Posted on 03/03/2003 5:18:18 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
Two years ago today, we buried my father. I cried then – I still do. It's hard without him because he'd always been there.
My mother is healthy and lives in the house they shared. Her strength and faith maintain her through each day. There's a gaping hole in life with him gone but his spirit is with her and their love prevails. My parents, through the ebb and flow of life, were together for 65 years – an astonishing record.
In this day of splintered families, I was fortunate to have an intact home. Mom and Dad were always there. How do children survive when their parental foundation is torn away? It's bad enough for older children but for infants and toddlers, it's their survival. They are the most vulnerable. It's known that without love, touch and human contact, babies die.
Traditionally, our society valued parenting and, especially, mothering. Giving birth isn't enough; you have to be there.
But times have changed. Not only has the long arm of feminism done its best to destroy the tradition of motherhood and family, the government helps it along. Women are urged to have it all – career and family. It's become "normal" to farm out infants and children to day care so Mommy can work. Some "enlightened" husbands expect it. The children don't know what hit them.
Government growth on every level has resulted in enormous taxation. The toll on families forces both parents to work just to break even.
But there's one area where the two-faced devil of feminism and government is now evident: The military. It's in the news as military deployments to the Middle East take place. And it tears my heart out – not that military personnel are being shipped out, but who is going.
I saw it first with Desert Storm: young mothers kissing children goodbye – military women leaving tiny infants while they went to war. I remember one woman with a child so young, its age was still measured in weeks. I thought it was wrong then, and I still do.
Such scenes are back with a vengeance. Now we see the true colors of the new military:
• a young wife in Massachusetts wiping a tear from her husband's face, as she leaves.
• a Dubuque, Iowa, mother kissing her two sons, ages 5 and 1, goodbye.
• in Shiprock, N.M., a mother hugging her 1-year-old daughter. She has two other children and is being deployed for a year or more!
These are just from one newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, (Feb. 23, 2003). Then, I saw this week's edition of People magazine (March 3, 2003) and was truly horrified!
The article on military deployments showed two boys, ages 2 and 1, as both their parents readied for deployment. They're Marines and they left for Kuwait a week apart, leaving the children with the grandmother. Who knows how long they'll be gone.
That is simply wrong. Not long ago, if a military woman got pregnant, she was out. That wasn't sexist – it was having the right priorities, for military needs and supporting traditional family and mothering.
Today, anything goes. While elitists argue whether women should be in combat, we order mothers ripped from their young children and sent to the front, all in the name of politically correct equal rights.
Are we so desperate that we have to ship both parents overseas, tearing the very grounding out from under two little children? Why is a mother of three, separated from her little ones for more than a year?
No woman with minor dependents should be sent overseas. In fact, such a woman shouldn't be in the military at all. The children's needs should take precedence. If she joined for a "career," then got pregnant – too bad. You can't do it all, no matter what feminism says.
Is it fair that men go to war and women don't? Sorry, life isn't fair, men are warriors and the military isn't "just" a job. Women are warriors on the home front. Children need their mothers. With them. Not in some war zone because of feminism and politics.
Shame on the Marines – in fact, shame on the entire military for permitting this and being too pummeled by political correctness to just say no.
The military, which fights to protect our country, has a duty to protect the youngest of our citizens, the children. It can do that best by allowing mothers to be with their babies at home, not on the frontlines of war.
No, The military is a tool of the Government, and reports to civilian authority. The military has always been a good place for social experimentation (e.g., racial integration).
Feminists pushed the agenda, the Politians demanded, and the military followed orders, despite being wrong.
The list of errors in military planning and structure would certainly encompass several pages. The error outlined in this article is nonetheless one of the more immoral. The outrageous nature of this practice of building the military foundation with mothers is unsettling.
An exercise in comparison might be to note the effectiveness of an NBA team that was forced to field a woman on the floor during all competition. Even the L.A. Lakers would find themselves hardpressed to win games in such a scenerio.
An exercise in comparison might be to note the effectiveness of an NBA team that was forced to field a woman on the floor during all competition. Even the L.A. Lakers would find themselves hardpressed to win games in such a scenerio.
You're right - with the exception that The Government would mandate one female for ALL NBA teams. For 'parity'. Unfortunately, other countries are not as 'enlightened' as us and do not see the need to cripple themselves in this manner.
Before I need to don my asbestos underwear for the flames, let me state that I am opposed to any woman in a combat role, not because of prejudice, but because of simple logic. Females in combat open up a full range of societal and logistical problems. I also particularly disagree with the lowering of military physical standards for women.
Fred Reed wrote an excellent column on this issue, including the stats to back it up. It's located at: http://www.fredoneverything.net/MilMed.shtml
Good post and I agree with your logic, except for the fact that the military deserves some of the blame. The policy is foolhardy and the retired officers should have been protesting in droves. And current officers should have been retiring in droves, and then protesting themselves. We let the left have this issue because we didn't fight.
The good news is that we will prevail in Iraq in spite of the numbers of women in the military. It would be even better news if we learn that women decide not to join in the future because of the sacrifices they had to make as soldier and mother.
Do any Freepers know more about this? Please post. And, send the info to Barbara Simpson at World Net Daily so she can have fodder for a second column.
As much as I like to blame Clintoon for everything, this started before his reign of terror.
We had women in the fist Gulf War. In addition, the Military continues Coed training (cudos to the Marines for avoiding this).
Guess I'll need to change my screen name to male sexist pig
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