Army Instructor Faces Court Martial for Treating Woman Like He'd Treat a Man
Political correctness could end in a court martial for a British Army instructor, all because he had the gall to treat a female soldier the same way he would treat a man.
According to the Daily Mail, the unnamed instructor can be seen in a video yelling at the soldier as she was failing at a bayonet exercise. Due to the verbal abuse, she begins to cry.
Officials were irate that the instructor filmed the female during the exercise, which they said shouldn’t have been done with or without her consent. Lord Richard Dannatt, former head of the British Army, called the video “totally unacceptable.”
The video has been viewed more than 360,000 times on Facebook:
Perhaps regulations on filming might have been responsible for the furor. However, that line becomes dubious when you couple it with a recent series of PC-friendly recruitment advertisements for the British military in which recruits are told that it’s OK to cry.
Good grief. Given that initiative, it’s little wonder that officials are furious.
“I hope the identity of the corporal is discovered very quickly and that he is removed from the Army at the earliest possible moment,” Lord Dannatt said.
“Tomorrow would be a day too late. This kind of behavior is totally unacceptable.”
Really, Lord Dannatt? Here’s what’s unacceptable: military unreadiness.
Imagine, for instance, this woman out in the battlefield, unable to use her bayonet. That could cost lives, her own being one of them. You’re angry that one of your military instructors told her to “show me your war face” and then berated her when she couldn’t really do it.
Whether you like the fact or not, crying isn’t OK on the battlefield. Crying isn’t OK when you’re under fire from enemy forces. Crying isn’t OK when others’ lives depend on you.
It isn’t an acceptable response to break down in front of your training instructor. That’s why instructors purposely subject their charges to stressful situations — because being in the military is stressful. That’s true whether you hold down a desk job or are out in the field in Afghanistan, which is part of why all recruits undergo basic training.
Yes, it’s grueling. So is war.
The fact is that this soldier should have been harangued — and that seems to escape most of the media reports, which seem to focus on the “bully” corporal involved. If you think he’s bad, just wait until you see the Taliban.
There’s no way this soldier could serve in the military without being transformed into someone mentally and physically ready for combat. Apparently, that’s now a problem in the softer, more cuddly British armed forces.
The British Army, meanwhile, did not say what would await the corporal or give out any information on his identity.
“We are aware of mobile phone footage of military training, it is now the subject of an investigation and it would be inappropriate to comment further,” a statement from a British Army spokesperson said, according to the U.K. Telegraph.
No matter how you feel about the instructor recording the video, make no mistake that he was doing his country, his military and this soldier a favor by how he acted. For all appearances, he was making sure that a soldier he was sending out into the field was ready for combat.
If this was a man, there would be no controversy. Those who say the West’s military readiness isn’t being weakened by political correctness ought to take note of the silly controversy about “bullying” this corporal’s words have caused simply because he treated a female soldier like a man.
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