Of course, there are a few, a very few, women who can meet what should be the rigorous standards of the Rangers. But your idea of a “sane, merit-based society” is not realistic. No merit-based standards will change nature or eradicate sex differences. A woman is a woman, physically different from a man in ways other than strength. Even basic bathroom functions are different, no small matter in the field. The very presence of women changes the atmosphere of a group of men. The male-female dynamic cannot be eradicated on command and there will often be strong attachments where men and women are put together in close quarters, as the numerous scandals involving romantic affairs in the military which I have covered here before have demonstrated. Even strong women have been known to act like women emotionally.

It is immoral to prepare women who may become mothers for combat — a betrayal of the young, who depend on that close maternal bond. It is immoral to send women into combat because they face a risk that men do not face: They may actually be forced to bear the children of the enemy. I realize you haven’t thought through the complications, but only a sick, sick country would send women where they risk falling into the arms of the enemy and giving it the actual lifeblood of the unborn.

Is there a need for women in combat? Are there not enough men? If so, why aren’t there enough men? Could it be because women are not having children?

Finally, it is unfair to allow a few women to serve for the sake of their own personal fulfillment and then not include women in the draft. After all, many men would rather not be drafted in times of war.

Re: “The “Rangers” aren’t really an ‘elite’ unit. Just because you graduate from Ranger school doesn’t mean you’re going to be in a Ranger unit. It’s a training credential, just like parachute school. My West Point graduate father graduated from both paratrooper school and Ranger school, and then was assigned to the artillery branch.”

Michael, your comment contains some truth to it, but you are also mistaken in one or two important respects. You are correct that obtaining a Ranger tab isn’t any guarantee that you will serve in the Ranger regiment. To that extent, it is simply one more ticket to get punched – another merit badge on the way to Eagle Scout, so to speak. If you want to get promoted in today’s army as a line officer, you have to have all of the correction qualifications, badges, schools and so forth.

However, you are mistaken about the status of the Rangers as an elite – as a glance at their history shows. I am not in the army at the present time – so cannot speak to the status of today’s Ranger regiment – but the force was founded as an elite formation and has long-been run and used operationally on that basis. All Rangers are volunteers three times over, are they not? – once to join the army, once more to attend airborne school and a third time to attend RASP (Ranger Assessment and Selection, formerly called the Ranger Indoctrination/Orientation Program.

During the Second World War, when Britain faced Nazi Germany alone – Prime Minister Winston Churchill sought irregular and innovative means of taking the fight to the enemy from the beleaguered islands of Great Britain. Seeking an elite military force capable of mounting raids behind enemy lines under the most-dangerous and adverse circumstances possible, in June, 1940, Churchill directed that the first commando units be formed. The idea was a remarkable success. Franklin D. Roosevelt soon grew as-infatuated as Churchill with irregular troops and commandos, and asked the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to form units along the same lines. The U.S.M.C. – after considerable hesitancy (the Marines already regarded themselves as an elite force, and did not wholeheartedly share FDR’s fascination with commando operations) – formed the Marine Raiders, who went on to distinguish themselves at Guadalcanal – and the army formed the Rangers. The initial Ranger officer/NCO training cadre came in part from men who had trained and gone on missions with the British commandos in Europe and North Africa – and the Army Rangers were intended to be the U.S. counterpart to them. In practice, during WWII the Ranger regiments were used more as elite shock troops – tasked with taking the most-dangerous and difficult objectives, i.e. such as Point du Hoc during the D-Day landings at Normandy – rather than as genuine commandos, but the larger point is that they were conspicuously an elite. The selection and training process was extremely difficult and very dangerous – only the best and most-fit recruits were selected and they were sometimes killed during live fire and other exercises before even making it into actual combat.

In today’s army, the pathway into special operations is taken to be > regular army > airborne school > Rangers > Green Berets/Army Special Forces and Delta Force. If you don’t complete A/B and Ranger schools, you won’t get a shot at Special Forces – at least, that is, unless you have someone higher up the food chain pulling strings for you.

As your father’s career demonstrates, officers of the line can be reassigned from their basic branch or MOS to a secondary one entirely at the discretion of the army, per exigencies of the service. That is especially true for officers, who are not promised specific duties as enlisted soldiers often are, per their enlistment contracts.

You mentioned Airborne School – that’s an example of another formerly-elite institution that the social engineer types (both in and out of uniform) have succeeded in transforming into just another punch on the careerist ticket that everyone gets. Airborne school – let alone being assigned to one of the army’s then-elite parachute units, i.e., the 82nd or 101st Airborne Divisions – was hardcore and old-school tough in those days. The PT was extremely difficult – paratroopers were expected to be extremely-fit, had to have high aptitude test scores and were otherwise expected to be exemplary, squared-away soldiers. In that old “hard corps” military, airborne slots were allotted only to the best troopers – guys who had already demonstrated an outstanding proficiency as soldiers. When the A/B forces were formed shortly before/during WWII, no draftees were accepted – only the highest-caliber of volunteers – guys who wanted to be the best of the best. Wash-out rates for trainees were initially quite high. See “Band of Brothers” for chapter-and-verse on that, if you have not done so already.

It is only later – much later – during the 1970s and afterward – that the army dumbed-down and diluted airborne training to allow anyone with a pulse to attend jump school. The dumbing down of the standards, not surprisingly, aligns closely with the formation of the AVF and the mass inclusion of women in the ranks.

In the narrow sense of the word, I will concede that the army was correct – much of the romance and derring-do associated with parachute troops during WWII/Korea was overblown – arguably, it doesn’t take an elite soldier to jump out of an airplane and let gravity do the work. But in the larger scheme of things, the army blew it big-time. Those paratroopers of the WWII-Korea-Vietnam era were some of the finest soldiers ever fielded by this or any other army. Now, pregnant single moms are wearing A/B tabs and badges… if you think that’s a big deal and a good thing, then we reckon these things very differently. Cultural leftism and its supporters were responsible for the damage done to the airborne, and now the cultural Marxists are trying to do the same to the Rangers, SEALS, Green Berets, etc. right on down the line.