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.
Today's enlisted people know in advance what will be required, including vaccinations. If birth control is mandatory, a female enlistee would give informed consent to medication at enlistment. Disobedience at a later date is a different matter.
BTW, why the assumption that enlisted people, male or female, lack sexual self control? Many people are perfectly able to control themselves, particularly if they are married. Why force those individuals to take drugs they do not need?
I didn't say ALL of them are having sex.
But a lot of them DO. And it's not just the enlisted . The Occifers do it , too.
It's a problem.
Do you understand that when they are talking about a draft they are talking about sending you into combat involuntarily?
I do and not only do I think it's insane, I don't think it will pass.
I hope it doesn't either.
We can keep our fingers crossed.
I need to shut this down.
I have dogs and burgers and a grill to man!
Have a great Memorial Day!
You too. :-)
Equality at work?
Are men and women interchangeable? Can men give birth? Can women compete against men in sports that depend on muscle strength?
The myth of "equality" of the sexes needs to be debunked.
WE ARE MAKING America's Military into a agency of the United Nations.
The problem with the above is that your argument is predicated upon size and strength rather than gdender. When I joined the military I was 5'1" (still am) and 105 pounds (I wish). However, I happen to be male. My wife on the other hand is an amazon at 6'.
If we take your objection above seriously, it would be more logical and consistant to place serious size and stature requirements rather than gender requirements.
Again, you're problem is gender related. There are plenty of men in the military who don't weight 145 pounds.
Hhhhhmmmm.
I had NOT considered that.
Well, anyway "Thank You for your service!"
Perhaps it is. However, let's be clear, A male, United States Marine, may be 4'10" tall and weigh a scant 96 pounds. How much easier do you think it will be for that marine than a 145 pound woman?
A female Marine by comparison must also stand at least 4'10" tall, but she may weigh as little as 90 pounds.
Well, along the lines of what I said, if it is proven that women in some instances exhibit better skills in certian jobs, then it would stand to reason that they should be given those jobs. My main goal is fielding the best possible force. IMO, the well trained and physically honed man being best to stand the rigors in the field, takes nothing away from a women who may be able to multi-task better than men in another sector of the military. Anotherwords, this isn't purely a 'keep them home where they belong' issue for me.
Thank you for your response, feeling as you did about my comment and their unrelated nature, in your terms. I do however have to disagree that they are unrelated. Look, we can't draft women in equal numbers and insert them willy-nilly in the military. IMO that would degrade our force capabilities to the point that our military would be far inferior to it's full potential. This being my thought on the issue, how can I separate the issue, as you seem to have indicated you would have.
Anything near parity in the military and our military would cease to be the fighting force it is today. At least that's my opinion.
DoughtyOne wrote:
Well, along the lines of what I said, if it is proven that women in some instances exhibit better skills in certian jobs, then it would stand to reason that they should be given those jobs. My main goal is fielding the best possible force. IMO, the well trained and physically honed man being best to stand the rigors in the field, takes nothing away from a women who may be able to multi-task better than men in another sector of the military. Anotherwords, this isn't purely a 'keep them home where they belong' issue for me.
Well, I join you in your rejection of this idea. Drafting women would be counter-productive IMO. I do not see men serving in the military as them being the throw away gender. While I do think society has discounted the importance of men in today's society, the military and a draft would not be where I'd start the rectification of that.
Giving fathers equal footing with mothers when it comes to parental rights would be my first step. A mother would have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, and this would be almost impossible to do, to get sole custody of children. Fathers play an critical part in their children's upbringing. Neither the father or mother should be able to bad-mouth the other. And if it came down to it, I'd consider that grounds to remove rights from the offending party.
Joint custody would be almost universal, and neither parent would have the right to pack the kids up and move away until those children were of age.
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