The Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability to Win Wars [Anglais] [Broché]

When the Marines dropped their famous slogan, "We're looking for a few good men," and replaced it with "The few, the proud, the Marines," they weren't just eliminating a worn-out ad campaign--they were pursuing a controversial social agenda. "The nineties were a decade in which the brass handed over their soldiers to social planners in love with an unworkable (and in many senses undesirable) vision of a politically correct utopia, one in which men and women toil side by side, equally good at the same tasks, interchangeable, and, of course, utterly undistracted by sexual interest," writes journalist Stephanie Gutmann. The Kinder, Gentler Military--an expanded version of a cover story Gutmann wrote for The New Republic--is a devastating critique of the military's sex-integration efforts. She reports of women "allowed to come into basic training at dramatically lower fitness levels and then to climb lower walls, throw shorter distances, and carry lighter packs when they got there." This has led to problems in the field: during the Gulf War, says Gutmann, "men in many units took over tearing down tents or loading boxes because most of the women simply couldn't or wouldn't do these chores as fast." Liberals will accuse Gutmann of hostility to feminism, but her strong blend of reporting and analysis overcomes that charge by describing the frustrations of women who want to contribute to the military's old-fashioned warrior culture, not its newfangled Peace Corps mentality. The Pentagon doesn't want you to read The Kinder, Gentler Military; that's all the more reason why you should. --John J. Miller --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

...an impassioned defense of the warrior culture and the vision of masculinity it sustains. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

...identifies the "risk-craving, "edge-courting soldiers" on whom success in the field, and in the planning rooms, depends. ...does not rule out the aptitude of some women for the killer role... --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"New and Noteworthy Paperback" --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Col. David Hackworth (Ret.) author of About Face and Hazardous Duty What the British longbow did to the French army at Crecy in 1346, the failed military policy on gender integration has done to the U.S. armed forces at the end of the twentieth century: near total destruction. Gutmann's brilliant book must be read by all caring Americans and its cogent message be urgently transmitted to all our lawmakers. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

The Kinder, Gentler Military is a devastating critique of how and why the military -- the most tradition-bound, masculine institution in the United States -- spent the 1990s in a tortured attempt to reform its time-proven warrior culture in favor of a new, politically correct value system, a system that is decimating morale in our armed forces.

"Our armed forces are deeply mired in an expensive, resource-draining, time-consuming, morale-flattening project, one that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with politically correct politics," charges Stephanie Gutmann. "That project...has used quotas, double standards, and coercive policies to recruit greater numbers of women, promote them faster, and put them closer to combat with little thought to the fact that this is, in effect, an attempt to meld two dissimilar populations -- men and women -- in an institution that requires sameness, interchangeability, standard issues, known quantities."

In The Kinder, Gentler Military, Gutmann scouts the field -- the bases, the boot camps, the ships, and the flight lines -- to observe what is often called the "New Military." She then shows why the complete integration of women into the military is physically and sociologically impossible and how the pursuit of this unrealistic ideal is profoundly demoralizing to soldiers of both sexes and a sure setup for battlefield disaster. While the politically correct stance on this hot topic is pro-integration, Gutmann's fresh and informative take on the practical and political inner workings of the nation's military will command national attention.

Unflinching, compassionate, and balanced, The Kinder, Gentler Military is a persuasive argument in a compelling public debate. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Stephanie Gutmann is a freelance journalist who has written extensively on sexual politics for publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Playboy and Cosmopolitan. She wrote a cover story for The New Republic on the subject of this book. She lives in New York City. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.