The Washington Times reports that terrorists “in the
Abu Musab Zarqawi network in Iraq are specifically trying to kidnap
an American female service member” to rattle America into pulling
out of Iraq. What is Zarqawi’s assumption here? That American
leaders will treat the abuse of female soldiers differently from
the abuse of male ones? Hasn’t Zarqawi heard that the only aspect
of the war in Iraq the Democrats won’t question is the exposure of
women soldiers to violence there? The death of women soldiers in
Iraq is proof of progress for them — not a reason to pull female
soldiers off the battlefield but to place more of them on it in the
name of equality.
Look at the liberal reaction to Lori Ann Piestewa’s death. She
was an Army private first class that an Iraqi thug shot and killed
in early 2003. Liberals used her death to advocate more female
soldiers on the front lines. “The Best Way To Honor This
Warrior-Mother Is To End An Outdated Combat Ban,” ran the headline
over a piece by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette national bureau
chief Ann McFeatters. She argued that no restrictions on American
women in combat in Iraq should exist. “It’s an outmoded vestige of
a bygone era that only hurts women who want to serve by keeping
them from getting the promotions they should have a chance to
earn.”
Piestewa was a single mother with two preschoolers back home.
But her death didn’t even make the left reconsider the wisdom of
exposing moms to the risk of capture. On the contrary, Piestewa’s
death was regarded as some sort of monument to egalitarian
liberalism and self-actualization. McFeatters praised her “for both
supporting her children and following her dream.” Stanford
University’s Peggy Drexler reported with perverse pride that “it
was a mother who was the first U.S. woman soldier killed in the
war,” and that “mothers in risky professions are establishing new
roles for women that we must finally accept and even
embrace…Only when we accept that the mothers can keep the
home fires burning and fight oil fires in Iraq will we truly honor
motherhood.”
Under the insane cultural conditioning of the left, Americans
aren’t supposed to blanch at the brutalizing of women soldiers in
captivity. To do so is chauvinistic. Those public service
announcements about “Violence Against Women” don’t apply to war.
Then enlightenment requires that society not care if women are
exposed to a culture of violence. And if you do, you are a
chauvinist who fails to see that violence against women in war is
an acceptable consequence of equality.
Liberals rejoiced when Les Aspin, Bill Clinton’s hapless defense
secretary, eliminated the phrase “substantial risk of capture” as a
consideration in determining where the military could place women
on the battlefield. The debate over placing women on the
battlefield actually turned in part on an issue Zarqawi evidently
hopes to exploit: that exposing women to abuse and death could
demoralize a nation and lead it to turn against war at a critical
moment.
The left pooh-poohed this possibility. Liberals argued
confidently that Americans would learn to accept with equanimity
the sight of women in captivity and women returning from the
battlefield in body bags or as amputees. Americans, they said,
could be conditioned out of their chauvinism, just like male
soldiers trained not to feel distressed when women are brutalized
in captivity next to them.
“If a policy change is made and women are allowed into combat
positions, there must be a concerted effort to educate the American
public on the increased likelihood that women will be raped, will
come home in body bags, and will be exploited. The consequences of
not undertaking such a program would be a large scale
disillusionment with the military should the United States get in a
protracted military engagement,” said trainers at the Survival,
Evasion, Resistance and Escape training center at Fairchild Air
Force Base in Spokane, Washington, in testimony before a
presidential commission studying the issue of women in combat in
the early 1990s.
Exposing female GIs to the Zarqawis of the world is an
experiment in equality the left won’t abandon no matter what that
savage does in the coming days.
