Surprisingly, Kathleen Parker makes some salient points
(Washington Post) It must be true what they say about women — that they are smarter, stronger, wiser and wilier than your average Joe.
How else could one explain the magical thinking that apparently has prompted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to abandon all reason and lift the ban on women in direct combat?
This is a terrible idea for reasons too numerous to list in this space, which forces me to recommend my 2008 book, “Save the Males,†in which I devote a chapter to the issue. The most salient point happens to be a feminist argument: Women, because of their inferior physical capacities and greater vulnerabilities upon capture, have a diminished opportunity for survival.
Kathleen points out that the arguments against women in front line combat roles has “nothing to do with courage, skill, patriotism or dedication.”
We’re potentially talking about 18-year-old girls, notwithstanding their “adult†designation under the law. (Parents know better.) At least 18-year-old males have the advantage of being gassed up on testosterone, the hormone that fuels not just sexual libido but, more to the point, aggression. To those suffering a sudden onset of the vapors, ignore hormones at your peril.
Now, hold the image of your 18-year-old daughter, neighbor, sister or girlfriend as you follow these facts, which somehow have been ignored in the advancement of a fallacy. The fallacy is that because men and women are equal under the law, they are equal in all endeavors and should have all access to the same opportunities. This is true except when the opportunity requires certain characteristics. Fact: Females have only half the upper-body strength as males — no small point in the field.
You’re also placing women and men in situations that could be very uncomfortable and cause issues with field unit cohesion. There is a difference in the biology of men and women (something that often has to be made clear to liberals). Of course, we do have to wait and see what the plan is for combat unit inclusion for women. We’ll surely see female inclusion in air units, particularly those flying over the field of combat (women typically can take more g forces than men, a benefit in a fighter jet) and in units such as artillery. But, what people like Parker and others are discussing is women in field combat units where they’re carrying a gun and assaulting the enemy directly. It can be simple things like being out on patrol and nature calling.
If the enemy is all around you — and you need every available person — that is one set of circumstances. To ask women to engage vicious men and risk capture under any other is beyond understanding. This is not a movie or a game. Every objective study has argued against women in direct combat for reasons that haven’t changed.
And the military should not be a setting to test social programs for political expediency and points.
They want to build out army on the Soviet model.
The flaws of which are that although whenever chivalrous German soldiers hesitated to kill barbaric female Soviet soldiers, it cost those foolish Germans their lives, savage Muslims won’t hesitate to kill American women for whom they have no respect anyway. Did I say that right?
Even whenever they have the best of intentions, Liberals always make a bad situation even worse, because they are too impulsive, not thinking it through before they act, and because all of them lack the moral compasses that guide the rest of us.
Never mind that since our primary strength and our heaviest reliance today is in our vastly superior technology in weaponry, it isn’t like we even need women to supplement our manpower in the front lines. They would be more useful if they were trained to operate that technology of which I spoke, and probably better adapted to serving that purpose, also.
These screwy Liberals and their harebrained ideas, Geezez!!! God help us!!! The USA is becoming an insane asylum run by its crazies!!!
Brian 2013-01-26 09:06:17
Oops …, They want to build
outour army on the Soviet model.It’s a cost saving idea, since women get paid less than men. And God knows there aren’t many job opportunities in the President’s cabinet,for women.
“on the front lines” has sort of a quaint twang to it. Not sure if we will ever see battles against an enemy army facing us in a line. Our future battles will more likely be like in Iraq and Afghanistan where having women in action would not only seriously disrupt the thinking of these ultra conservative hard right wing islamists it would also showcase to 50% of the locals (all the women) what a better future for them may look like.
Political correctness, diversity, gender equality, has no place in our military.
Women make good intelligence officers, spies, support personnel, but not front line grunts. We are too civilized to want to see our girls blown to bits.
But then, this is the point isn’t it? To further destabilize our society. To further weaken and demoralize it.
Y’ll write like this is some new thing; it isn’t. We have had our women in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade now, not because we deliberately wanted to try it, but out of military necessity. An infantry squad in Afghanistan right now is as likely as not to have a female medic attached — not assigned — to the unit, and some of those units prefer having a woman in that job; having a woman in that position is an advantage if an Afghan woman who has to be searched is encountered. We have women serving in the fire areas as medics, commos, truck drivers and crew, helicopter pilots and crew, just about every job which doesn’t fall specifically under a combat arms designation, and it hasn’t been the problem that so many have predicted.
Why did we do this? This wasn’t some evil master plan by the wicked Barack Hussein Obama to weaken our armed forces, but the result of military necessity, and started under President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and it was done for the very simple reason that there weren’t enough men available to do every job.
Remember back in 2004, the worst of the Iraq war? Military recruitment was way down, and the Army was having to use the “stop-loss” policy to keep servicemen in their positions after their active duty enlistments had expired. The conservative military leaders weren’t using female medics because they wanted to engage in some great experiment, but because there were not enough males to fill all of the jobs. They weren’t particularly eager to send women out driving trucks in the combat areas, but the men were needed in the infantry.
This is really not that much of a change. The female medic (MOS 68W) is carrying just as much gear as the male infantryman (MOS 11B). The medic won’t be carrying the M-249 SAW, but he will be carrying his M-16 or M-4 rifle, along with his additional medical equipment. When the infantryman is marching in his 70 lb of kevlar and gear, so is the combat medic, and when the unit comes under fire, the combat medic is expected to join in returning fire, and they do.