Posted on 05/31/2004 10:12:50 AM PDT by Kentucky
Dear Friends:
June 6 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. More than 85,000 men rallied to assist in one massive assault against the enemy, a campaign which required unprecedented bravery and sacrifice. Some were cut in pieces. Others were literally sawn in half by enemy fire and mortars. Still others attempting to land on Omaha beach never made it alive out of their Higgins craft. Many who did were shot and drowned before reaching the beaches. As we consider the tremendous sacrifice of the brave boys who engaged in one of the most heartbreaking, yet glorious campaigns in military history, I want to ask a simple question:
Aren’t you glad that the soldiers who hit those beaches of Normandy did not include young girls, single mothers, and pregnant female Marines?
Hold that thought. Fast-forward to 2004.
Wednesday, The New York Times reported of a young girl serving as military police in a “non-combat” zone when she was hit by the missile from a homemade launcher:
A homemade missile launcher propped up in an apartment window let forth a volley, and an American soldier lay moaning and bleeding, grasping for her life. The scene repeats itself so often in the Iraqi capital these days that it hardly goes remarked upon, particularly when the soldier, like nearly 4,700 other soldiers since combat operations began, is only wounded.... The wounded soldier writhed in her own blood and shrieked, her voice climbing and ebbing suddenly as if she had run out of breath.... Later in the day, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division said the soldier had suffered shrapnel wounds to her leg and that she had lost her right arm from the forearm down. He did not give her name.[ii] The strange thing is this: there is nothing particularly unusual about this report. Another day in Iraq — another report of a girl wounded, shot to bits, or raped as a prisoner while in the service of Uncle Sam. Earlier this week, Ted Koppel hosted an episode of Nightline in which he presented a vision of the new female military. Having surveyed the implications of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq on the American people, one guest boldly declared, “the debate over women in the U.S. military is over.”[iii] (A friend of mine put it this way: “It is the story of the Titanic turned upside down — women and children dying for stay-at-home men.”)
And with each day, with each fresh report, with each Presidential statement or directive pointing to women in the frontlines of fire, the collective consciousness of the American people becomes increasingly seared. Yes, America has a seared conscience — at least our leaders do. But the best which can be said of the American people is that we are suffering from a state of collective “denial” as we blindly follow leaders who have lost the ability to recognize the horror and the effeminacy of a nation which holds women in such low regard that it would abandon the most basic biblical principles of warfare, enshrined for millennia in the practices of Christendom, by sending girls and young mothers to their deaths on foreign battlefields.
Leading the charge in this state of mass denial is the Evangelical Church. The Church is so intent on bringing affirmation to their Christ-professing President that they are unwilling to face the fact that some of America’s greatest moral failures are taking place under his watch. In many cases, these failures are being furthered by his policies.
During the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly led a successful charge to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. One of her most potent arguments (and the deciding point for many in the debate) was the likelihood that the ERA would place women in combat and make them subject to a future draft. The ERA failed, but the next generation of conservatives handed the feminists their political agenda on a Kevlar platter. With no ERA, and with barely a political whimper, our “enlightened” political leaders of the early twenty-first century have essentially accepted, tolerated, advanced, and championed the very vision of a gender-neutral military which American conservatives of the ’70s fought so tirelessly to prevent.[iv]
Where are the pastors with the courage to preach on what God says about sending women into combat? (Answer: For too many, the girls of their congregations, if not their daughters, have joined the National Guard to the applause and fanfare of these same pastors.) Show me one leading Christian magazine which has been willing to call the problem of women in the military what the Bible specifically calls it: “an abomination.”[v]
Yes, Scripture makes it clear that the real issue is not women soldiers in combat roles vs. women soldiers in non-combat roles. The real issue is women playing the role of soldier, period. Remarkably, the Bible spells out several wrongs so outrageous, so wicked, that they earn the title of “an abomination.” Homosexuality is one. Killing innocent children is another. Having women serve as soldiers is a third. This act of a woman putting on “the gear of a warrior” (keli gabar) is described in Deuteronomy 22:5 as “an abomination.” “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (emphasis mine).
Assessing the Damage Last March, Vision Forum Ministries launched a feature section on its Web site which “threw down the gauntlet” by calling for church leaders to oppose the sin of women in the military by actively confronting our leaders for furthering this horrific practice, returning the biblical standard once again to the church itself, and holding church members accountable to that standard.[vi]
Since last March, President Bush has made at least two significant moral errors with far-reaching implications for our military and our national security. First, he has given ground to moral perversion by supporting civil unions for sodomites as an alternative to marriage;[vii] he has made equivocating statements regarding the nature of homosexuality and the place homosexuals should play in an “inclusive” society;[viii] he has appointed known homosexuals to high positions of office;[ix] he has supported pro-homosexual and pro-abortion candidates;[x] he has funded pro-homosexual activists and organizations;[xi] and he has continued Bill Clinton’s immoral pro-homosexual “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the military.[xii]
Second, the President has done more to deliberately place American women in harm’s way as formal combatants in warfare than any other leader in American history. Over the past year, the President has committed more female troops to Iraq, and the results are that more American servicewomen have died or been injured as formal combatants in warfare than at any other time in American history.[xiii] (Ten percent of ground troops in Iraq are female).[xiv]
U.S. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski Reuters / Photo by Oleg Popov Flag folding for female soldier buried in Bridgport, Connecticut after being killed in Iraq Reuters / Photo by Chip East
Meanwhile, the farce of the “combat” vs. “non-combat” delineation for women soldiers has been exposed once and for all as Americans have (1) woken up to the fact that all of Iraq is a combat zone;[xv] (2) learned of soldiers like Private Jessica Lynch being captured, raped, and sodomized; (3) seen the images of dead and wounded American female soldiers on the covers of papers like USA Today and The New York Times; and, most recently, (4) observed the horror of female soldiers under the command of a female general, joining their male counterparts[xvi] in the horrific, brutal torture and Nazi-like, sexual molestation of Muslim male prisoners.[xvii]
Less discussed, but widely known to the press and the military itself, is the breakdown of moral discipline and the rampant problem of promiscuity and adultery between American male and female soldiers stationed together overseas, not to mention the skyrocketing abortion rate. In 2003, one Marine gave birth on a warship deployed off Kuwait. Linda Chavez writes that, “...while we don’t know what the overall pregnancy rate is among female soldiers serving in Iraq today, in Operation Desert Storm it reached 15 percent and was the single largest cause of evacuation from Bosnia during U.S. deployments there.”[xviii]
Among the 1,800 pictures released from the Abu Ghraib prison were images of American soldiers fornicating with each other, which is why no one was surprised to learn that the torturer whose face has graced the covers of newspapers and television shows for three weeks now, Private Lynndie England, is five months pregnant — meaning that the child was conceived during the prison atrocities, or shortly thereafter.[xix]
The Conscription of Your Daughters What Christians have yet to assimilate is the fact that the compromises of the present administration regarding military discipline, moral perversion, homosexuality, and women in combat, along with the collective searing of our national conscience concerning these matters, is setting the stage for the next big wave: the conscription and drafting of your daughters. At this moment, there are several bills before Congress that, in one way or another, by inches or by miles, advance us toward the logical conclusion of our current policies — namely, the registering of our daughters for national selective service and their eligibility for a draft should the next President deem that necessary to sustain America’s new role in spreading twenty-first century democracy to Islamic peoples still culturally rooted in the eleventh century. (S.B. 89[xx] and H.R. 163[xxi] are paralle l bills currently receiving some national attention as they work themselves through Congress as the Universal National Service Act of 2004. If passed, they will require all eighteen- to twenty-six-year-olds, male and female, to perform a period of military duty. Those daughters who refuse to comply will face criminal prosecution.)
After all, having jettisoned the long-defended and hard-fought fundamental Christian ideals of motherhood and home and the biblical mandate that men should be the defenders of women, what is there left to debate? We have conceded the premise. The current policies and those yet to come are clear, logical extensions of the fundamental compromise.
Having bought into the charade that there are no differences between men and women at home or at war (or if such differences exist, they are negligible); having conceded that our military policies must be subservient to the politicized interests of the feminist movement — then why shouldn’t we be registering, conscripting, and drafting our daughters?
The Loss of American Moral Authority Americans are great blame shifters. In our desire to be loyal and patriotic, we often fail to do the one thing which God requires of a nation that seeks His blessing: evidence humility through self-examination and repentance for sin. (And there is a lot for which we should be repentant — whether one considers that we have executed one out of every three people in our nation through abortion, that we have tolerated judges and politicians who ban the acknowledgement of God from the public square, that our courts have struck down sodomy laws and replaced them with the “rights” of homosexuals to marry, or that we are sending girls and mothers to their deaths in combat.)
The typical response of politicized conservatives and Christians to the Abu Ghraib prison catastrophe is to make some perfunctory comment about how unacceptable the behavior was of the “very few” American soldiers acting as prison guards, and then to immediately switch the discussion to the “obvious” moral superiority of America over our enemies.
This response is like a Christian pastor caught in the sin of adultery. In one breath he confesses the wrongness of adultery, but in the next breath he strenuously emphasizes his opinion that, compared to the harlots living down in the local red-light district, he really ain’t that bad.
But contrary to what many conservative (and Christian) commentators have been saying lately, the issue in Iraq, in the Abu Ghraib prison, in the Supreme Court buildings of Massachusetts, and in the sex-integrated boot-camps training boys and girls to spread democracy, is not the moral authority of America vs. the moral authority of radical Islam. The issue — the only issue — is the moral integrity of America, a nation consecrated to God through our charters by our Founding Fathers, in light of God’s objective, transcendent, unchanging standards. This is the only issue.
Millennia ago, Israelites tried to pull this stunt. Believing themselves the chosen people, and thus both morally superior to other nations and invincible in battle, they nonetheless mocked God by departing from His laws. God’s response to this hubris was to use the heathen nations to terrorize them:
But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land.... The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.... The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known.... Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee. And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever. Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things.... The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young.[xxii] One more point for clarity: Israel was the chosen people. America, though once great and glorious, is not Israel. Nevertheless, the same laws of life, liberty, and righteousness apply to America. Honor God and receive His blessings. Dishonor God and expect judgment. This applies to chosen nations like Israel, pagan nations like Nineveh, and nations conceived in Christian doctrines of law and liberty like America.[xxiii]
God says that nations and the judges and political leaders of those nations must (emphasis, must) “kiss the son”[xxiv] and pay public homage to God. God says don’t kill babies and don’t help people to kill babies.[xxv] God says homosexuality is a perversion and a judgment on the land which, if not vehemently condemned, will usher in final judgment.[xxvi] God says there are rules which govern the way Christians enter into and conduct war, and to violate them is to rebel against God. God, through His Holy Word, clearly patterns a transcendent principle: Men are to be the defenders and protectors of motherhood — not the other way around — and to deliberately place women in harm’s way in the name of equality is a perversion of God’s law order. [xxvii]
The result is that the United States military is in the most morally compromised epoch of its illustrious 230-year history. To enter into international war with such fundamental moral issues unresolved, to openly boast about our moral superiority over Saddam (as if that is the issue), and to continue to leave our moral failures unresolved is an invitation for a dozen 9-11s, or worse.[xxviii]
How to Regain America’s Moral Authority and End Terrorism The Doctrine of Providence teaches that the Lord God directs all events at all times for His glory and to accomplish His perfect will.[xxix] No events are outside His control. No events surprise God. There are great mysteries involved in the providence of God, but the Bible unequivocally teaches that it is He who sends calamity and judgment — for His glory.[xxx]
The first step in addressing our problem is to recognize the meaning of terrorism in the light of the Doctrine of Providence. My thesis is this: While terrorism may not always be the judgment of God against a nation, the Bible makes it clear that terrorism is one of God’s means of bringing judgment.[xxxi] Those nations which abandon their biblical roots and desecrate the law of God are prime subjects for God’s just wrath. So, when a nation like America, founded upon the acknowledgement of the God of the Bible as the only true Lawgiver, banishes the Lord from the public square, embraces false gods, sends our children “through the fire” of abortion, blesses moral perversion, and sends women to die on foreign battlefields, we must assume that the appearance of “a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew f avour to the young”[xxxii] within our gates, is a message from the Lord. To put it another way, “if the shoe fits...”
What America desperately needs is a heavy dose of humility and repentance followed by formal restitution. We must stop accumulating offenses against the Lord. We must turn from our sin. Our professing Christian leaders must turn to the Lord in humility and ask what they have done to contribute to the problem. They must stop comparing themselves to “bad” Democrats or “evil” Islamic fundamentalists, and simply examine whether their own actions are pleasing to the Lord. This is not a contest to see who is the lesser of two evils. And the Church of Jesus Christ must help them do this. We can help them by praying for them, by loving them, by honoring them, and by following the example of John the Baptist by telling them when they are in sin[xxxiii] and the example of Paul the apostle (a citizen of Rome) by holding them accountable for wicked actions.[xxxiv] Thi s is true biblical loyalty and patriotism.
The war against terror can end tomorrow.[xxxv] Our future is completely in the hands of God. The minute we realize this and turn to Him, we will be able to sleep soundly at night as a nation. The solution to the war against terror is not more foreign interventions (although constitutionally and biblically justified interventions may be appropriate); it is not the restriction of fundamental principles of due process through measures like the Patriot Act; it is not the raising up of an army of women to die fighting militant Islamic fundamentalists. Here is the solution:
And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.[xxxvi] Epilogue Over the past two years, I have had the privilege and honor of interviewing veterans of Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Normandy in preparation for the release of the film, Faith of Our Fathers, Vision Forum’s up-and-coming documentary film on the influence of Christian fatherhood and manhood on that remarkable generation of boys who gave their lives to defend country, motherhood, and home.[xxxvii]
It is amazing to look into the tear-filled eyes of eighty-year-old men and realize that the memories they have today of foxholes, beach landings, and of lost comrades from sixty years ago are as real as if the events had just occurred. And most of them have been living in silence with these memories for more than half a century.
Many indicate that they have never experienced such brotherhood, such camaraderie, and such belonging as they did when they served in a unit with other men in a life-and-death struggle to defend American freedom. The D-Day survivors from battlefields like Iwo make it clear that, “no one who was not there can ever really understand.”
Usually, at some point in the conversation, I pose a simple question: “What would it have been like had you hit the beaches with women in your ranks?”
As if the question itself is beyond comprehension, they usually stare at me, unable to process the horror of the thought or to respond to that which is unthinkable. The Christian veterans gasp or shake their head in incredulity. The non-Christians are less polite.
On this Memorial Day, we must thank the Lord with joy in our hearts for more than two centuries of freedom. We must thank Him for the ranks of millions of “ordinary” Americans who have fought and died for our freedom. And we must pray — pray with all of our hearts — that America will reverse direction, turn to the Lord, and be spared the reality of new D-Days with beaches full of dead girls and single mothers, because Christian men in the church, in politics, and in the voting booth lack the manly fortitude to call the practice of sending our daughters to war what the Bible calls it — an abomination.
If you have children, you know they are not treated equally, because they are different. The law should not try to treat the sexes equally. When they do, they have to gender norm and use all sorts of deceptive devices to try to make them equal.
Bottom line: Get women out of combat roles; do not draft them. Do not train them with men. This is PC at its worst, and I understand this stuff going on under the Clinton administration, but not one that is supposed to be at least a little on the conservative side.
It appears that even a fair number of "conservatives" on this forum have been Clintonized. Too bad
You keep talking about women in combat. Sad since I have done nothing but talk about men. And I do have children, two boys. I am a masculinist, an advocate for men's rights. Get over it.
I have a son who served in the Army for 7 years; he entered in 1993 just as Clinton was starting his poor excuse for a presidency.
He saw the Army go downhill, as drill sergeants had to be more "sensitive"; and affirmative action promotions, etc.
Men's rights; women's rights. What about adhering to the laws of God and nature that ARE right?
I love Doug Phillips, he's a sweetheart, but he's a noodle.
If Kerry gets elected it will be absolute!
I do not support the lowering of standards just to accommodate women. Nothing I have posted here even suggests that.
Men's rights; women's rights. What about adhering to the laws of God and nature that ARE right?
I'm talking constitutional rights here not God's law. If you are pissed off at Clinton for his mistreatment of the military, great but don't take it out on me.
How do you know?!
Eat doodoo and die. Click my profile to see more about me. Can you find a more Conservative profile. If so, show me.
Men are the only ones required to register.
I'm not taking anything out on you; you're taking this much too personally; it's merely a discussion. I don't know if you've ever seen Elaine Donnelly from the Center on Military Preparedness. Her concern is the feminization of the military and the dangers therein.
My concern is about the defense of the country. Undermining the military by gender norming does not enhance our defense.
I don't know what your issues are concerning men's rights; I've read a lot of what you are concerned about re: property rights and environmental extremism and I agree with you on those issues.
Our Constitution was conceived by people who were in concert with God's laws.
Very rarely and mostly in the legends. But female camp followers is indeed a long tradition.
The "powers that be" will continue floating trail balloons about the draft, then will save the day with a "brilliant" proposal: allow foreigners to join up and serve for a few years, with citizenship for themselves and their families as a reward.
This will serve several purposes. It will gain the support of many Americans who don't want to get drafted themselves. It will dilute the integrity (defined here as loyalty to the Constitution) of the American military. It will advance the one-world open borders policy of the gov't. It will dilute an already tenuous American culture. And finally, it's cheaper to employ foreigners in the military than Americans. So the politicians can cut the defense budget and give themselves more money.
I agree.
I don't know what your issues are concerning men's rights
They are too numerous to go into here but the long and the short of it is that the women's rights movement has weighted the scales in their favor leaving men behind. A prime example of this is in health care. We constantly hear how health research is focused on men and not women. Heart studies are brought out as proof. But when you stop to look at all the facts you come up with things that show reality. In the 1920s men lived one year less on average than women. As medicine improved the gap widened to 7 in favor of women. Men die of prostate cancer in the same numbers as women die of breast cancer but breast cancer receives 660% more funding.
Men's parental rights are a big one too but like I said too much to go into here.
Personally, as a woman, I'm tired of hearing about "women's issues" as if we live in different countries. And I agree that men have been shafted by courts ... BIG TIME ... when it comes to custodial and support of children. And the children suffer too.
I wish we could get back to common sense; probably not in our lifetime, unfortunately.
Thanks Mears. I agree with you. There's also the issue of how men and women, or even women and women interact in the workplace. Putting mixed sexes into a close in high pressure situation places dynamics on the operation I wouldn't want to see introduced there.
I have to say that I've not been a member of the military, and haven't served in a combat capacity. That being said, I've seen how women interact together, and how men have been trained to think of women differently their whole lives, which has to affect some of their combat situation thinking IMO.
So all those doctors, nurses, etc, in the military who happen to be women, have to go? I used those as examples, because women have been acquitting themselves in those roles, in regular (not auxiliary) military service for half a dozen wars now.
I agree with your comments. Thanks for the post. Good points...
Is it OK for me to take two sisters as my wives, as Jacob did -- and is it also OK for me to conceive children by two of my household servants?
Oh, speaking of slavery, that was OK in the Bible, too. So can we keep humans as chattel?
Are we to stone adulterers? And, in the event of a natural disaster, would you say it is OK for my daughters to get me drunk and seduce me, so they they can conceive children, as Lot's daughters did after the destruction of Sodom?
Beyond such absurdities -- exposing the absurdity of your reasoning -- why do you take a clearly EXCEPTIONAL case and seek to make it the rule? I mean, during a desperate manpower shortage in World War II (an exceptional circumstance), female pilots were used to transport airplanes from factory to airfield. But this exception did not overthrow the rule.
You arg engaged in bad logic, but of a type very common nowadays. I was once in a discussion of homosexuality when someone brought up the question of people born with ambiguous genitalia (hermaphrodites), as if the existence of a few thousand freaks of nature somehow affects how normal men and women should behave. I suppose it must be something in our contemporary culture -- we don't like rules or roles, and thus naturally think up every possible exception whenever someone suggests that, for instance, WAR IS A MAN'S JOB, which it most certainly is.
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