Posted on 11/09/2005 8:38:12 AM PST by GMMAC
Fighting is for men
Barbara Kay
National Post
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
As soon as Remembrance Day lapel poppies make their annual appearance, wars, old and new, occupy my thoughts. I am especially keen to see the film Jarhead, which tells the story of a U.S. Marine who fought in the first Gulf War. By all accounts, Jarhead follows on other classics of the war-movie genre by answering the timeless question of why young males are willing to face torturous training, brutal hazing, long-term celibacy, excruciating tedium, dust, mud and the risk of death (or worse) in war.
Jarhead will no doubt be seen as hate propaganda in peace-loving Canada, where pacifism is in vogue, and traditional military values are viewed with suspicion. Not coincidentally, our Canadian Forces (CF) are deeply demoralized; military historian Jack Granatstein predicts a mass exodus of 20% over the next few years.
Reviving a military with cruelly degraded mechanical resources -- with virtually no significant new funds available for use until 2009-10 -- will be a difficult job for recently appointed Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier. His most pressing task is to stem rampant attrition -- in 1993, enlistment stood at 80,000; in 2005, at 58,000. Re-masculating the Forces would be a good place to start.
Nothing better illustrates Hillier's uphill battle than political termagant Carolyn Parrish's reaction to his perfectly reasonable assertion, in July, that terrorists are "scumbags ... who detest our freedoms" and that it is the Forces' job "to be able to kill people." She declared Hillier "dangerous" and "testosterone-fuelled."
Parish's reflexive hostility to Hillier's personal manliness is, unfortunately, emblematic of the anti-male attitude behind the transformation of our combat forces into the integrated, "sensitive" New Military. Women have served in the CF since 1951, and today represent up to 14% of the CF. They were deployed in support roles until a Human Rights tribunal in 1989 struck down barriers to all service options, including combat.
This meant integrated training with men. Since then, it's goodbye testosterone, hello estrogen, PMS, pregnancy -- and lower, gentler criteria. The single-standard Old Military shaped recruits to meet fixed benchmarks. The double-standard New Military fixes benchmarks to meet enlistees' shapes.
To maintain the fiction of gender neutrality insisted upon by the social engineers who pressed for integration, and produce the appearance of equality of outcomes, co-ed physical training has been dumbed down to accommodate women's lesser strength and ability, an insulting disservice to male recruits. But women also have female reproductive issues that can't be similarly obscured, and that receive special treatment. Pregnancy, for example, allows women to withdraw from combat duty with honour, while men have no such combat escape hatch. Some "equity."
Feminists perceive the military as simply one more government or social institution in need of accelerated PC behaviour modification to ensure functional and numerical parity for women. Manliness as a virtue has already been eradicated from scholarship, early education, child psychology, family law, and social work. Now it is the military's turn.
But combat troops aren't like teachers or postal workers or bus drivers. The military is -- was -- a unique, genetics-dependent culture, as specific to males as midwifery is to females. Men don't fight for the feminist ideal of androgyny, but to protect the women they love -- wives, daughters, mothers, sisters -- and the values they represent -- normalcy, freedom and peace. Former U.S. infantry officer Brian Mitchell, author of Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster, points out that rather than shortfalls being a reason to recruit women, recruiting women causes shortfalls: "The more attractive you make the military look to women, the less attractive you make it look to men."
In spite of the military's ardent courtship, women leave the CF for domestic obligations or greener career pastures at double to triple the rate for men. Add extra expense for female-specific injury and medical needs, double those of men's, not to mention costly flights of PC-induced idiocy (our Forces once commissioned a pregnancy combat uniform), and you have an institution in denial. Sadly, according to Granatstein, "It will take a large number of dead female soldiers before we snap back to reality".
Rick Hillier's comments have been labelled "controversial." Nonsense. He's a breath of fresh air, a role model for young men seeking purpose and self-realization through the ultimate male bonding experience.
Apart from rear-service, medical and administrative functions, where they shine, women don't belong in the CF. Hillier would do well to take a leaf from the Jarheads' copybook. Unlike the other Services, the U.S. Marines enlisted women, but successfully resisted integrated training. Consequently, they are the only U.S. Service to have easily met their recruitment goals, ensuring their continuing capability to field the world's most motivated, cohesive and effective combat units. More power to them.
© National Post 2005
"My solution is that with the exception of specialty professions like nursing, clerks in the USA, etc. make every soldier should be a rifleman and know how to fight."
That sounds good, but the navy has some problems that complicate that. They have to send personnelmen, yeomen, disbursing clerks, etc. to sea on ships. After a few years of sea duty, these guys are looking forward to rotating to a shore billet.
If every shore billed is filled by a woman, where are they going to rotate to?
So why do you think it's not possible to have an all-male military (except nurses)?
"But we as a mature, stable society, can never hope to equal the muzzies in baby production."
It's not a matter of being a mature, stable society; it's the bill of goods that feminism has sold to women, starting with contraception, through abortion, and the fiction that women have to have a career to be fulfilled.
I doubt the small overall number of women in the military makes any real difference in our nation's fertility rate.
This was in the introductory paragraph of your original post and I admittedly hit you below the belt because of it.
Your current posting reveals a greater understanding of the issues than you revealed in the original posting.
Combat duties are defined as any activity where fire might be exchanged or any enviornment where that possibility exists.
There are, of course, exceptions that can be made: nirses ar eneeding in gield hospitals and since the vast majority of nurses are female, it stands to reason that they will, occasionally, be in a combat enviornment. But this is a judgement call based on "needs of the service". The same could not be said of truck drivers or combat engineers, for example.
As for the President issuing an order, he is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and he can issue an Executive Order, not reviewable by Congress or the Courts (I believe, if I'm wrong, someone please tell me).
Damn! Talk about needing agrammar nazi!
That was supposed to be:
"nurses are needed in field hospitals".
Must remember the spellcheck...lol
I'll give you an even better example than Jessica Lynch: she just got "lucky" enough to get herself captured in this day and age of media excess. She's extremely fortunate that she isn't dead.
Prior to the USS Abe Lincoln's deployment to the Eastern Med as part of the ops against Afghanistan, Fox News went aboard and conducted some interviews with the crew. Now here they find this cute-as-a-button, 4' 11" sailorette, who happens to be an AO (incidentally, I was an AO1 before I topped out).
When asked about her "feelings" about going into a combat zone by the reporter (and I believe it was Brian Kilmeade, no less!), this little girl has the audacity to say (paraphrasing):
"Well, I'm really nervous about it. I mean, when I signed up I never thought I would have to go fight someplce."
I have an idea one or more of the following things happened to this young lady under the tremendous workload and stress of full-blown combat operations aboard a CVN:
a) She "mysteriously fell overboard one evening" after her shipmates got sick and tired of hearing her cry 24/7.
b) She got herself pregnant, and thus, ejected from the combat zone.
c) Her CO found her incapable of taking the stress (physical and mental) of combat ops and she was transferred from the combat zone for "medical reasons",probably after a minor sprain, perhaps a broken fingernail and numerous trips to the Chaplain for "emotional counselling".
However, the quote above pretty much sums up the attitude of most of the servicewomen I came across in my time. They are there strictly for the training, the college money and the travel, not to be on the sharp end when the ship goes into harm's way.
Geez.. I thought I was having a mini stroke.
But this is a judgement call based on "needs of the service". The same could not be said of truck drivers or combat engineers, for example.
If there are insufficient males to fill the required positions so that a unit can be combat effective, what is the alternative?
In a naval scenario, I presume a ship going "into harm's way" also must have a certain level of personnel on board to be combat effective. Would you restrict personnel to male only?
Feminists perceive the military as simply one more government or social institution in need of accelerated PC behaviour modification to ensure functional and numerical parity for women.
Most of us who are post between the hours of 0800 & 1700 are likely at work. Therefore, by juggling our professional responsibilities with or poltical interests, we usually type quickly. This often leads to a few grammatical mistakes. One, however, would take much more care in grammar construction if he was writing in response to an editorial or posting something on his blog.
I have not seen one female officer who could cut the mustard. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not one; in years of service. Fellow officer whith whom I've had this conversation feel the same thing. Female officers are either incompetent, have some sort of emotional complex, or both. Not one that I've met is an effective leader in any way. Every female officer I've known personally has tried to use their gender to their advantage when dealing with men. Almost every one has broken the basic tenets of leadership.
What is it with the grammar-nazis on FR?
Arguing the point, it doesn't take "balls" to enlist in order to drive a truck
Then the solution is cannibalize units. Not enough male engineers in a particular unit? Then combine the men from two units into one unit, and so on. The ladies can backfill all the assignments stateside that are falling by the wayside because of the departure of their male counterparts.
As for a ship in combat, my experience is liimited to carriers only. I do not know the requirements for DD's or LSD's, for example. But I can tell you that when your "work day" consists of 16 hours continuous flight ops, I know of no woman on the planet that can keep up with the men. It's is hard, dirty, sweaty work, fueling, arming, spotting, towing, pushing,launching,recovering and maintaining aircraft. Not to mention the 1,001 other jobs aboard.
You tell me if there's a loss of efficiency and effectiveness when a job that requires three sailors now requires four because one of them can't lift her fair share?
I do not hold with the theory that because we live in an age of "push button warfare" and that because a particular job may no longer require a great deal of physical labor, then the physical is no longer all that great a requirement. Even someone with a "cushy desk job" is expected to be ready to lend whatever assistance may be required at any moment, from damage control and putting out fires to standing watch with a pair of binoculars, hanging from the mast 100 feet above the deck in foul weather.
There is also the mental requirements to think about, as well. It is difficult to be crammed aboard a ship with 5,600 men, hundreds of miles from land, far from home, and often living one atop another for months at a time. Tempers flare, small grievances become large ones, people break down in these situations. Men, in my opinion, don't break as often, or as spectacularly, in these situations.
You might wanna check out who is providing security in Iraq for those truck drivers. I can tell you it AIN'T combat soldiers, because we have so few.
Those people patrolling the streets in Bagdhad are more likely to be clerks, cooks,quartermasters and clerical workers, given a rifle and sent outside to look mean and tough and give the impression that we're there in fighting strength.
We went into this war with not enough combat-trained boots (infantryMEN, not tankers and helo pilots) and with a stupid idea that every Iraqi in the country would fall over themselves in an attempt to kiss our backsides. A great many of those casualties you speak of could have been avoided, I believe, if we had trained infantry, in sufficient numbers, who expected trouble and were ready to respond to it.
We can debate the planning and execution of the war all day long, it does not answer the basic question: are women combat capable? The answer is most certainly NOT.
"God Bless All Those Patriots Past & Present
Who Nobly Served And Continue To Serve Freedom's Cause!"
I choose common sense and experience. "Professional studies" can be manipulated to support any view you desire.
My son is in an AFJROTC unit. He holds the highest rank possible as a junior in high school. He's a 4.0 GPA student and a good bet to get into one of the service academies, which is his desire. I attended his awards ceremony the other night and was struck by how many of the cadets were young women (easily over half). Not only that, but young women held almost all of the senior leadership positions and had received the bulk of the highest awards. Why is that? Simple. Young women tend to be neater in their appearance and love the social structure. They tend to be more settled and serious in their academic studies at that age and are oh-so eager to please the instructor.
That carries over to active duty. Women do well in a garrison military environment. It's like playing "dress up" everyday. They are also very effective in certain support roles. What they are not, are warriors. War is about breaking things and killing people, and women are not suited to it. We ignore that truth at our peril. Yet political correctness forces us to indulge this delusion that women in combat are just men with small bone structure.
At first it annoyed me that so many young women were crowding out the young men in the AFJROTC unit. But then I realized that the vast majority of those young women will never actually serve in the military. They will self- select out because, at some deeper level, most will realize that women are not fitted for combat roles. Yet many of them will become mothers. And if they have positive feelings about the military from being involved in AFJROTC, they are more likely to encourage their sons and grandsons to serve.
Now if we could only undo some of the terrible damage inflicted on the military during the Clinton years to satisfy feminists.
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