Jesse Ventura on Homeland Security Former Independent MN Governor

War isn’t civilized; don’t expect warriors to be

I don’t like what happened in the navy’s Tailhook scandal; I think what those officers did was wrong. But I understand why it happened. When you get a force of that many hundreds of warriors together, there’s bound to be trouble. We’re responsible for making them what they are. You just can’t bring them back into civilization and expect that everything that was drilled into them is going to go away.

When you’re dealing with death face-to-face, there are no rules. It’s all about survival. After that, bad behavior doesn’t affect you all that much.

War isn’t civilized. War is failure. It’s the ultimate result of a breakdown in public policy, and soldiers are the machines that handle that breakdown. In warfare, you’re taught to do whatever you have to, to stay alive. Can you imagine bringing that mind-set into a party?

Military is stronger if all-volunteer

I loved the braless thing. I’m very heterosexual. I’d see women out burning their bras, and I’d go over with a lighter, “Can I help?” I did participate seriously, though, in the anti-draft movement. To this day, I’m against the draft. I believe the military is much stronger if it’s an all-volunteer organization.

Against the draft; for including women except in combat

If we’re going to draft at all, then we should draft women too, as long as we don’t send them into combat. The problem is men, [not women’s effectiveness in combat]. There’s something protective in men that makes us want to protect women. And that would be disastrous in battle.