Women as wanton killers

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views May 31, 2004]

Although there was no reason to expect the new Bush Administration to take political risks in reversing certain policy objectives of the preceding Administration, it still came as a surprise to many observers that no determination was made to ignore proposals that would send women into military combat. This gender-equality bit of madness had not yet become a dyed-in-the-wool cultural practice, and even feminists were divided on the issue and not totally sold on its necessity. So, what political loss would have been incurred, if women were not assigned to combat duty?

In a previous commentary on this subject, we cited the views of R. Cort Kirkwood, who, in the 1990s, served on a Presidential commission dealing with women in the military, and the Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly. At that time, Kirkwood condemned the use of women as combatants, claiming that there is no benefit to society when women are encouraged to become willing participants in the wanton killing that war requires. About Pvt. Jessica Lynch, he asked incredulously, "What in heaven's name was a hundred-pound girl, barely out of pigtails and high school, doing in a combat zone?"

Here are some recent remarks by Schlafly, who speaks of the "humiliation of America in letting the world see to what depths the gender-integrated military has taken us." In discussing the "insidious" destruction of the military culture, and the inevitable sexual fraternizing that now goes on between soldiers of different ranks, she writes:

The result is a breakdown of military discipline and a dramatic coarsening of women and of men's treatment of women. This has caused a critical diversion of time and energy away from the essential task of teaching men to be soldiers into dealing with the obvious problems caused by the powerful factor of sex when lonely, scared young men and women are crowded together in an environment where moral standards have been abandoned.

The current high percentage of women in the military has been achieved by gender quotas in recruitment and retention, and by affirmative action to promote women to higher ranks so they could command men. Nobody admits the existence of gender quotas, but everybody knows they explain why we have a 15 percent female military.

Social experimentation in the military includes generous subsidies to induce single mothers to enter and remain in the military. That's why we have had the shameful incidents of single mothers of infants being killed or taken prisoner, a byproduct of the Iraqi war that the feminists describe as equal opportunity for women.

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