More on Women Soldiers
March 6, 2015
JAMES P. writes:
Attached is a copy of the cover of Military Review, “The Professional Journal of the US Army”, which depicts a “female engagement team” in Afghanistan. Its purpose is “community engagement” – yaay! Apparently, “direct communication between male U.S. troops and Afghan women would cause uproar in the Afghan community,” and therefore we need the female engagement teams who are “geared toward family, community and advocacy of women and children.” Nothing says “we are serious about war” like sending your women to hold hands with the native women so you don’t make the residents of a conquered country unhappy…
I think you will like the words of the brigade commander:
“Women, our blood and treasure, are serving on the front lines right now. As a brigade commander, I remember having all Soldiers in the fight, not only males. My daughter is a staff sergeant in the Army, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. When she deployed to Iraq, I told her to make sure she faces toward the door of the Humvee during her combat patrols – so that if she’s shot at, [bullets] will hit her vest. That is a weird conversation for a father to have with his daughter.”
A weird conversation, indeed — and in a sane world, this would be an unthinkable conversation.
Don writes:
Here is an article about the suicide of a female Air Force officer who served two tours in Afghanistan. PTSD is the contributing factor per her peers. What is interesting is the recognition by her peers that men are able to handle stress better than women:
“I think women are just more emotional creatures as it is, and I mean that’s just my opinion,” Aguiar says. “When you are enlisted in the military, You have to have some sort of built-up emotional guard, and you have to kind of amount to the male aspect of it and be just as tough. So I think that they kind of put up walls to be strong as maybe their male counterparts. There needs to be more of a focus on women in the military.”
Sadly, the solution escapes them. They think it is just a matter of focusing enough of the correct resources to female soldiers. There is no level of focus that will negate that sex is a biological fact and not a social construct.
Laura writes:
This is a very sad story. Feminist agitators are complicit in the deaths of female soldiers, including those who end their lives.
In the interview on the page linked, it is agreed by her friends and the interviewer (what a ridiculously unserious interviewer, she is) that Brunette suffered some kind of post traumatic stress. But no one suggests what her career might have done to her personal life as a woman: She had been in the military for 11 years and had no real life to come home to. She was 30, unmarried and sexually liberated.
Also note that the conclusion of the women in the military is that not enough attention is paid to the problems of women soldiers! This is too much. Against enormous resistance, including the resistance of most women in the military, feminists demand that women be placed in combat-like roles and there is national attention focused on their achievements. Then feminist complain that no one is paying attention to female soldiers and no one cares that women have to suffer as soldiers. The idea that you can everything you want and not pay for it is feminist utopian insanity.
Abigail writes:
The letter by the writer at Family Security Matters succeeds only at conveying the author’s ostensible belief that feminists are too stupid to breathe. I say “ostensible” because I doubt whether the author can possibly believe what he claims – that feminists have never pondered the possibility of having to register for the selective service or that feminists are ignorant of the fact that soldiers suffer and die in combat. So either the letter writer’s criticism of feminists is in bad faith or he is almost too stupid to breathe.
Worse than his bad faith and stupidity, however, is his ugly mockery of fellow citizens for expressing a willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Yes, that’s what he is doing. He blatantly expresses grim satisfaction in the notion of female soldiers suffering and dying in war – because they’ll get what’s comin’ to ’em for being so uppity, right?
I don’t see how, as a traditionalist, you can sanction this guy’s attitude. Yes, I’m sure it’s true that no one can really, fully understand the experience of war until actually experiencing it. But that’s true of every callow youth who rides off enthusiastically to join an army — the kind of character who is a staple of literature and family lore. When a young man makes such a calculation, we feel compassion and reverence for him — even if we know he has probably bitten off more than he can chew, or may live to regret his decision. But when women want to serve their country, traditionalists jeer and high five at the thought of their suffering and comeuppance.
Personally, I am agnostic about what combat roles, if any, women are suited for. But, as a woman myself, I would be proud to register for the selective service, and in time of military emergency, to serve in whatever capacity I can be most useful, whether combat or otherwise. I am surprised that the letter writer you quoted would assume otherwise.
Laura writes:
You write:
I say “ostensible” because I doubt whether the author can possibly believe what he claims – that feminists have never pondered the possibility of having to register for the selective service or that feminists are ignorant of the fact that soldiers suffer and die in combat.
Well, perhaps then you could point to a single example of a feminist publicly calling for the female draft or publicly stating that women must prepare themselves for the draft in the future.
If feminists are not ignorant of the fact that soldiers suffer and die, perhaps you could explain why in their scenarios of historic oppression they have rarely, if ever, pointed to the unequal sacrifices of men and women in wartime and the far greater number of men who have given their lives to protect women and children.
Worse than his bad faith and stupidity, however, is his ugly mockery of fellow citizens for expressing a willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
There is good reason for this mockery. Careerism seems to be the real motive behind the campaign for women in combat.
Not only do most women in general not want to fight, but most women in the military do not want to make the ultimate sacrifice. Surveys consistently show that the vast majority of women in the military don’t want combat assignments. It is really only a small elite of women who are pushing for this and it is reasonable to suspect that a big reason why they are pushing it, given that they are so unequal in strength to men, is not that they want to make the ultimate sacrifice but that combat experience is necessary to qualify for certain top command positions.
By the way, the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated in large part because women wanted no part of the draft.
