The Clinton Administration’s announcement that women will be assigned to military combat was made on the same day that Ms. Magazine was doing a publicity stunt called “Take your daughter to work.” That’s the same kind of coincidence displayed by the Clinton spokesman who announced the possibility of imposing a gigantic new VAT tax on April 15.
One of the evening TV newscasts showed a policewoman who took her daughter to work with her. In answer to the newsman’s question as to what she learned, the little girl replied, “I learned that women could boss men.”
Bossing men (the feminists call it “empowerment”) has been a goal of the movement ever since the National Organization for Women whined in a 1973 convention resolution that “military decisions are exclusively made by male supremists.” A totally androgynous society has been a goal of the feminists ever since their top legal whiz, Professor Thomas I. Emerson, wrote in the Yale Law Journal in April 1971: “As between brutalizing our young men and brutalizing our young women there is little to choose.”
Most civilized Americans think there is a lot of difference between brutalizing men and women. We expect men to protect women from being brutalized by the bad guys of the world.
If feminists want to reject this protection, that’s their privilege. But the rest of American women should not be required to sacrifice this principle in order to facilitate the “career opportunities” (as Defense Secretary Les Aspin called it) of a handful of ambitious feminist officers.
Training for combat and for survival as a POW will require women to accept violence from American men as part of their training, and to accept violence from enemy men as an occupational risk. Men and women will have to be taught to accept violence against women as no different from violence against men, and those who harbor “stereotypes” will be put through sensitivity training to purge their old-fashioned notions.
The polls show that a majority of Americans seem to buy the argument “If women are as qualified to serve, why not?” But women are NOT as qualified to serve, and the Armed Services have been concealing this fact from the American people by double standards for men and women and by gender norming (which means rigging test scores in favor of women).
For example, male Marines are required to do 40 pull-ups within two minutes but female Marines only do what is euphemistically called a “flexed-arm hang.” A woman may get the same grade for effort that a man gets for actual performance.
Women are not allowed to fail, and men are not allowed to tell the truth about this organized deception. The Armed Services practice what is called “zero tolerance” for those who dissent from this fraud.
Instead of competing against men, the women just compete against other women for designated quota slots. According to the New York Times, at least ten female aviators will be “leapfrogged” over 600 male pilots who have been waiting for years for advanced training.
The argument that putting women in combat is the remedy for the Tailhook scandal is the biggest non sequitur of all time. If military women can’t defend themselves against some drunks in a Las Vegas hotel, how can they protect themselves against sadistic Iraqis or Serbs?
Defense Secretary Aspin said in his news conference that he is even instructing the Navy to “consider” putting women on submarines. It would be instructive to compare the width of the passageways on submarines with the width of the corridors in the Las Vegas hotel that the Tailhook women found they could not walk through safely.
President Clinton and Defense Secretary Aspin are totally ignoring the findings and recommendation of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, which concluded after a year’s study that the assignment of women to combat units on land, sea and in the air would have a negative effect on combat readiness, unit cohesion, and military effectiveness. The American people have the right to know WHY the Commission recommended against women in combat.
It surely doesn’t help morale to know that assignments are made on the basis of politics, affirmative action quotas, and preferential treatment. But what else can we expect from an Administration that is dominated by persons who don’t understand or respect the military?
To make personnel policy decisions about women on the basis of “equal rights” and “career opportunity” rather than military need and readiness will greatly strengthen the demand of the gay rights activists that the Armed Services be opened to open homosexuals. Those who embrace the “equal opportunity” argument in the case of women in combat have forfeited the high ground of military necessity which supports the gay ban.
Assigning women to military combat goes against human nature, our culture, and centuries of experience. It’s another Clinton cave-in to the radical feminists.
