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.

Should Women Fight in Combat?

No. Women should not fight in combat missions.

Women should stay at home baking cookies and washing diapers until they can look inside someone's cubicle, see a bikini-clad woman on the screensaver, and avoid either crying or bringing a sexual harrassment lawsuit.

Until women have mastered that skill, they should not be allowed into combat. I understand it is much more stressful to be in the middle of blood, explosions, and people who want to kill you than it is to see a bikini model on a screensaver, after all.

I'm just sayin....

Item 1:
During the United States' Panama invasion, a female truck driver taking troops into a combat zone started crying. Another woman who had been performing the same job also broke into tears, and the two women were relieved of duty. After reporters learned about the incident, the Army "took pains to convey that the women had not disobeyed orders or been derelict in their duty," reports The New Republic. "On the contrary, according to an Army official quoted in the Washington Post: "They performed superbly." Since men, too, have been relieved of duty after breaking down emotionally during combat, the point is not to single these women out. The point is that the Army was less than candid about the incident. As The New Republic commented: "To call the overall performance of a soldier who breaks down and cries during combat 'superb' is ludicrous and patronizing." ("Soldier Boys, Soldier Girls," The New Republic, February 19, 1990, cited in Congressional Quarterly Supplement, February 7, 1990, p. A14.)

And for the foolish individuals who say that women are capable of anything that men are....

Item 2:
In Canada, combat training was opened to women in 1987 as part of CREW Trials (Combat Related Employment of Women). The Canadian Defense Ministry had planned to form an infantry unit with 40 men and 40 women and compare them with a unit of 80 men. The experiment was never completed because not enough females volunteered, according to Commander Judith Harper of the Canadian Defense Ministry in Ottawa. (Telephone interview with Heritage Foundation researcher on June 7, 1991.) From 1987 to February 21, 1991, some 342 women were enrolled in Canadian army combat units, and 79 graduated. More than HALF the graduates were radio operators. Of 102 women who enlisted in infantry training, only ONE (less than 1%, for any math whizzes out there) graduated. That woman served her three-year mandatory term and recently left the army. (Ibid.)

Item 3:
Following the War of Israeli Liberation in 1948, women were never allowed into combat again (unless by accident). It has been Israeli law since 1950, for a variety of reasons, including underperformance by women and overprotectiveness to the jeapordizing of combat mission goals by men, that women are still drafted, but not placed into combat.

When women have been placed into combat they have underperformed, to the danger and detriment of their units. Nations that have allowed women into combat have done so only temporarily, and even the soldier-starved Israeli army will no longer allow women to fight in their combat forces (though they still fill many support roles, as they ought to, as long as they can meet the same requirements as the men who fill those roles).

The military is a very poor place to engage in social engineering. The purpose of the military is to kill people, break things, and subjugate the enemy - not to function as a testing ground for pink and blue uniforms. The inability of feminists to admit the truth, think rationally, and place the needs of their nation above their own personal whims is disturbing in this instance, but unfortunately, for them none of that is entirely out of character.