Turning women into cannon fodder

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | April 11, 2003 | Robert Knight

[Tailgunner Joe]

You couldn't help but be elated upon hearing that Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued. But it was a little like the relief that parents experience before the anger sets in after junior has done a death-defying stunt and lived to tell about it.

Many brave men risked their lives to save Pfc. Lynch following an Iraqi man's report that a woman soldier was being tortured at a hospital. We still don't know what the Iraqis did to her. The two broken legs and spinal injury indicate torture. No word on whether she was sexually assaulted as well. Her comrades, most of them men, did not fare as well, with nearly a dozen bodies found.

Instead of shaking off our '60s feminist hangover and vowing to end the lunacy of sending young women like Miss Lynch into harm's way, you'd think her brutalization was actually a good thing.

Gen. Wilma Vaught, the harridan who wants to draft our daughters and put them into combat, gushed that Miss Lynch reportedly took out some Iraqis on the way to being captured, so this proves women ought to be in the front lines.

Liberals like the terminally grimacing Patricia Schroeder echoed the call, saying it is time to end all combat exemptions for women, since, in our enlightened way, we are not supposed to care that wives and daughters are turned into hamburger by enemy troops.

Liberalism has a remarkable record for worsening any situation. Are welfare programs destroying black families and creating poverty and crime in the nation's cities? Throw more money at them to snag even more people into a failed system! Does gun control exacerbate crime by disarming innocent citizens? Press for tighter controls!

On the military front, the armed forces have been in full retreat from liberal feminists. If the Navy's Tailhook sex scandal during the '90s proved anything, it is that men and women mixed tightly together will create spontaneous combustion. Instead of admitting this simple truth, feminists used Tailhook to "out" recalcitrant traditionalists who opposed putting women closer to combat. Naval officers who could fearlessly face down enemy fire cowered before the, uh, ladies.

The same folly was at work recently at the Air Force Academy, where several female cadets reported sexual assaults by male cadets. The Academy's response? They took down the big letters over a stone arch that read: "Bring Me Men." That's right, men. Real men. The kind that don't assault women and who think that protecting women from harm is one of the duties that God assigned them. Let's opt for androgyny instead.

The more that we buy into the fiction that women are indistinguishable from men, the more we sleepwalk into an unfolding disaster.

Forget about Miss Lynch for a moment. How about Pfc. Lori Ann Peistewa, the first U.S. servicewomen killed in Iraq? She left behind two preschool kids, aged 3 and 4. Her body was found at the site where Miss Lynch was rescued. Or how about Shoshana Johnson, a single mother of a 2-year-old? We have not heard anything about her since the Iraqis released a haunting photo of her frightened face, along with those of some male comrades.

"Jessica was a clerk, essentially a secretary, doing yeoman's work, I might add," said Martha Kleder, a Culture and Family Institute policy analyst who served with the Air Force in Alaska. "Shoshana Johnson joined the Army to be a cook. Today, no woman is safe in the military. There are no more rear-support jobs. All women should expect to be made cannon fodder. Thanks, Pat Schroeder, thanks for your utter glee that these women who only wanted to serve their country in rear-support jobs are now facing hostile enemy fire."

Political correctness at the Pentagon hangs in the air like Napalm smoke. At the press conference announcing Miss Lynch's rescue, the spokesman lauded her as a "brave woman," and then turned to give credit to her rescuers. "We have to remember" – and then he paused ever so slightly – "the brave souls" who risked their lives to save Miss Lynch. Had he used the term "brave men," it would have clarified the absurdity of putting Miss Lynch near the front lines in the first place.

Americans are probably largely unaware that women are prohibited from being on the front lines, a policy increasingly being broken by our gender-neutral military.

The practice of turning women into cannon fodder got a huge boost when the Clinton administration largely dispensed with the "risk rule," which exempts women from jobs in which they are likely to face enemy fire. Although women are still not technically in combat, it sure looks like they are.

Take 2nd Lt. Sarah Ewing Skinner, for instance. With her "finger on the trigger of her M-16, [she] gives the order to move forward as troops under her command prepared to storm 20 derelict buildings where die-hard Iraqi defenders may have taken refuge," the Associated Press reports in an article headlined "Not for men only." Now isn't that special? Women are supposed to be exempted from combat, and yet they are going house to house just like the grizzled Vic Morrow and his squad in the old "Combat" TV show.

The loophole is that they are serving as military police, and those squads have been ordered to do dangerous cleanup work that looks a lot like combat. In fact, it is combat.

"In Iraq, this stuff includes escorting supply convoys through ambush-prone areas, sweeping villages for weapons, arresting Iraqis hostile to U.S. forces and handling prisoners of war," AP said. Pvt. Kristi Grant, a military policewoman, told AP, "I guess the only thing is that I can't lift some of the same things males do, but I try." How would you like to be her comrade, wounded and in need of being dragged to safety? A good try wouldn't cut it.

There are some other key physical differences between the sexes, but you would never know it from the AP report. Sex means nothing: "She quickly got over her initial anxiety about being squeezed into a tent with male soldiers and discovered 'we were much like one family.'" Nothing about the jealousy, broken marriages and fights that erupted during the Gulf War when men and women were billeted together. Do any parents really want their 20-year-old daughter sleeping in a tent with a bunch of men?

"Women are treated like trash, they're objects in the service," said former Marine Cpl. Carmelo Torres. "They may talk PC, but it's a different story behind closed doors. Women are treated like dirt."

Torres recalls being stationed at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia and seeing staff sergeants picking out attractive young women and declaring them off-limits to other men. "In the women's barracks, the women were being sexually harassed by the lesbians when they weren't being hit on by the men," he said. "Two of the lesbians got new recruits drunk so they could gang-rape them in the women's barracks."

This is not about military women's willingness to serve their country, which is commendable, or their bravery. America owes much to its women service members.

But they shouldn't be in combat. First, they are the bearers of life and the heart of family life, an utterly indispensable role. When America sends young women off to war, watching them kiss their toddlers goodbye, we are making a moral choice that children are just not important anymore. It is much more important to drive a military truck. This callousness is an outgrowth of the abortion culture in which human life itself is cheapened. Any job those women do could be done by a man, but nobody else can be a mother to her children. It is bad enough for children to lose their father, but it is utterly unnecessary for them to lose their mother. Raising children is the most important job in society, and yet it takes a back seat to feminist ambitions to pursue sameness in the name of equality.

Second, women lack the upper-body strength, endurance and speed of men, which, despite all the talk of "push-button wars," can be crucial in battle. As Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness has said, "Women don't have an equal ability to survive on the battlefield."

Third, although some feminists claim that they have a right to serve if they want to, military service is a privilege and a duty – not a right. The armed forces bar numerous classes of people, regardless of individual ability, because they could have a negative impact. Homosexuals are a case in point. Putting women into combat endangers all of our daughters because in the 1986 case Rostker v. Goldberg, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women could not be drafted because they did not serve in combat, and that Congress had the power only to raise armies to fight wars. A few feminists in the front lines could destroy that exemption.

Fourth, women have a profound effect on men. In 1948, the Israelis put women soldiers into the front lines, but had to pull them after a few weeks. Discipline broke down, morale plummeted and men ignored orders, rushing instead to protect the women. Some men lost their sanity when they saw women being blown apart. These men must have been chauvinist pigs.

The Israelis quickly grasped that women have no business being in combat, and that is their policy to this day. They train women for emergency situations, removing them if combat begins. But we have brushed aside that lesson. We are actually training men to ignore their noble impulse of being protectors. The Navy introduced a program a few years ago in which men were conditioned to endure the cries of women being tortured. The other services have adopted these programs as well. This is progress?

Imagine what these men will be like when the war is over and they return to civilian life. Do we really want thousands of men among us who are indifferent to women's cries of pain? That's a recipe for domestic violence and rape. The floodtide of pornography only makes it worse. But liberals like porn. It's religion they despise. As C.S. Lewis said, the social goal of liberals is to make religion private and pornography public.

It is barbaric to allow pornography to permeate our entire culture, and it is barbaric to put women in combat, even if they are fool enough to want to go.

We're glad that Miss Lynch made it to safety, but we would like to see the larger question addressed. What was she doing there in the first place?

[alisasny]

A single woman who is properly trained to be anywhere near a front line can be there as a cook or mechanic...etc...

I read that there are something like 225 jobs in military and only 30 or so are front line.....


Is it less honorable to serve as support in the back?
Now, we know Pvt. Lynch joined military to further her education.....did she join military out of national pride as has been suggested by some...or to further her education.
Same goes for Pvt. Pestiewa....

The bizarre side of me believes that Pvt. Pestiewa would request a do-over if she knew she would be so close to being captured or killed. Very very sad story and situation.

[MikeAtTheShore]

"The bizarre side of me believes that Pvt. Pestiewa would request a do-over if she knew she would be so close to being captured or killed. Very very sad story and situation."

Maybe i don't understand what you are saying but who wouldn't? Bizarre is right.

[usmcobra]

"You realize, of course, that your position is just as liberal/progressive/socialist as is possible to get."

Then prove me wrong instead of asking me questions not related to anything I posted about.

My point is simple there are many more things in this world more dangerous to women then serving in the military. I only named the three most obvious ones. I could have easily have added violent crimes against women.

In this war One woman has died compare that with the same period of time in this country and I think you'll find that numerous women have died in car crashes, spousal abuse, plane crashes or as victims of crimes. All this talk of chivalry towards women by protecting them from the military, doesn't protect them from the dangers they face here at home.

Preventing them from being cannon fodder doesn't do jack to prevent them from being hamburger on the highways or chalk outlines on the street.

However allowing them to serve this country, allows them to be a part of it's defence, and for better or for worse It's something we need to accept and improve their ability to continue to do so by holding them to higher standards.

[William Terrell]

Then prove me wrong instead of asking me questions not related to anything I posted about.

Only future history can prove you wrong. That's unfortunate because then it will be too late. We must depend on past history, and many are ignorant of it.

I asked three questions that cetainly were related to your posts.

1. Have you ever been in a war, that is to say, actually patroling, ambush sitting and firefighting?

You presume to judge that women are not in any more danger in war than at home in time of peace. To clarify your competance to judge, you will need to have experienced war.

2. When you drive or fly, are other drivers and flyers purposfully trying to kill you?

Accidents happen, flying along at 60+ mph in a ton and a half metal box has always had its dangers. Living on Earth is dangerous. The difference is, are intelligent, armed people purposefully trying to kill you. There is danger in accidents, but danger greater by order of magnitude when there is intention to harm.

3. Being married is a dangerous as being in armed conflict?

I'm still trying to figure this one out. You seem to be saying that if women can be married, they can be placed in combat. I think a clarification by you is called for here.

Your whole orientation seems to be that since domestic dangers to women exist as a result of just living on Earth and being human, we should be happy to increase the danger by placing them in more than they already face. This does not compute.

You didn't answer any of these questions, each of which relate specifically to what you are saying. So, let me ask another: why should we put women in armed conflict or even allow them to "volunteer", who are not physically or psychologically suited for it except for a vanishing tiny percentage, when there are far more than enough men, who are uniquely suited to it except for that same small percentage?

For what purpose?

[Lorianne]

Given that God has given women the sole priveledge to bear fruit, it is incumbant upon women to use wise judgement in the procreation because they are the ones who will be left with results of their joint actions.

God gave us the ability to BS also, which is what you're doing. Abandoning a child is doesn't have anything to do with the ability to "bear" a child. And it God made it so it takes TWO to create a child.

Too often, men are only interested in one thing, self gratification. Coupling with someone out of wedlock leaves women at risk to being left alone to raise a child. For whatever reason, God gave an unequal balance of responsibility to women in this regard.

Well first off, it's nice of you to speak for God and let men off the hook. By the way, isn't that blasphemy? I don't beleive God gave men an excuse (or many excuses) to abandon their own children. Men granted that to themselves and then some like you claim that's what God intended. I don't presume to speak for God (like you) but I find it difficult to believe abandoning their children is what God wants men to do.

[CyberCowboy777]

We're supposed to believe that someone's mother being killed is worse than their father being killed.

Yep.

[CyberCowboy777]

A women ability to handle the physical aspects of war make no difference.

This is not about individuals or what a person wants or desires. It is not even about being fair. It is about create from volunteers the best possible soldiers and giving them the best possible environment. Women in combat have been proven to be a detriment to that goal.

Why would we place even .005% more risk of failure, death or trauma on any fighting man just so a female can be happy via combat service.

It has never been about whether a woman is competent or able - it is about the priorities of a society and the outcome once those priorities are dismantled.

Anyone who says otherwise is pandering to one of many agendas that do not include our lives now or our society as free as priority.

They are also devoid of any historical knowledge of either the goals of the left or the reality of warfare on soldier and society.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Considering you are repling to post 28 means you have NOT read the entire thread yet. You should take the time to do so, you will find it very informative.

[CyberCowboy777]

I have been in the last three or four of these threads -

If you have some great information that will change my opinion please share - I will not go fishing.

Respond or don't respond to my post, i do not care, but do not play games with me.

[Paul C. Jesup]

No games here, I just don't like it when people post in ignorance by not fully reading what the other person has said on that thread.

[CyberCowboy777]

I completely read your post.

I cannot be held responsible if you did not represent yourself fully until I have read all 300 posts.

I have come late to this thread, yet I intend to assert my opinion.

I am sorry if your post that I responded too has not your full understanding or opinion on the matter but it warranted my response.

If you have some empirical data that I seem to be lacking then by all means give me the shorthand - else live with it.

[Paul C. Jesup]

The only 'empirical data' I can give you is that the military has YET to raise the standards so that it is equal between the sexes and until that day comes NONE of us will know how effective women will be in combat.

Now get off your high-horse and come back down to Earth.

[CyberCowboy777]

They said the same thing about that on the issue of race, which was proven wrong.

Until the same can be said about the sexes (and it cannot) this fact has no bearing on the issue.

On the other hand much data can be read on not only the real world effects women have had on troops, but also on the science of gender relationships and effects.

Can men be trained to ignore these "crude" base behavior responses? Yes.

Is the cost top society worth it. Nope.

[Sloth]

I am not sure why the author thinks it is preferable for men to be "cannon fodder" or get "turned into hamburger".

[CyberCowboy777]

I will dismount when the fascism of America is dead.

[CyberCowboy777]

There can be a different and accepted cost without it being "preferable".

Of course you knew that, but you typed it anyway?

[MikeAtTheShore]

Unbeleivable. Women are not in combat positions. Its been repeated 100 times are on here. How much physical effort does it take to be a clerk or other non-combat job.

The two women POW'S held up magnificently under pressure.

How would you or I perform under such circumstances? Cut them a little slack please and stop living in the twelth century with the Taliban.

[Sloth]

There can be a different and accepted cost without it being "preferable".

If you can say that with a straight face, evidently your dictionary has different definitions for 'accepted' and/or 'preferable' than mine.

[CyberCowboy777]

I can say it with a straight face.

I am perfectly aware of how words are used and why.

You used 'preferable' for a reason and now you are not being honest as to why.

[usmcobra]

Future history will prove me right.

Let's look for a second at the "women can't handle it physically" argument for one second.

Is there a shortened course for women in the triathlon?

The answer is of course, no there isn't.

How about the Marathon?

Again men and women run the same course, 26 miles if memory serves me, the last big marathon run was the London Marathon. The top male finisher finished in 2 hours 7 minutes in a literal sprint to the finish, The top female in 2 hours 15 minutes. That's a difference of only eight minutes over 26 miles, and yet there are those that believe women can't compete on a man's level and can't meet the same standards men in the military. Ten years ago a two hour fifteen minute time was a man's time, possibly even a world's record time for any man that could run that fast. That tells me that women have the potential to meet the standards we expect of men, given the chance or held to a higher standard.

It should be obvious to anyone with a mediocre knowledge of military equipment that I derive my nick from AH-1 type Cobra attack helicopters of the Marine Corps variety, so asking me if I served as a grunt is almost dumb. However I'll let it pass, instead I'll give you a link to the autoboigraphy of a woman that did all those things you ask me if I did.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/velazquez/velazquez.html

Only she did them under the name Lieutenant Harry T. Buford before either of us were born. and she wasn't the only one either. Want to talk cannon fodder, which war coined that term? The one she fought in.

I don't presume to judge anything but the facts, this country can be a more dangerous place for women then this war has been. On my ride home tonight I saw proof of that as a young woman was pried from minivan, hopefully she survived the crash, but I know this much, mischance, karma, or fate found her. She didn't have a chance, the same can't be said of an armed female trained in the use of weapons, she stands a better chance survival then the woman in the minivan because she knows someone is out to kill her and she has something to fight back with.

And I was talking about spousal abuse not marriage, perhaps you have trouble seperating the two, one has to wonder if Laci Peterson had been able to defend herself would the results have been the same.