Debating women in combat

This week, the United States House of Representatives Armed Services Committee is debating the Defense Authorization Bill. Competing sides are squaring off on the subject of women in combat.

For those who see the military as just another career option, the issue is equal opportunity for women. This side wants to erase or blur the line between combat and support jobs which it sees as a barrier to career advancement. Feminists say, “It’s an issue of fairness.”

The other side recognizes that the purpose of having a military is to win wars. Equal opportunity is incompatible with that goal. In order to win wars you have to kill people and break things; it’s survival of the fittest. It may not be fair that the average man is six inches taller, 30 pounds heavier and, more importantly, has 42 percent more upper body strength, but it is reality. In combat women are not only undesirable, they are a liability.

This side not only wants to keep the line in place, it wants to end the practice of training young men and women recruits together. In 1994, this disastrous practice was begun in earnest, with the urging of President Clinton, in the Army, Navy and Air Force and has been hotly debated in Congress ever since.

It is unlikely, however, that our elected representatives in Congress will have an opportunity to vote on this measure, because the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives say they don’t want to put President George W. Bush in the position of having to sign such a measure, even if they could get it past the Democrat controlled Senate.

Why?

They don’t want to “hurt him with the women’s vote.” They would rather have it done by the service chiefs and the secretary of defense, thereby shielding the president from a direct attack by the feminists, who are in full battle mode.

Our leaders in Washington have been lobbied by angry mobs of extremists in the women’s movement for so long that they honestly believe that most of us want our daughters and granddaughters to be on the front lines of the next war.

The real women of America understand the purpose of the military and we are unwilling to sacrifice our sisters on the battlefield just so a handful of women officers, who have been promoted out of harm’s way, can get an extra star on their uniforms. Real women understand fairness and placing women in infantry units, where the men will be required to do twice as much heavy lifting, is not only unfair, it is dangerous. In battle, a tired soldier is a dead soldier. Likewise, it is unwise to place women in support jobs where they are unable to carry their loads.

Today, from our service academies to basic training, pressure from feminists groups has resulted in a dumbing down of strength and endurance tests. The emphasis no longer is on making sure that everyone who survives these tests has the ability to go the distance, but seeing that everyone puts forth an “equal effort.” On the battlefield there is no grade for effort, it is either kill or be killed.

Often the only thing that stands between a wounded soldier and life or death is the ability of his comrade in arms to carry him to safety. Real women are mothers of sons as well as daughters and we don’t want our sons’ lives to depend on whether women, who excel in dance class but flunk hand-to-hand combat, can carry or drag them out of harm’s way.

Also, most real women feel it is unfair for the government to force them to spend an extra hour or two at work everyday, away from their families, in order to finance the feminist’s definition of fairness in the military. The cost of supporting the military is huge, but it is a burden that we willingly accept as long as the money is not wasted. It costs a lot of taxpayer dollars to put power steering on motor pool vehicles so women can drive them, redesign rifles so women can fire them and planes so women can fly them. It costs over $100,000 to train a woman combat pilot. If a flare-up occurs, all she has to do is get herself pregnant and she can say, “See you in the next war.”

When airmen, soldiers and sailors are lost due to pregnancies, readiness is sacrificed. In our new kinder, gentler armed services, readiness is being sacrificed in hundreds of different ways in order to appease the radical feminists and their friends. Readiness is sacrificed because women suffer more injuries and must be accommodated when monthly periods make them unfit to serve. Readiness is sacrificed when barracks and ships have to be reconfigured to accommodate them. Now the feminists, unsatisfied with their recent success in getting women in combat planes and on surface ships, want them to be accommodated on submarines and in ground combat units as well.

Unfortunately, this nonsense has obscured the contributions that hundreds of thousands of selfless real women have made in military service over the years. There are many jobs that women do well; some even better than men, but combat is just not one of them.

We enjoy the benefits of living in a free country because, in the past, our military was structured to be a lean, mean fighting machine. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case because many of our elected representatives, who have the responsibility of writing the rules for the military, have lost their way. Only 164 of the 535 have any military service in their backgrounds. They are more concerned about votes than bullets. Furthermore, they do not have a clue when it comes to understanding how real women think.

Real women want a strong military that is capable of defending this country against any foe. Therefore, real women can understand that co-ed basic training with its dumbed-down standards has got to go. The only reason for training men and women together is if they are going to fight a war together on the frontlines.

Today, 15 major groups followed the lead of the American Legion and released a letter sent to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asking him to end co-ed basic training, which was begun without legislation, and can be undone the same way. The signers represent the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Independent Women’s Forum, American Conservative Union, Coalitions for America, the Center for Military Readiness, Eagle Forum, Center for Security Policy, Concerned Women for America and Freedom Alliance.

Note that three of these groups are women’s groups with a combined membership that dwarfs the National Organization for (some) Women.

This week, real women are needed to back up these groups. Please take a moment, and contact Secretary Rumsfeld, your own members of Congress and President George W. Bush and tell them how you feel about putting women in combat, co-ed basic training and keeping and maintaining the strongest military in the world.