My topic is women in our military’s close-combat units. Let me be clear; women have served in combat and are now serving in combat units and perform very well. However, in what I’ll call the tip-of-the-spear units, infantry, armor, and Special Ops forces like Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, women have no place. Yet, our Politically Correct Pentagon has required that our military allow women in these units as of this month—and this will reduce or destroy our combat readiness.
As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews chewed on Iran’s capture of ten American sailors in the Persian Gulf just hours before President Obama’s final State of the Union address, he noted that one of the captured sailors was female. The implication of this detail was: This situation was extra urgent. But, why? Feminists declare that men and women are equal in all respects. They decry any male courtesy towards females as a relic of a still oppressive patriarchal culture. According to that principle, it should be of no greater concern if a female soldier falls into enemy hands, including those of Islamic terrorists, than if a male does.
Since the Pentagon is putting females in close-combat units, let’s hope for the sake of our military combat readiness that this interesting theory works. But it can’t. When an enemy next captures one or more female soldiers there will be extra political pressure to quickly rescue them, perhaps overriding sounder or safer strategies. The prospect of a female soldier being raped by her captors or, merely being beheaded will sideline all other military considerations.
If two platoons are captured, the one with females in it will undoubtedly take precedence in any rescue effort, thus jeopardizing a rational approach to the rescue. And feminists won’t object to this double standard. They revive traditional norms of chivalry on a moment’s notice in order to play, yes, their victim and sexism cards.
Wasn’t it the feminists who screamed the loudest at Donald Trump’s and Fox’s Megyn Kelly’s exchange during the first Republican debate? Kelly accused Trump of being a sexist because of his nasty comments about various celebrity women, most infamously Rosie O’Donnell. But—and get this clearly–Trump was not being a sexist in those insults, he was being a feminist: he was treating men and women with an equal degree of tastelessness. Typical of all feminists, including Republican ones, Kelly wanted it both ways: decrying as sexist a man who publicly puts down a woman, while purporting to stand for female equality.
You know, if women are equal to men, they should be equally the target of male cheap-shots, not granted some special protected status. Trump rightly brushed off Kelly’s sanctimonious comments. Then, his refusal to apologize to Kelly for his alleged past sins of sexism only set him up for more feminist criticism for not treating his female challenger with a politeness utterly lacking in his treatment of men.
Now, regarding the Pentagon’s disastrous decision to put women in close-combat units—this stupid sexism debate now has life-and-death consequences. The feminists and their Political Correctness allies have browbeaten our military into a suicidal attack on combat effectiveness. Their big point is careerist self-interest; they suggest that combat service is a prerequisite for the highest reaches of the Pentagon hierarchy; this is true, but women have been in combat situations for over a decade now, and we have more women generals and admirals than ever; so what’s the beef?
The Politically Correct crowd also clings to a cute-sy, fictional ideology. They insist, against all evidence, that the female frame is equally physically suited for the grueling, skeletally punishing ordeal of long military missions as the male one, and that a 130-pound female will be able to drag her wounded 200-pound comrade, weighted down with 40 pounds of equipment, out of enemy fire. They deny the inevitable destructive force of sexual tension in integrated close-combat units. But you can count on the fact that the feminists will push the hardest to protect female soldiers from any risk of rape or other uniquely female abuse.
There are two kinds of likely sexual issues here—the first is the boys like girls and vice versa—in the close-combat units. As boys and girls pair off or break up or hit-on or reject each other, the “band of brothers” tie that has enabled our combat units to survive and win over centuries may well be destroyed.
Then there are the likely future opponents –Radical Islamists. Look at what has been happening in Europe lately—open rape of women by crowds of wandering Islamic males. Some Islamist males believe that raping a non-believing female is approved by their god. ISIS has literally warehouses full of females who serve effectively as prostitutes to serve the male warriors. When we face this kind of opponent do we continue our mantra that men and women are the same? What will these Islamists think? They’ll be very thankful as they rape our female soldiers who are their prisoners and laugh at us for being so stupid.
Think about this. Do we really want our males to actually take feminists at their word and eliminate any last vestige of chivalry in themselves? A proper respect for the female difference is one of the great civilizing disciplines; a society that truly treated males and females as equal, interchangeable parts would be not worth living in. This attitude is radically changing our nation and weakening it in every aspect.
