges and patrolling the seas to keep the problem contained until nature takes its course.

Advanced nations will have to make the choice; bring it in, or wall it out. A few may keep with "bring it in." The other nations will see what happens there, and will elect "wall it out." It is already happening.

People may have been taken aback from the French President's remarks that had the usual suspects heading for the fainting couch earlier this week - but he seems to know that his nation will be one of the first to be bathed in blood if they don't get this fixed. France knows Africa well, and no serious person who has studied the demographics and economics of Africa would disagree with the broader substance of his remarks.

 Some would argue it may be too late for France, but I think there is still time.

Macron says Africa's problems are "civilizational" and blames women with "7 or 8" kids. A repugnant speech.

pic.twitter.com/4BqwDb7fqE

— joe prince (@joeprince___) July 10, 2017

The Body Count as Datapoint

Body counts are a useless metric by themselves. They should never be a primary metric, but they are useful in showing if nothing else the breadth and depth of conflict.

In the Briefing section on the Islamic State, The Economist has, as they often do, a graph that tells a story in a way 5,000 words cannot. It answers questions, as well as offers new ones. It is open to a variety of interpretations, sure, but that is not the point.

People are entitled to their opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

For review:

Though their article is on the fragility and weakness of the Islamic State, there is another story in the above graph, one I want to revisit.

It tells a story that some don't like to hear - but needs to be repeated as this is the actual history as I saw it, the first part first hand.

1. Withdraw of forces in Iraq began under Bush43 in late 2007 with the success of the surge, just as we were halfway through designing the upcoming uplift of forces in Afghanistan.
2. With a firm victory in Iraq in the late-summer and early fall of '08, the death toll was at a steady low pace as we worked towards what the military wanted, a low five-figure force in place to ensure a properly secure environment until the Iraqi government was fully ready to defend itself. Then the zero-option took place. Shortly after, the slow buildup of death began again, and 24 months later we were off to a death level not seen in half a decade.
3. They Syrian civil war, right across the border, started its blood soaked path almost a year prior to our IRQ zero-option. A risk we wished away.
4. This Islamic State inspired and related killing is not going to stop any time soon, indeed, from Nigeria, to Libya to Yemen ... one could argue that it has only started.

This is President Obama's challenge to fix or let fester.

Feelgood hypocracy comes full circle

If you needed any proof that the Diversity Bullies - when you boil it all down - are some of the worse racists in the nation; this will do. Not just because they cannot get by the color of someone's skin - but because they get away with it.

The nation's most elite colleges and universities are bolstering their black student populations by enrolling large numbers of immigrants from Africa, the West Indies and Latin America, according to a study published recently in the American Journal of Education.

Immigrants, who make up 13 percent of the nation's college-age black population, account for more than a quarter of black students at Ivy League and other selective universities, according to the study, produced by Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.
...
Black American scholars such as Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier, two Harvard University professors, have said that white educators are skirting long-held missions to resolve historic wrongs against native black Americans by enrolling immigrants who look like them.

In an interview, Guinier said that the chasm has less to do with immigrants and more to do with admissions officers who rely on tests that wealthier students, including black immigrants, can afford to prepare for.

If we are not making the exception for those who descend from slaves and the hardships and discrimination they have experienced historically in North America; then what are we doing?

Simple. We are allowing official bigotry to run wild. Shame on them.

As always, what these programs do is drive people apart - not together.

"To white observers," they wrote, "black immigrants seem more polite, less hostile, more solicitous and 'easier to get along with.' Native blacks are perceived in precisely the opposite fashion."

On campus, native black Americans and immigrant students both embrace and wrestle with diversity. At the University of Georgia, native black American and African students met in the student union two years ago to discuss an emotional topic, "Where's the Africa in African American?" They were quiet at first, senior Oluwatoyin Mayaki recalled, but with some coaxing, the black American students spoke up.

"They were saying, 'I don't think it's fair that you get affirmative action like we do,' " said Mayaki, the American daughter of Nigerian parents. " 'This country was built on my parents' backs, not on your parents' backs. You didn't go through the years of slavery, discrimination or the civil rights movement.' "

Mayaki counts many black Americans as friends, but that was not always so. As a child, she was steered away from black Americans by her protective Yoruban mother, who emigrated from Nigeria in the 1980s.

"My mom wouldn't let me go next door for a sleepover with African American kids, but I could go five houses down to Asian houses. I kind of got along better with foreigners," she said. "You don't go to parties. You don't go to movies. You just study, stay at home, do your chores. My Indian and Asian friends got it. All my other friends, they never got it."

At Rutgers University in New Jersey, Ghanaian immigrant Abena Busia said that drawing distinctions between black Americans and Africans is divisive and dangerous.

"What disturbs me . . . is it immediately casts African Americans as unmotivated," she said. "It's like a good Negro, bad Negro syndrome and I reject it. It creates more problems than necessary. It's also a myth."

From one American to another, wouldn't our dealings with each other and our national demons be easier if we looked at each other as just that - Americans?

The Wages of Decades of European Delusion

There is a nuance to the attack on Brussels last week that is already well understood by long-time readers of CDRSalamander. Yes, on the whole the most recent attack in Europe was a well-executed tactical operation by the enemy in the course of The Long War.

Brussels, as the HQ of the EU and NATO is the premier target in Europe along with Paris and London, closely followed by Rome and Berlin. The backstory to the attack in question; this was an inside job. That is the nuance.

The attackers were not part of wave of million+ military aged males from radicalized Islamic nations that crashed over the borders of Europe in the last two years. No, these were native born Belgians, the end result of decades of wrongheaded national policies that had no historical record of success. Just the opposite, all of written history showed where polities being supported in Belgium would lead, but history was ignored in the arrogance of the now.

Over at TheNewYorkPost, Amir Teheri does an outstanding job filling in the caps of why this latest attack was very much part of The Long War, with some distinct local characteristics;

What happened in Brussels was a co-production by adepts of two sick ideologies.

The first one is Islamism in its many versions, including Khomeinism in Iran, Talibanism in Afghanistan, Salafism in Arab countries, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and ISIS and its offshoots across the globe. It will remain firmly in place until it implodes under the weight of its savage contradictions, as did the old Soviet Union, or is defeated in a war as was the case with Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan.

The other co-producer, the mushy and politically correct “liberal” ideology that has seduced segments of opinion in Western democracies, can and must be combated by all those who wish to protect the democratic system in an increasingly dangerous world.

Since most factories were located in the Walloons’ area, the owners were careful to import workers from French-speaking lands which, at the time, made French-controlled North Africa an attractive source of labor. The Walloons also had a low birth rate, while the Flemish had large families. One source of concern for French speakers was the capital Brussels, with its 19 districts divided across linguistic lines. The Walloons feared that their depopulated districts would be repopulated by Dutch-speakers. They offered rent-free or subsidized housing to immigrants from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia who knew no Flemish but could plod along in kitchen French.

By the 1990s, most of the factories had disappeared, but the immigrants remained. By then Islam was Belgium’s second-largest religion, now accounting for over 700,000 people or 6.2% of the population. Of these, almost half live in Brussels, counting for 28% of the total population of the city, and guarding the demographically declining districts from “falling” to the Flemish.
...
The Belgian multiculturalist elites, making a fetish of the concept of “otherness” corrected that lacuna by financing courses in Islam, encouraging the building of mosques and Koranic schools and even subsidizing pilgrimages to Mecca. The welfare industry also had an interest in protecting the “otherness” of the immigrant community where unemployment was rising, reaching over 40% by the end of the 1990s. In some cases, four generations of a family could be found on the welfare register in the context of their cherished “otherness.”

Radical Islamists of all ilks were welcomed to market their ideological wares.

In 1993 when France and most other Western nations banned the Algerian terrorist groups, Belgium welcomed them with open arms. For example, the so-called Islamic Armed Group (GIA), responsible for tens of thousands of killings in Algeria, maintained an office and published a magazine in Molenbeek, while the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-Tahrir) which campaigns for the revival of the caliphate, transferred its leadership to Belgium.
...
The Belgian multiculturalist elite, helped by political allies in France and Germany, also secured European Union subsidies for Islamist propaganda in the shape of seminars and conferences and, ultimately, the creation of a European Fatwa Council headed by the Muslim Brotherhood televangelist Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi.
...
After the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks against the United States, Belgium, though member of the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) and host to its headquarters, kept a low profile when the allies acted against the Taliban to dismantle terrorists bases in Afghanistan. In the US-led liberation of Iraq that followed in 2003, Belgium joined France’s President Jacques Chirac in denouncing “George W Bush’s illegal war.”

So open, so accommodating, not unlike the evil US or Britain. Belgium was sure it wasn’t a target for jihadists.
...
They even wrote to the king of Belgium inviting him and his family to convert to Islam as soon as possible.

Petty domestic identity based political concerns by a small but active political party, throw in some fluffy useful idiots from the multiculturalism cult, and there you go.

... the European Union’s foreign policy representative, the Italian Federica Mogherini, happened to be on an official visit to Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Fighting back tears, she cut short a news conference saying: “It’s a very sad day for Europe, as Europe and its capital are suffering the same pain that the Middle East has known and knows every single day, be it in Syria, be it elsewhere.”

She then mused about the role that Islam may have played in the tragedy, dismissing “the idea of a clash between Islam and the West.”

“Islam,” she said, “holds a place in our Western societies. Islam belongs to Europe…I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.”

Mogherini’s statement offers an insight into the mentality that has helped produce the situation in Western European societies, where fear is woven into the fabric of daily life. It is a world of illusions and false identities.
...
Brussels is the result of this thinking. It’s what happens when immigrants are allowed to construct their own state within a state, not pushed to become part of a nation.

In a sense, Mogherini is right. Islam in its most violent form is already part of Europe just as much as a cancer belongs to the body it attacks.

Mogherini’s crocodile tears remind one of the German Nazi anthropologists Sigrid Hunke, another grand lady of misguided European Islamophilia. In her book “Allah’s Sun Shines Over the West,” Hunke claims that Islam, not Judeo-Christianism, created modern Europe by shaping the Andalusian model and must at some point return to resume its work. Well, may be the prodigal son has returned, invited back by Europe’s multiculturalist elites.

Mogherini and the Belgian left, specifically the Walloon Parti Socialiste, are almost cartoonish weak-horse representations of may be a terminal illness of the EuroLeft - and even significant portions of the American Left; a personal self-loathing projected to a national cultural scale. Like a pretty girl who doesn't believe that she is pretty and deserving of being respected who makes herself unattractive, hurts herself, and then partners with lovers who abuse and debase her because she thinks she is somehow deserving of it.

Yes, it is a mental disorder.

The next question is; will the Belgian people hold their government accountable? Can they? As we outlined during the 2007 Belgian crisis, the entire nation can be held up by less than 25% of the nation's voters - specifically in this area by the Walloon Parti Socialiste. This sub-plot in the general European disaggregation in the face of waxing Islamism will only get worse.

Watch this space.

The Niger Delta Pirates Strike Again

Where there is lawlessness and the cost/benefit ratio is good, there will be pirates.

This time, the Niger Delta in the Gulf of Guinea;

Pirates have kidnapped 12 crew members from a Swiss cargo vessel in Nigerian waters.

Massoel Shipping said its vessel, MV Glarus, was carrying wheat from Lniagos to Port Harcourt when it was attacked on Saturday.

"The pirate gang boarded the Glarus by means of long ladders and cut the razor wire on deck," the firm told AFP.

The intruders struck 45 nautical miles from Bonny Island in the Niger Delta, taking 12 of the 19 crew hostage.

A spokesman for Geneva-based Massoel said the pirates had "destroyed much of the vessel's communications equipment".

Seven of the crew members are from the Philippines, with a national from each of Slovenia, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia and Bosnia, Reuters reports, quoting Nigeria's maritime agency.

This is a known area for pirates. The area the ship was taken is about 2/3 of the way south of Bonny Island in the map below.

As regular readers know, I am at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to pirates. I don't care what your economic conditions are; if you go to sea to steal merchandise, ships, or people - your life is forfeit.

The oceans are too large, the margins for commerce too narrow, to allow there to be any incentive to raid commerce at sea. This ship was carrying wheat for goodness sake.

Well, here's Sal's advice. Throw it away if you wish, but it is the best.

The Swiss do not have a navy. They do not have an expeditionary military. They do not have allies. What they do have is their reputation.

Another thing they have is a lot of gold and a freedom guaranteed by the knowledge that the Swiss are neutral, but are armed to the teeth.

The Swiss need to play to their reputation - mostly untested in the last couple hundred years, but coasting off the blood of centuries well earned. They need to find the best mercenaries money can buy. Pay for them to get their ship back as soon as possible and with as few of the crew killed as possible. Then they need to find out where these pirates came from and who bankrolled them. They then need to hunt the principals/leaders down and have them killed one by one. No need to advertise what they are doing. They should actually try to keep it officially quiet.

The pirates will know though, and in the future, Swiss flagged ships will be allowed to go unmolested.

Also, it might be helpful to have small armed guards on your ships when sailing in pirate infested waters. Yes, I known, margins ...

Diversity Thursday

It’s July, so I guess it is time for another overwrought ethno-masochistic virtue signaling article by CDR Wolf Melbourne, USN. You can read last year’s here where he strangely implies guilt on everyone, and this year’s here where he's making another run, both in Proceedings … if you are so inclined. 

A few of you asked my thoughts and being that I’m not one to ignore the audience, here you go. 

In its reaction to the death of George Floyd, the Navy has had to face the deficit between its own ideals and its reality. Despite many pioneering and rightfully laudable advances in racial equality and a genuine desire to be meritocratic, it remains clear the Navy continues to be weighed down by the effects of systemic racism. Many of these effects have been expressed courageously in the pages of Proceedings. The need for Black officers to “wear masks” and “carry burdens” and the fact that White officers inequitably “profit from the status quo” are all, as Baldwin would believe, truths we need to accept before we can hope to overcome them.

Yes, he likes to quote Baldwin, a lot. Just like last year, for some reason Melbourne REALLY wants people to know that he read someone many of us first read in high school or college. For me, I read Baldwin first in 1984.

While the impetus to make substantive change is present, and the emotional moment of today is focusing our collective mind, Navy leaders urgently need to talk openly about these truths, plan how how to address them, and, most important, start acting. Otherwise, the Navy will simply fall back on old habits, and initiatives such as Task Force One Navy will either fail or disappear into bureaucratic oblivion like each preceding effort.

“Start acting.” We get a lot of vague calls for action from Melbourne, but he never really outlines exactly what that means to him. How would he operationalize bending the numbers to what he wants them to be? 

Not what they are, what their objective levels are … but what appears to be a desire to the US Navy to perfect align with the nation’s demographics, as if that delta in itself represents racism somehow. I know that is how Kendi defines racism, but that does not make the Navy racist any more than medical school or the NBA is.

All Navy officers, but especially White officers, owe this effort a debt. A debt stemming from decades of looking the other way, being oblivious, and making excuses. It is well past time to reconcile the deficit between our ideals and our reality—between what we say and what we do. This debt needs to be paid. It is what we owe.

No. No they don't. Melbourne can speak for himself here. Personally, I don’t know how you look in the eye a new Ensign born in Bosnia in 1999 and tell her she somehow owes a debt to her shipmate next to her born in Nigeria the same year … all based on something as meaningless as the color of their skin - when you in all your white Commanderness stand there knowing full well black LCDR were left behind in the crunch at the CDR selection board you made it through.

...why does the Navy continually get such racially disparate outcomes in its officer demographics?

In 2020, Black officers made up 7.5 percent of all ensigns in the Navy, yet only 2.8 percent of all flag officers. White officers make up 75 percent of all ensigns and 90 percent of flag officers. Over the course of an average career, Black naval officers lose rank and positions of power while their White colleagues gain and improve on their already substantial position. As the Task Force One Navy final report states, “Our officer corps remains overwhelmingly white and male and . . . is not representative of the U.S. today [emphasis added].”

As we’ve discussed here for over a decade, the US military and the Navy is on the receiving end of the nation’s cultural and educational production line that brings men and women to adulthood. It is at that point that they intake the Navy.

For most officers via NROTC and USNA, (the ones entering today were in diapers when we invaded Iraq in 2003 BTW) they enter at about 18 years of age.

If you want to be so retrograde as to first look first at someone race and ethnicity – which is what Melbourne seems to want to do - there are certain objective entering criteria for officer program selection you have to recognize. There are more, but let’s just pick three; high school diploma; criminal history; standardized testing scores.

In these areas there are significant group differences which are not the fault of the Navy – nor its Sailors. Blaming them for this is at best illogical, on average sadistic bullying, at worst bearing false witness.

As Melbourne is obsessed with externalizing his white guilt as contrasted to African-Americans (black) - (mostly ignoring “Hispanics” and Asian-Americans (AAPI), and the growing cadre of mixed-race Shipmates), let’s look at that difference … but I’m still going to pull in the AAPI numbers in where possible because in almost all categories their objective desirability is greater than that of whites.

High School Diploma:

Criminal History:

Standardized Testing:

What do these facts inform us about the utility of Melbourne’s feelings? Simple; at the point the first objective filters finish their sorting, there will be a significance divergence in eligibility for consideration for commissioning by race.

As a percentage of the population, there will be many more AAPI available, slightly more than average non-“Hispanic” whites, slightly fewer “Hispanics,” and significantly fewer blacks.

Those are just the numbers. Numbers are not racist any more than the sun’s ability to burn my fair skinned daughter more than her olive skinned sister is racist.

In addressing this disparity there are only two approaches. The first is passive. It argues the Navy’s policies and performance to date are sufficiently equitable. The Navy is objectively meritocratic and color blind, and any racial imbalance is largely explained by forces out of its control. Over time, these imbalances will right themselves. This approach further argues it is not the Navy’s role to be a social experiment in correcting the inequities present in the larger society it serves. Doing anything more risks weakening the Navy by sowing confusion, undermining morale, and unnecessarily distracting the service from its central warfighting mission.

The other approach is active. It argues there is something systemically racist occurring in how the Navy recruits, retains, and promotes Black officers. The disparity in demographics indicates the Black officers who do make it into the top ranks do so despite systemic racism, not because the service is free of it. This approach stresses that the reality Black Navy officers face is not a new one. It goes back at least as far as 1948, when President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 ending segregation within the armed services, if not all the way to the founding of the Continental Navy. Doing nothing more means institutional acceptance of the Black officer’s second-class status.

Again, Melbourne does not define what he wants or defines as “active.”

Melbourne does not want to have a conversation on this topic, he wants to dictate. If you don’t align with him .. well … here is the bifurcation, the lack of nuance and critical thinking typical of the radical “NO CENTER!” Red Guard thinking.

There is no middle ground between these approaches to the question of racial disparity in the Navy’s demographics. An honest accounting of today’s reality and the history that led to it must drive Navy leaders to stand on difficult, but moral, ground, acknowledging that the service has a systemic racism problem that requires sufficient attention and resources be paid to rectify.

You either agree with him or you are a red in tooth and claw racist. This mindset is not open to reason – it is a bully’s emotional desire to dominate.

More damning than its officer demographics has been the Navy’s utter lack of curiosity about why they remain so persistent. Until it contracted with the Center for Naval Analyses late last year to analyze the challenge of minorities shifting out of the core warfighting communities at a higher rate than their White peers, the Navy had never sought or conducted a comprehensive study of how Black, female, and other minority officers progress through their careers. Albeit late, this is the type of question the Navy needs to start asking more, because, as Irish poet James Stephens said, “We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.”

This is just silly and not grounded in reality. We had these conversations with senior leadership in my NROTC unit in the 1980s, and throughout the next 2+ decades in uniform.

Let’s return to the central critique I have with Melbourne’s earnest concern with the disparity of numbers relative to self-identified racial classifications: that it is not the Navy’s fault nor the fault of today’s serving officers. 

If someone wants to fix that problem, accusing the Navy of being worm-ridden with racism is not only on morally shaky ground and contrary to the facts – it is avoiding the real source of the problem in the 3rd decade of the 21st Century; our nation’s educational and cultural failures in raising children to adulthood.

That is where Melbourne should point his attentions, but instead he desires to place all of this peers and his Navy under the shadow of a yet clearly defined and demonstrated systemic racism. He demands action, but never says what action he wants. 

Besides the challenge of the entering argument of objective criteria (criteria BTW, that are proven indicators of success), there is the issue that well meaning people need to accept; people have choice and agency. Throughout our nation, civilian and government organizations with the best intentions desire their organizations to “look like America” too. As such, they have specialized recruiters who aggressively recruit minority candidates who meet the objective criteria for success (side-note, a high school classmate of mine has made an exceptionally good career doing just this). They come for those with military experience aggressively. The pay, positions, and – in the late 20s-early 30s offer of staying home to properly raise a family – it is hard to say no to greener pastures. 

Shipmates of mine were swept up in the 90s. I don’t blame them, I congratulate them. The fact that their leaving cuts a few percentage points off the number of minority candidates at the top of their peer ranking does not mean the Navy is more racist. That isn’t how this works. They’ve all done very well. High demand, low density marketplaces are hard to compete in.

Melbourne’s arguments are a bit threadbare and worn. We’ve discussed them here for over a decade. I don’t think that we should establish as a baseline for talent management racial essentialism as Melbourne does. I think it is not just unfair to do to people born this century, but it is corrosive to building unity that we need as a fighting force. I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he means well, but he is creating more heat than light. I would offer that he should examine the problem with a wider aperture. 

I’ve lived and worked all over the world and I’ve lived in states in all corners of our nation. The US Navy is the least racist place I have ever been associated with. That is something we should be proud of, even talk about, but we don’t – mostly because people like Melbourne want to accuse everyone not aligned exactly with his theory as being bad actors. Perhaps it is because Melbourne is so narrowly read. I mean, we get it – you’ve read Baldwin. You don’t have to quote him four time in this year’s article alone. Embrace a little intellectual diversity and read, oh I don’t know, Thomas Sowell.

A sad, hard truth on Africa

We've got AFRICOM - we've spend billions over the last decade.

But really - what history does helping Africa have? From a few years ago, there is this very cold, very hard, and arguably very defendable position by Kevin Myers in The Independent (Ireland).

Something we should consider as calls will come - as they always do - to "help" some disaster in Africa, again.

We did more in Ethiopia a quarter of a century ago than just rescue children from terrible death through starvation: we also saved an evil, misogynistic and dysfunctional social system. Presuming that half the existing population (say, 17 million) of the mid 1980s is now dead through non-famine causes, the total added population from that time is some 60 million, around half of them female.

That is, Ethiopia has effectively gained the entire population of the United Kingdom since the famine. But at least 80pc of Ethiopian girls are circumcised, meaning that no less than 24 million girls suffered this fate, usually without anaesthetics or antiseptic. The UN estimates that 12pc of girls die through septicaemia, spinal convulsions, trauma and blood-loss after circumcision which probably means that around three million little Ethiopian girls have been butchered since the famine -- roughly the same as the number of Jewish women who died in the Holocaust.

To him, this is personal.

I am not innocent in all this. The people of Ireland remained in ignorance of the reality of Africa because of cowardly journalists like me. When I went to Ethiopia just over 20 years ago, I saw many things I never reported -- such as the menacing effect of gangs of young men with Kalashnikovs everywhere, while women did all the work. In the very middle of starvation and death, men spent their time drinking the local hooch in the boonabate shebeens. Alongside the boonabates were shanty-brothels, to which drinkers would casually repair, to briefly relieve themselves in the scarred orifice of some wretched prostitute (whom God preserve and protect). I saw all this and did not report it, nor the anger of the Irish aid workers at the sexual incontinence and fecklessness of Ethiopian men. Why? Because I wanted to write much-acclaimed, tear-jerkingly purple prose about wide-eyed, fly-infested children -- not cold, unpopular and even "racist" accusations about African male culpability.

Am I able to rebut good and honourable people like John O'Shea, who are now warning us that once again, we must feed the starving Ethiopian children? No, of course I'm not. But I am lost in awe at the dreadful options open to us. This is the greatest moral quandary facing the world. We cannot allow the starving children of Ethiopia to die.

Yet the wide-eyed children of 1984-86, who were saved by western medicines and foodstuffs, helped begin the greatest population explosion in human history, which will bring Ethiopia's population to 170 million by 2050. By that time, Nigeria's population will be 340 million, (up from just 19 million in 1930). The same is true over much of Africa.

Thus we are heading towards a demographic holocaust, with a potential premature loss of life far exceeding that of all the wars of the 20th Century. This terrible truth cannot be ignored.

But back in Ireland, there are sanctimonious ginger-groups, which yearn to prevent discussion, and even to imprison those of us who try, however imperfectly, to expose the truth about Africa.

From the USA though - I think the reality of our financial position, compassion fatigue a decade into war - and also a memory of the below will keep us mostly out of Africa.

Don't worry though - the demographic, economic, social, and environmental train wreck that is coming will bring plenty of Africa to your TV and borders. Just remember, you cannot save everyone, and you can spend your whole life and treasure trying to slay the last dragon and never find it.

Diversity Thursday

An oldie but a goodie - from the AUG 2005 (Oops, my bust. Correction; 1995) USNI Proceedings.

Reflections on a Naval Career

Larry Di Rita

On board thc USS Boorda (CVN-80). The ship is off the coast of Brazil, conducting rain forest preservation research as flag-ship for Commodore N. Singh Nifighandi, Bangladeshi Navy, Commander. U.N. Environmental Task Force 161.

Captain Will Keith drew on his cigar and let the smoke drift from his mouth. He knew he shouldn't be smoking; his cabin was on the same ventilation system as the crew nursery and the filters wouldn't catch everything. But he had a reason not to care. There was a surprise in the message traffic today: his relief's orders. Keith could start counting down the days until he retired. Funny, he thought, command wasn't supposed to be like this.
–
When he'd left Annapolis in 1980, carrier command seemed about as likely as spaceship command. His only aspiration was those wings of gold. Only one thing could top the feeling of pinning on those wings: Tomcat. And the hard work paid off; in two short years, Keith was doing touch-and-gos from the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) in the Free World's baddest plane.

“Captain! Sir, are you down there? The muffled voice of the officer of the deck wafted down the voice tube above Keith's head. As he cleared his thoughts, he was struck with the irony of this quaint form of communication," which Lord Nelson himself had used," on board a nuclear aircraft carrier. He took comfort in the tradition as he yelled back up the tube. "Bridge, Captain. What's up?"

"Sir, the Commander of the Peacekeeping Detachment is finished with training on the flight deck. She's releasing it to you for flight operations."

"Great. Have the Executive Officer meet me in my cabin." Damn peacekeepers, thought Keith. Always fouling the deck with mock hostage situations and crowd-control training. Getting hard to remember this is a warship. It was important, though. Once back home, the ship would be sending peace-keepers to the Commander of the U.S. Internal Security Force in Miami. Keith was determined to send well-trained troops, even if it was a mission he didn't like: U.S. military forces deployed against U.S. citizens. Still, after the second Haiti occupation in '96, when General Colin Powell was named U.S. Governor General, it seemed less bizarre. Things sure had changed since Desert Storm, though....

"This thing is going down!" Lieutenant Commander Keith whispered to his wingman as the squadron listened to the mission brief. The air in the ready room was electric. It was going to be war after all. Years of training had come to this. Looking around, Keith saw the same mix of resolve, anticipation, and fear in the faces of every one of his shipmates. What could they expect he wondered.

He'd seen the so-called experts on television in the weeks since Desert Shield had begun. They were predicting thousands of American dead. They talked about chemical warfare, cruise missiles, mines, and the fourth-largest army in the world. To hell with all of them, thought Keith. All the "experts" knew were charts and tables and statistics. They knew nothing about the only things that mattered: the faces of his fellow fliers and the sound of Tomcat engines winding up on the flight deck. The ship continued her full-speed rendezvous with war through the cool Persian Gulf evening....

Knock! Knock! Knock! The pounding on his cabin door brought trim back to the rain forest. "Who is it?” he demanded.

"XO sir. The OOD said you waned to see me."

"Come in. XO." Keith looked up. I want to conduct some flight operations. We've been out here a week without any flying. I might even suit up myself."

“What do you mean, sir? After all, we send a couple of V-22s to the beach every day to drop off and pick up the Environmental Control Team."

“Very funny, XO. We haven't done a cat shot since we’ve been here. We've got the last Tomcat squadron in the Navy on board, and I'm determined to ride it hard."

"Just one problem, Skipper. I've scheduled our Diversity Stand-Down for this afternoon."

“You remember, sir. The Chief of Maritime Services ordered it to remind all hands about the strength the Navy draws from their diversity. All because of that business on the Schroeder.” Keith winced. After eight years, he still hadn't gotten used to the redesignation of the Chief of Naval Operations as the Chief of Maritime Services. It happened back in '97, when the United States occupied Venezuela to restore democracy after a military coup. The U.N. Secretary General had convinced the President that "Chief of Naval Operations" sounded too "war-like," since the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Nigeria, Haiti, and Somalia had been conducted for peaceful purposes.

He recalled the incident on board the Schroeder, the new Aegis battleship. After being denied an advancement, a seaman of Indo-Ugric heritage sued his Master Chief. The charge was "insensitivity to diversity," a grievance some of the old-timers were having a hard time adjusting to after spending so many years learning that individuality had nothing to do with military readiness. The sailor claimed that the Master Chief was insensitive to his Indo-Ugric traditions, which required him to spend each Wednesday and Friday afternoon in quiet reflection "away from his normal place of work." The Master Chief thought that sounded like an excuse to goof off twice a week, with the rest of the division carrying his load. But the court ruled that the Chief had shown "reckless disregard for the importance of diversity in defending the national interests of the United States." The Navy-wide Diversity Stand-Down was the result.

"Anyway," the XO continued, "we won't be able to conduct flight operations today. “Skipper, you still with me?” But Keith was in another time and place, thousands of miles away. When everything had begun to change.

He’d been in Las Vegas that week; he'd even been on the third floor that night. And he had lied about the whole thing under oath. He wasn't proud of his behavior; never had been. But it was every man for himself right from the start. The flags were the first ones: trudging up to Capitol Hill to admit that the Navy had serious problems and that things would have to change; agreeing to just about anything to avoid losing their jobs; and denying that they knew what went on in Las Vegas. In thc end, everyone got off. But everything changed. Sensitivity training, diversity stand-downs, women on combat ships, women in combat aircraft, and after the second Gulf War, women in body bags.

And then there was the Arthur affair. Admiral Arthur, the commander of Desert Storm naval forces, had his career short-circuited in '94 when a j.g. who had washed out of flight school complained to a senator about a "climate of sexual harassment" at Pensacola. As Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arthur had reviewed her record. He reprimanded her instructors for inappropriate comments, but stood by their decision to deny the woman wings on the basis of poor performance. Wrong answer. He had been nominated to be Commander-in-Chief Pacific, but that was not to be.

The whole thing had a perverse logic. That this wartime leader should be lost because of "insensitivity" reflected a turning point for the Navy that had started somewhere between the deserts of the Middle East and the deserts of Nevada. Anyway, the lesson was clear to mid-grade officers like Keith: If flag officers could watch Arthur go down with nary a whimper, what could a lieutenant commander with kids and a mortgage hope to achieve by speaking out?

"Skipper, did you hear me?” intoned the XO. "I saw your relief s orders. Do you know her?"

"Met her once," said Keith. "Year behind me at Annapolis. CH 46 pilot; had the during the Jamaican Drug War."

Keith had missed Jamaica in '01. He was pulling a U.N. tour in Sudan. U.N. assignment was critical for anyone with flag aspirations; back then Keith still saw stars. He worked for an Indonesian two-star as Chief of Police for the U.N. government in Sudan. Keith never had given much thought to disarming private citizens, distributing food, and patrolling the streets. But he had to admit that it did prepare U.S. forces for the kinds of missions they were doing in Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Keith always had sensed a vague connection between Tailhook and these strange new missions. The Navy brass already had been concerned about the budget cuts at the end of the Cold War and were willing to sign up to just about anything to keep the money coming. And after Tailhook and Arthur and all that, they weren't in a very good position to choose the good missions and reject the bad. After a while, patrolling the streets of U.S. cities didn't seem much different from catching drug runners at sea and occupying Third World countries.

"Captain to the bridge!" blasted the speaker. Thoughts of an imminent collision raced through his mind as Keith bolted out of his cabin. The OOD must need him up there bad if he didn't have time to call himself. When he arrived, he saw Commodore N. Singh Nifighandi sitting in the commanding officer's chair. These U.N. types always ignore military tradition, he thought." Even the sanctity of my bridge chair. "Yes sir,"
he saluted.

"Good morning, Captain," began the Commodore in his curious British accent. "I just saw your Marine detachment holding close order drill on the hangar deck. We are on a peaceful U.N. mission here. Please have them stop."

"But, "sir," began Keith, his jaw tightening. "Those men must stay sharp. That's what they're trained to."

"Thank you, Captain," clipped the Commodore. "That is all."

"Aye-aye, sir." Keith realized it was more despair than anger that he felt. As he turned to leave the bridge, the bos'n handed him the phone.

"XO for you, sir."

"Yeah XO, what is it?"

"We just got an order modification on your relief. She'll be here three months late. Turns out she's expecting; taking mandatory family leave. You know the regs. Skipper, you there?”

He wasn't. He was back at Annapolis, tossing his cap in the air. He was pulling Gs at 30,000 feet, locked on to a bogey with weapons free. He was feet dry over Kuwait and itching to splash an Iraqi fighter. Something had changed, and it wasn't him. Maybe it was better, probably not. He didn't know for sure, but he knew it wasn't fun anymore. And it had stopped mattering.

Mr. Di Rita, a former naval officer who served in Desert Storm, is Issues Director for Senator Graham's presidential campaign.

Hat tip Jim.

Capitulation Theology

What is it with the NYT this month? This is the second horse they have dug up and started flogging. The first was the uranium in Africa memo, now just war.

This has to be one of the worst religion based articles written in a self-described serious publication in awhile. It is so 2003. OK, Charles Marsh is a Professor of Religion at U. Va, but this is, to be frank, lame.

IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?

Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.

Time out Professor. After, with the rest of my family, leaving the Church my family was part of since, well, Scotland left Catholicism, I wandered until my mid-30s when I got dunked and became an Evangelical - for a lack of better definition. Personally, I just like Christian...but that is me and my personal relationship thingy.

Christian doctrine? Is there one? Now, I know my Catholic friends have all sorts of extra goodies, as do good folks from Orthodox to Mormon....but there is no one "Christian doctrine." From one "E" to another, we should stick inside our own lifelines. Not to mention the "damnation or not" differences between the major branches, from a Southern Baptist to a member of New Life Ministries - there is A LOT of open air on about every chapter and verse. One thing we can agree to Brother, is what do you find in The Word? That is what sinks this whole write-up. All opinion, no Word. Lets get back to the parsing.

The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.

Especially if, as an "E" would think, "Just War" theory isn't in the New Testament that I can see. Also, perhaps, the 68% know and experience more than you find in the rarified air of Charlottesville.

The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.

Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."

You lost me here. After this point, your other quasi-solid ones just faded away. The '70s. Nice point of reference. What else do you want to bring to the front? Liberation Theology? The rise of the Pink Palace? The start of the vast emptying of the mainline Protestant churches? The preeminence of the once powerful Castro loving nightmare of the World Council of Churches?

A little peak into Phibian's background: the Protestant Left and I have a bad history. It started with the Presbyterian Church USA's lurch to the port side in the '70s....and Church became about Central America and the USA as the center of evil in the world......but that's not important right now - except to explain the bee in my bonnet. Let's get back to the babble.

David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.

David Brooks doesn't know beans about Evangelicals (IMAO - to be honest, I'm not the world's expert either). You can organize Evangelicals around one religious leader like you can herd cats.

What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

Mistaken loyalty? You imply political loyalty. Therefore, who do you recommend? Afraid to name names? Why is that? Shared faith with the "global Church?" What globe are you talking about? Post-Christian Europe's church? The Church of England? My globe has Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Korea, Indonesia to name a few. My conscience is clear. I am not arrogant enough to think that I exist on this Earth to stand by and let evil win. I don't see passivity in the face of evil as a virtue.

As a sidebar Brother Charles, have you talked to any Iraqi Christians? Have you seen the results even the NYT's is reporting on? Have we brought hope someplace where there was once none?

I don't pretend to know all the answers, or believe in my own ideological perfection - I will even grant that you make some solid points. What I don't need to hear is someone making theological mote comments while their own beam is blocking out the light.

Diversity Thursday

Self-improvement and self-reflection are a daily requirement and a good thing.

Institutional self-loathing is never a good look and it is both self-destructive and counter-productive.

It appears that our leadership has decided to throw away one of our crown jewels, race relations. 

In the face of the howling mob attacking someone else, it appears that instead of standing up and telling the nation the focused efforts our Navy has made over the last 50+ years to work toward a fair and equal opportunity organization for all – an imperfect but solid sustained effort – we are instead going to accept the false and worst accusations put against us and so invite some of the mob to climb inside our lifelines too.

The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, has said, "We cannot tolerate discrimination or racism of any kind."

On Monday, the branch held a virtual first meeting of Task Force One. Its goal: to address the issues of racism, sexism, and other destructive biases and their impact on naval readiness.

Since day-1 I was a MIDN a quarter century ago, the message "We cannot tolerate discrimination or racism of any kind." was clear as can be. With the crooked timber that is the human condition, we have striven to do the best we can for an inclusive force. Something anyone can quibble with here and there in its execution - but still - those doing the quibbling all agree it is something to be proud of and much better than anything going on in the civilian arena.

What is the CNO saying, we have done nothing?

It appears he's found officers that agree and pushed them to the front. 

"I think we should assume there are barriers everywhere for minorities," said LT Destini Henderson, who is African American, and a Naval Flight Officer. "That was definitely the case for me throughout my career, or even getting into the Naval Academy."

No Lieutenant, we should not make that assumption. If there are barriers, you need to point them out and we can continue the conversation from there. No one wants barriers - tell us where they are. I can identify 336,978 active duty personnel, 279,471 civilian employees and 101,583 ready reserve personnel standing by. 99.9% will help you pull those barriers apart, and the 0.01% are in TPU.

So, who is leading this?

Rear Adm. Holsey will be supported by Fleet Commanders and leadership from a number of organizations such as the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, Chief of Chaplains, Surgeon General of the Navy, Chief of Legislative Affairs, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) Russell Smith and many others.

The task force will seek to promptly address the full spectrum of systemic racism, advocate for the needs of underserved communities, work to dismantle barriers and equalize professional development frameworks and opportunities within the Navy.

“We are at a critical inflection point for our Nation and our Navy and I want to ensure that we are fully responding to this moment as we work to facilitate enduring change,” said Nowell. “We must use the momentum created by these events as a catalyst for positive change. We need to have a deeper inclusion and diversity conversation in our Navy and amongst our own teams.”

First, there is no “systemic racism” inside the Navy if you are using the term as plain English would define it. Are there individuals who hold racist views and may act on them? Sure, the Navy reflects the nation it serves. Are those people properly dealt with once discovered? In my experience, yes.

That is a hell of a charge. You need to define each one of those items you define as systemic racism, and then specifically explain why they have remained in place and who allowed them to stay there.

Next to CNP, VADM Nowell’s comment. Do we read you right here?

“We must use the momentum created by these events as a catalyst for positive change. We need to have a deeper inclusion and diversity conversation in our Navy and amongst our own teams.”

By “events” do you mean the wide spread riots by mostly Marxist led, race-baiting, American-hating mobs taking advantage of real concerns Americans have with the killing of an African American man by a bad cop? How exactly are you going to take advantage of a killing and lawlessness unconnected to our Navy … and it that a moral thing for a Flag Officer to be excited to do?

Are you really looking for a conversation, or are you looking at giving speeches inside a wafer-thin Overton Window?

From the CNO to CNP and down – every Flag Officer needs to be directly asked, “Do you lead an organization that is structurally racist?” Yes or no. 

No one should have to wait for an official report to tell them the answer. If yes, then ask them what they have done in their career to eliminate structural racism that they so clearly see? Did they willingly participate in it? If so, does that make them racist or, being that they clearly benefited from these racist policies, why do they continue to enjoy the fruits of that poisoned tree?

Of course, we all know the answer. The Navy is not racist and has not been that way for the length of anyone serving’s career.

Does our Navy “look like America?” In some ways yes, some ways not. Depending on designator or rating, we can be wildly one way or another. The reasons have to do with the fact that we are a huge nation with a great diversity of people, regions, sub-cultures, and traditions.

Our intake is our nation's outtake. We will see the differences in education, crime, and desire to serve as reflected in our diverse nation when people reach 18-years of age.

Unless “Task Force One” becomes something I don’t think it will, we will once again miss a great opportunity to look closely at who we are to make sure we are doing things right -never a bad idea as the nation you serve is being rendered- but we have an opportunity to show the nation what unity actually looks like. The Navy has a lot to be proud of with regards to our record on race relations. Way ahead of the country in so many ways, yet we seem to be hoisting on board the absolute worst and wrong take. It isn’t just divisive; it is bearing false witness against ourselves.

We didn’t set this self-loathing up overnight; the conditions were set for a long time. Never pushed back against those who smear from the Diversity Industry, never wanting to stand up for ourselves in our imperfect but very real desire to make sure everyone has an even chance regardless of race, creed, color or national origin, and now it looks like we’ve surrendered control to people who don’t want to do that. They want to accuse and shame our Navy by saying it is “structurally racist” and thus needs to be changed.

Changed how? Back to an earlier pull quote;

..equalize professional development frameworks and opportunities within the Navy.

Assign rates, designators, jobs, ranking and promotions by race, creed, color, and national origin? Go towards some kind of Woke Jim Crow where the most important thing first of all is the most useless identified – your DNA?

Is that where we are going? This is real “structural racism.”

If there will be a spoils system, who will police it? Can we self-identify our own race, creed, color, national origin … or even sex?

If we are to set up an apartheid like spoils system, will the Navy share what is the most advantageous? If a retired Navy CDR’s father is from Nigeria, mother from South Dakota German stock, his wife’s father was from Ecuador of mixed Italian/Amerindian heritage, and her mother Peruvian Japanese … if his daughter wants to get in to the Naval Academy … how exactly should she identify herself for the most advantage? As a daughter of a Navy CDR, and all the privilege that comes with it, should she be given any advantage over the son of Bosnian immigrants? If so, why?

In the zero-sum game that is promotions and assignments, if race and ethnicity become a factor for selection, will that drive division and resentment in our navy?

Does any of this do anything to win an urban insurgency in some poor nation, or win the battle of the first salvo against a rising power on the other side of the Pacific?