Posted on 10/23/2007 8:08:10 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
According to the Chief of Naval Personnel, men in the Navy have higher “failure to deploy” and “unplanned loss” rates than do female sailors, when all causes are taken into consideration. Men also have higher rates of those social pathologies most affecting military readiness, including homicide, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, DUI, arrest and incarceration, than do their female counterparts.
I’m not the one with a chip on my shoulder. Mention “women” and “military” in the same post and knee-jerk reponses are sadly predictable. In fact, I have yet to see a post on this forum that included those two words where the cry didn’t soon go up to “get the women out of the military!”
Not gonna happen. There aren’t enough men volunteering to fill the ranks, and a draft isn’t politically feasible. Much to the chagrin of some, women in the military are here to stay, not because of political correctness or feminism, but because they are needed to accomplish the mission.
How about we conservatives judge people on their individual merits instead of viewing them as collectives and making ill-informed snap judgements like liberals do?
But, I do not believe that women have any business in overseas deployments (embassies excepted) or combat duty. The U.S. military, as a fighting force, has one mission, to defend the country and the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, using extreme violence if need be. Much as women's rights advocates would like to have it otherwise, the military is not a dating club or an exercise in social engineering...
Concur, that’s what it sounds like. Imagine the rage if she leaves you for a woman.
Why Christian Women Should not Join the Military:
A Plea from a Woman Veteran
By Mrs. Richard Downin
Jun 25, 2003
In the New Testament there are many direct commands that speak to women about how they are to live. There are also many examples of godly women who served the Lord. These commands and examples prove, I believe, that the military is no place for a Christian woman.
The first direct command is found in Titus 2:5, “To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” Women are to be keepers at home. Not just “housekeepers,” but keepers at home. How can they keep (protect) the occupants of their homes if they are off fighting in a war? If they are not keepers at home they are blaspheming the word of God.
The next direct command I would like to examine is found in 1 Peter 3:4, “But it let be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” To God the meek and quiet spirit is worth a great price. He values the gentleness of a woman higher than any other adorning that she can put on the outside. If a woman is to serve in the military, she can not be gentle and quiet. The military is an occupation that requires its members to continually prepare for war. War by nature is anything but a gentle and quiet procedure. War is about fighting, killing and destroying.
When a woman is in the military she needs to be agressive and dominant. It is unsafe if she is not. Her comrades depend on her to be that way. When I was a flight engineer, I worked with a woman pilot a few times who had a gentle voice. She was asked to speak louder, and many felt uncomfortable around her because she seemed to lack command. In her proper sphere, this gentleness is perfectly in its place; in the military it can be life-threatening. Men are better suited to command forcefully.
The next verse I would like to examine is 1 Timothy 2:9” “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold or pearls of costly array.” The first phrase that stands out to me in this verse is “modest apparel.” When a woman is in the military, she must wear men’s apparel. The clothing that I had to wear was anything but modest. I wore a dark-colored T-shirt, battle dress pants, a battle dress jacket over the T-shirt and black combat boots everyday. When working inside, airmen are allowed to remove their jackets. And I can tell you from eight years experience that the men enjoy seeing the young female soldiers in their T-shirts.
There is another word that is in direct opposition to what is expected of a strong military airman. That word is “shamefacedness.” Shamefacedness is not talked about much anymore, nor is it practiced, even among Christian women. Nevertheless, it is in the Bible. To be shamefaced is to not stare at men or hold their gaze for a long time. When a woman is in the military, she works very closely with other men and must look at them. She may at times be tempted to hold their gazes while working alongside them.
In the same chapter of Timothy in verse 12 there is another command” “But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Women in the military are almost always placed in authority over a male. There is a rank structure in the military that allows one to outrank someone else very quickly. This is clearly not God’s design for Christian women to order men around. This does not mean that women are not intelligent or strong; it simply means that women are not to rule over men.
The last and possibly most important direct command is in 1 Thessalonians 5:22: “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” When I was in the military I had to work very closely with men. Some men were married, some were divorced and some were single. There were several times when I had to work nighshift for a few months. Each time I was on this shift with only one other male. We worked all night together, just he and I. I truly believe that I gave the appearance of evil when I spent entire nights alone with men who were not my husband. I have also had to literally sleep next to men who were not my husband. Nights in the woods were spent close to these men in a tent or in sleeping bags. I also spent many nights sleeping next to other men in other areas. No godly Christian woman would dare sleep next to a man other than her husband night after night, but that is what the military requires. The military requires that you become like a man. You must do what the men do. This is not the place of any woman, but it is especially important that women who profess the name of Christ avoid all such situations.
© Copyright 2002-2005 by LAF/BeautifulWomanhood.org
yep...not to mention the preggers rates aboard ship
Quite true -- that's why I prefer to wait for some clear evidence, one way or the other, before I make up my mind about things like this.
taboos of all kinds coming down seem to benefit ugly white girls disprportionately
life ain't fair...../s
The last legal challenge to drafting women said that it made no sense to draft women because there were too few places to put them because of MOS restrictions. I may not have the numbers exactly correct, but now that 80% of MOS categories are open to women, 90% of billets can be filled with women.
Private Benjamin gets an invite whether she wants to do lunch or not.
Gosh, maybe we need to kick the men out of the military, since the women are superior in every way. </sarcasm>
(Thought I'd give it a try)
Those factors you mentioned are pretty minor problems in the overall scheme of things. I believe VirginiaRidgerunner was discussing the problems associated with the combination of young men and women in the military. This combination has resulted in very real problems for both sexes.
Regardless of the apparent fact that the women have fewer emotional issues, etc., the combination of men and women together is a problem, and we can't deploy a women-only military.
The options are to either a) accept the problems which both the men and women endure in the military and continue on, or b) reexamine the decision to deploy women in combat roles along side men.
I think that's a reasonable subject of discussion and debate, personally.
Hon. Evan Bayh
463 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-1404
and other Elected Representatives
February 13, 2006
Dear Senator Bayh:
I am in receipt of your January 20, 2006 letter in which you attempt to answer my concerns regarding registering women in the military draft. Thank you.
Your letter, along with others I have received from you, Senator Richard Lugar and Richard S. Flahavan (Selective Service) attempt to quell my concerns by stating that at various times in the past the U.S. Congress has not voted to include women in the registration process. I, my wife and my adult daughters feel that you take us as being rather simple.
Obviously what Congress decided not to do in years gone by can be easily reversed in the current or any future Congress. So, the Congress had not included women in Selective Service registration in previous votes on the matter. It could be, however, that you will vote to include women in the future, and thus this is a matter in which we will have to exercise extreme vigilance.
You admit in your letter that a past president (President Carter) had indeed considered the inclusion of women in Selective Service registration, and that Congress was requested to authorize this. That being the case, the possibility of registering women must be in the minds of some prominent people in Washington even today. This means that my vigilance in this matter is warranted.
Further, you state that the Department of defense has had a “longstanding policy of not employing women in combat.” But this is a ruse. It is not difficult to prove that women are in fact serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are in harms way there. Women are carrying locked and loaded weapons in the field. Women are flying in combat aircraft in hot areas. Women have been killed, injured and captured along with male troops and airman. We have seen and heard women interviewed on television and radio about their participation in combat, and of some who were maimed in combat. We have read a recent book by a female working in military intelligence who kicked down doors in Iraq along with males See the supplemental to this letter). Women are certainly serving in combat. And women are being morally vulgarized in military units. Who are you, the Congress, the DoD and the Selective Service Administration trying to deceive?
Women in camouflage or flight suits, being sent anywhere where they might have to pull the trigger or might have their legs blown off by RPGs aimed at the bellies of their combat aircraft do not speak well of the character of our Nation. Women giving themselves to the whims and lusts of men in combat or potential combat zones (or anyplace else) speak volumes about national decay. These things are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women with small children at home in America are in harms way in obviously combat situations.
Since Washington will lie to us about whether women are serving in combat, perhaps Washington will also attempt to keep us in the dark with regard to any plans to eventually include our daughters in the Selective Service registration process. The more you write, Senator, the more we see our need to be vigilant.
You state that you are and “always have been a strong advocate of women’s rights.” We ask you now whether you would defend the rights of Christian women who believe the biblical mandate (Titus ch. 2; 1 Timothy ch. 5; 1 Peter ch. 3; Genesis ch. 2; Proverbs ch. 31; other) to be at home as wives and mothers, and their right never to fear the possibility that they could be extracted from their homes for federally mandated service. We want Congress to assure us that our daughters will never be required by law to leave their homes either for military service or for any alternative form of service.
We want Congress to assure us that the fact that some women want to serve in the military will never be justification for insisting that all women do the same. We want Congress to assure us that a woman’s “right” to serve in the military will never become a woman’s duty to serve in the military. We want Congress to affirm that it is equally patriotic for women to remain in their homes and uphold the traditional Christian character of the home and family.
Our daughters are aged 26, 21, 9 and 4 [Feb. 13, ‘06]. We have also one granddaughter thus far for whom we are concerned. We teach our daughters to be Christians. We train our daughters to be Christian homemakers. We teach our daughters to love their future husbands and children. We teach them faithfulness in the home, first, in obedience to God, secondly, for the spiritual and moral stability of our beloved Nation. We believe that Christian women being faithful in their own homes, serving in their God-ordained roles will produce the future generations of faithful American citizens and patriots. Will you defend a woman’s right to remain home and obey her God to the same extent that you will defend another woman’s “right” to wear camouflage and trudge through the sands of Iraq?
Every letter we have received thus far from our elected representatives illustrates that Christian people will have to remain vigilant in this war for our homes and for our children. We have not read any words yet that assure us that Congress understands traditional Christian families or would defend our homes from those who might think that women should be subject to serve in military service. We intend, therefore, to keep this issue before you.
Know that we are praying for you (1 Timothy 2:1, 2).
Sincerely,
(signed)
Cc: President George W. Bush
Cc: Senator Richard Lugar
Cc: Congressman Mike Sodrel
Cc: Richard S. Flahaven (Selective Service)
Not to be too picky but it should be, "Who was doing whom...?"
Obvious reasons that my daughters should not be in Military service
Materials extracted or quoted from LOVE MY RIFLE MORE THAN YOU, YOUNG AND FEMALE IN THE U.S. ARMY, by Kayla Williams, a female Army enlisted soldier, who has served in Iraq during Operation Enduring Freedom (e.g since 2002).
Kayla Williams, LOVE MY RIFLE MORE THAN YOU, YOUNG AND FEMALE IN THE U.S. ARMY, (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005)
A woman soldier has to toughen herself up. Not just for the enemy, for battle, or for death. I mean toughen herself up to spend months awash in a sea of nervy, hyped up guys who, when they’re not thinking about getting killed, are thinking about getting laid. Their eyes are on you all the time, your breasts, your [buttocks]—like there is nothing else to watch, no sun, no river, no desert, no mortars at night. (pp. 13, 14)
Some women sleep around: lots of sex with lots of guys, in sleeping bags, in trucks, in sand, in America, in Iraq. (p. 14)
[The male soldiers are] yours. [Vulgar exclamation], you left your husband to be with them, you walked out on him for them. These guys (the males in the same unit with the females), they’re your husband, they’re your father, your brother, your lover—your life. (p. 14)
…people conclude that girls don’t do combat zones. That we’re somewhere else from where the action is. But that’s [(vulgar word meaning) nonsense]. We are Marines. We are military police. We are there as support to the infantry in almost every way you might imagine. We even act in support roles for the Special Forces. We carry weapons—and we use them. We may kick down doors when an Iraqi village gets cleared. We do crowd control. We are often also the soldiers who negotiate with the locals—nearly one third of Military Intelligence (MI), where I work, is female.
Insurgents’ mortar attacks reach us, too. In fact, because insurgents strike supply routes so often, it’s frequently the non-infantry soldiers like us—with fewer up-armored vehicles—who end up getting hit and engaging in combat. (p. 16)
RIGHT INTO IT: Sex is key to any woman soldier’s experiences in the American military. No one likes to acknowledge it, but there’s a strange sexual allure to being a woman and a soldier.
I mean sex while in Iraq. At war. While deployed.
Take this one girl. …she [had oral sex with] every guy in her unit. …
…[the girl having oral sex with every guy in her unit is] making my life tons more difficult. Making it tougher for the rest of us females to get our work done without having guys insinuate that [performing lewd sexual acts] was part of our advanced individual training. (pp. 18, 19)
Or the twenty girls from this one unit who got sent home from Iraq pregnant. [(slang phrase meaning) made pregnant by promiscuous behavior.] I heard a number of married guys were involved in this situation. Now that’s a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Single girls and single guys can do as they please. Technically. (p. 19)
Our team settled into an abandoned compound, a sort of manufacturing plant, with 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry (1/87). There were military guards with guns sitting at the entrances to the compound; no one got in or out without passing a checkpoint. No locals were permitted on the base. Lots of big buildings with office supplies. Bathrooms were a hole in the floor and a spigot. But there was running water. Spigots lined the main road. When Lauren and I walked to the aid station, several dozen infantry guys were stripped naked in the street to wash at the spigots. We laughed and waved. They looked embarrassed. Then they laughed and waved back. (p. 108)
Exceptions are nice but they don’t make generalizations null and void.
Conservatives should be foremost realists, not equal opportunity employers.
The military should not “owe” women anything.
Women should serve if they wish in more traditional roles not mixed with men aboard ship or in combat.
The military has become our number one social engineering Test tube for basically anything anyone wishes to try out. It’s a slippery slope. Open homosexuality will be next if Hillary is elected.
That said and all due respect for your service, any nation at war that cannot fill it’s ranks with able bodied men to do it’s fighting and sends women in their stead for whatever reason while said able bodied males sit at home pimping out their rides or smoking dope or whatever is not a culture that will ultimately prevail against a determined foe.
To believe otherwise is pure folly.
Not critical enough. Too bad he didn't kill himself as well as killed the two young women. Undoubtedly he will live and the taxpayers are on the hook for his medical, his trial, his incarceration. Millions of dollars
(in all fairness there is no evidence these killings had anything to do with what women in military other than they were there)
You just took this thing in a different direction. So, have you ever been on a ship? What about the prostitution rings that pop up? Have you ever been involved in one or known of them? I have seen these types of things happen on just about every deployment (combat) Ive been on. Women dont belong in combat and they dont belong on ship...minus the hospital ships.
I’m a woman, and I was in the Navy 82-86. One of the huge problems was that not allowing women to deploy (which they didn’t at that time, save tender duty) meant that we used all of the shore billets and men had a harder time getting a shore rotation. They didn’t like that any more than they like having women aboard ships now.
I have thoughts on women serving in combat situations on the ground but it’s very different aboard a ship (where my daughter just happens to be serving now, BTW) Although, I’ll concede that it’s a very charged atmosphere on an extended cruise and it does push people together more than a normal situation. And, though I have no proof, I think that I’d agree that unwed pregnancies are a little more common in the Navy than other services. Cant be sure, just MHO.
The Demoralization of the Military
[Reprinted from Issues & Views Fall 1996]
Of the many painful consequences brought on by the surrender to political correctness, the demoralization of the United States military is surely among the saddest. First, force young men, who already face the challenge of bringing their unruly spirits under the control of rigorous military discipline to face the even greater challenge of reining in their urgent, natural drives-while living, dining and sleeping in close quarters with women. Then mix in the young women, who, while ostensibly pursuing military careers, are expected to suppress their visceral drive to capture lifemates. And what do you get? Confusion, and a lot of pregnancies.
What loss of common sense could ever bring a government to purposely introduce into its fighting forces the element of sexual interplay, which inevitably brings with it romantic ramifications with which we’re all familiar-hurt feelings, periods of anxiety and brooding and, sometimes, even vengeful behavior? The fear of this type of disruption is one of the reasons military leaders fought so hard, in 1992, against approving openly acknowledged homosexuals. But what the “gay” lobby lost, the feminists won. And we may all pay dearly for it some day.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert R. Maginnis researches and writes about this latest concession to the P.C. mania that is gripping America. He cites the facts of life in today’s Navy: the Navy now ignores longstanding screening standards to accommodate the limited physical ability of women; even after significant training, the strength of women does not improve and they suffer up to three times as many back injuries as men; Navy policy embraces pregnancy as an “acceptable” readiness problem (although almost half of pregnant “sailors” never return to their crews); fraternization among male and female crew members aboard ships contributes to serious morale problems; sexual harassment charges have become the favorite tool of some women to promote their own agendas.
Maginnis points out that a lack of physical strength, especially for lifting, can often decrease the chances for survival in a ship disaster. Strength can be the difference between life and death for other crew members. (These are facts that civilian policemen and firemen are forced to live with.)
Perhaps most shocking of all is the degree to which so many of today’s military women appear hell-bent on becoming “single moms.” For many, this seems to be a more overriding ambition than the career they supposedly set out to build. Maginnis writes, “At any given time, up to 18% of Navy women are pregnant and a study of two ships showed a pregnancy rate as high as one in three. That’s nearly 8,423 women, or enough to crew almost two aircraft carriers.” And in a less than well-kept military secret, Maginnis reveals that “During Desert Storm, 1,145 women on ships needed to be reassigned because of pregnancies, at an average of 95 per month.”
Maginnis cites data about the USS Eisenhower, which was the first combat vessel opened to female crew members, where pregnancies grew from five to 39 in just a couple of months. “In all, 13% of the female crew became pregnant.” And, needless to say, in each case, the “sailor” had to leave her shipboard duties.
Maginnis shares the observations of a chief petty officer who supervised women aboard his ship. From his direct experience, this officer got the impression that many women become pregnant, in order to avoid deployment. He believes that many of them have entered the Navy primarily for the education offered and to search for husbands. When he refused to tolerate close fraternization between male and female crewmembers, he encountered uncooperative behavior from the women.
In an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Bruce Chapman writes that the military is now being treated “as some kind of social laboratory.” The armed forces are now “pinned down by an arch-feminist fusillade of charges and policy demands.” He attributes the suicide of Admiral Jeremy Boorda, not to the superficial stories about campaign ribbons, but to the pressures of a changing Navy. On the one hand, Boorda was under fire from the government to enforce new, illogical policies, “while, on the other, he was incurring increased criticism for failing to defend the honor of his officers and the effectiveness of the service.”
Chapman also tells of the 53% of Navy aviation commanders who have left the service, rather than continue under current conditions. “These were the cream, the very future of the Navy, officers who had performed for two decades in a manner that marked them as potential Admirals.”
The Center for Military Readiness is an organization that monitors military policies and analyzes their impact on military effectiveness. It is described as an alliance of civilians and military “to defend sound personnel policies in the U.S. Armed Forces.” The Center publishes a newsletter and other relevant materials. Its mission statement has this to say: “Throughout its history the military has taken the lead in promoting positive social changes, but the counter-cultural agenda being promoted now is quite different. Social engineering policies being imposed on the military today are designed to benefit only a few, at the expense of the many, regardless of the negative effects on unit strength, deployability, morale, recruiting, retention, and overall readiness.
“The situation is complicated by a proud military tradition: Once decisions are made, good soldiers are expected to carry out orders, not debate them. This means that civilian activists, who will seldom have to live with the consequences, are free to impose extraordinary burdens on men and women who are not truly free to express their own opinions.”
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