More on Women in Combat

Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist, mother, stepmother, H. L. Mencken Award winner, realist, and genuine woman, writes in her book Save The Males:

What has been presented as a matter of women's rights... distorts the purpose of the military. What we are sacrificing in the push to satisfy [feminist] goals of absolute equality is the reality of what it takes to prevail against real enemies in war and to save real lives. We have allowed ourselves to enter a pretend world where what is false is true - and we have turned a blind eye to the consequences in the name of equality.

The fundamental falsehood that increasingly drives military policy and begs urgent correction is that women and men are interchangeable and equally qualified in all areas of military service. We know this isn't true as a matter of observation and common sense, but it has become easier to pretend otherwise - or simply to avert our gaze from the hippopotamus in the powder room. To suggest that women don't belong in combat these days is to risk being labeled a misogynist throwback and invite assault from the PC police. But there are objective reasons to keep women off the front lines and the sexes apart in basic training and other areas. The first reason is physical, and the rest have to do with male traits and behavioral differences that are rooted in our genetic makeup....

Through some slight of mind, women dying [in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are not in combat positions, but are in danger due to the lack of clear boundaries between combatants and non-combatants in these anti-terror wars,] has been construed as evidence of women's qualifications for combat. The thinking seems to be that if they're already in combat situations - [i.e.,] if they are already dying and being wounded - any argument against their being included in ground troops is so much rhetoric. By that logic, children may as well be allowed to play in the streets, since so many of them are getting hit by cars anyway....

...[P]utting women in and near combat requires a denial of sex differences that could put both men and women at greater risk. Women are at greater risk because they have diminished capacity for survival, and men because having to fight alongside fellow comrades who aren't equal to the task increases the likelihood that they themselves will be killed. To insist that men pretend women are their equals, meanwhile, only engenders disrespect and resentment.

See my article on why women should not be in combat positions for objective arguments on the issue, which are far less philosophically cogent than Parker's statement here.