Political correctness in the U.S. military did not end with the
Clinton administration. President Bush’s military is also pushing
an ideology of “equality” at the expense of military effectiveness.
For the sake of an absurd feminist experiment, the Bush military is
willing to sap its strength, expose women to torture and death and
mar the lives of children and families. The price tag of this
experiment is on the body bags carrying mothers, wives, and
daughters who have died in Iraq, and on the growing list of orphans
produced by the war. Read the casualty reports: Lori Ann Piestewa,
23, mother of two preschoolers; Melissa J. Hobart, 22, mother of a
3 year-old; Jessica L. Cawvey, 21, single mother of a 6-year-old;
Sgt. Pamela Osbourne, 38, mother of three children, ages 9-19,
Katrina L. Bell-Johnson, 32, mother of a 1-year-old.
“Tens of thousands of children are struggling to cope while Mom
goes to war,” reports the Sacramento Bee. And if Mom does
come back, she may return as an amputee. Or shell-shocked, reports
the Bee: “Returning female vets are bringing back wounded
minds, beset by post-traumatic stress disorder, an illness that
affects women at twice the rate of men. Health care experts fear an
avalanche of cases among female vets will smother the military
health care system.”
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness reports
that the Bush military, far from reconsidering the feminization of
the military under Bill Clinton, is advancing it. The Bush Pentagon
has now done what Clinton didn’t even do by implementing a de facto
women-in-combat policy of placing women in front-line support
groups alongside combat units.
“Under current federal law and military regulations, women are
barred from ground combat groups,” reports the Bee. (And
Bush has said “no women in combat.”) “There are indications,
however, that the Pentagon is less steadfast than its
commander-in-chief about maintaining the status quo. In February,
the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division acknowledged it has assigned women
to units in Iraq that directly support combat troops by providing
food, equipment maintenance and other services. The process, called
‘collocation’ — literally to place side by side— is at odds with
an 11-year-old Army policy that bans women from serving in
front-line support groups.”
Elaine Donnelly tells TAS that a Pentagon attitude of
“This is how women grow their careers” is driving the new
collocation policy. The Pentagon has bizarrely said that these
women will only serve alongside combat units when they are not in
combat but should they find themselves in combat the military will
“evacuate” the female troops. If that doesn’t show the military’s
willingness to lose battles for the sake of a gender-integration
experiment, what does?
What a lunatic scenario: the military is placing women with
combat units on the assumption that they won’t see combat but
should they see combat it will dissipate battle resources to
“evacuate” soldiers who shouldn’t have been there in the first
place all so that it can maintain a modified “collocation” policy
that conforms to a careerist feminist ideology in the Pentagon.
Soldiers have told Donnelly that the new collocation rule is
insane. An infantry officer described what evacuating the 24 women
in these units will mean: “[Removing] 24 fully loaded soldiers
[would require] two Blackhawk helicopters or six Huey helicopter or
one Chinook helicopter or two 5-ton (or LMTV) trucks or 12
up-armored HMMWV’s (with a full crew of three) and four to six
unarmored HMMWV’s to move. These are assets that cannot be spared
simply to move females to the rear. In combat, helicopters are
preferable but a very scarce asset. Imagine an entire brigade
trying to chopper out these female contingents before combat — it
would require almost half of a division’s worth of aviation assets
to move them all at once.”
A female officer told Donnelly: “The key question…remove
females when combat begins. That is ridiculous. When does the
combat begin? According to the President the war ended and we are
not in a ‘war zone’ but in a ‘Theater of Operations’ now. I think
it is a play on words and commanders in the field will not follow
those guidelines. This is political language that we commanders are
not aware of. Once soldiers are in the units they will all be
placed wherever they are needed regardless of their gender.”
In other words, the new collocation policy is a formula for at
once losing battles and getting women killed. It is not even
accurate to say that death is an equal opportunity provider on the
battlefield as women will have less chance of surviving than the
men.
But it is not surprising that the military is blurring the
distinction between combat and noncombat field positions for women.
The door blocking women in combat has been ajar since it became
clear that “noncombat” jobs would mean de facto combat jobs (as
evident in the fact that “noncombat” women carry weaponry and are
dying in combat situations). The military’s new collocation policy
signifies that it is readying to kick the door wide open. In the
meantime, however, female soldiers will learn the hard way what the
military means by career benefits.
“You’re not generally told as a female that you will be in that
type of situation where you are in harm’s way directly,” National
Guard Sergeant Brenda Monroe said to the Sacramento Bee.
“I never dreamed that I would wake up every night and have to run
to a bunker and take cover because we were being attacked or under
direct fire.”
The feminist dream that began under Clinton is producing a
nightmare under Bush. How many women and mothers will have to die
before a Bush military that should know better stops it?
