Women At Arms

Women at Arms Posted by Stephen Flurry at 11:59 am on August 16, 2009

Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground combat, the New York Times wrote yesterday. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, have changed that. “The number of high-ranking women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their status in the military,” theTimes wrote. [A]s soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. … A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly in total disregard of existing policies. Over the past several decades, an aggressive group of politicians and lobbyists have been pushing for women to fight alongside men in combat. As the Times story reveals, that minority has essentially won its war. “The Marine Corps, which is overwhelmingly male and designed for combat,” the piece continues, “recently opened two more categories of intelligence jobs to women, recognizing the value of their work in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Even with these changes, the Times informs, the United States is still lagging behind the rest of the world: In gradually admitting women to combat, the United States will be catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those pushing boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry and sent them to Afghanistan. As much as the liberal mindset would love for the U.S. military to “catch up” with Canada’s armed forces, what must America’s enemies think about statements like this, as quoted in the Times piece: “We literally could not have fought this war without women.” What does it say about American military strength if we can’t win wars without our wives and mothers in combat? And what does it say about our society when, instead of fighting to protect our women, we send them to the front lines of warfare in order to exchange fire with terrorists? For a refreshingly traditional perspective on this subject, read what we wrote herethree years ago. Here is an excerpt: In the “brutish,” non-politically correct world of yesteryear, the strong were obligated to serve the weak. A traditional-thinking male seeks to protect a woman. An honorable man shields a female from danger and hurt. This attitude, to the feminist, is contemptible. And in a gender-integrated theater of combat, it introduces a host of complications. A leader is expected to view that woman not as a woman, but simply as a soldier—a grunt whom he must be able to send into harm’s way. In the up-isdown moral climate of today’s military, his reluctance to pitch her into the lion’s den is considered backward.

The military is the most respected institution in America. It possesses some of the finest, most dedicated and self-sacrificing individuals the nation has produced. But woe be unto us if we fail to recognize how its effectiveness is being fatally undermined by a failure to beat back and restrain the virulent and invasive forces of feminization that enfeeble our modern society. •