Your Mother's Army: Bush's military is more feminized than Clinton's-and the costs are coming due
Neumayr, George
THE CASUALTY LISTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST contain a sick progress report on feminism in the U.S. military. Mothers sent into the war on terrorism are coming home to their children in body bags....
...Other studies have shown women deplete serotonin, a substance that helps combat depression, more quickly than men and regenerate it more slowly...
...G E O R G E N E U M A Y R H W Y THE ARMY IS FOSTERING this dysfunction-al mess, so surreal it seems like a Sci-Fi movie or an Aristophanes play, and deliberately makes itself dependent on those least capable of winning wars, is a source of mystery and bitterness to many male soldiers...
...But it is not the last one...
...Her smaller frame could not take the shock of landing after dropping 6 feet or so while weighed down with all the equipment a Marine is expected to wear in battle...
...I sincerely hope the Army will step back and evaluate how dumbing down training for the purposes of political correctness is not the way to win wars...
...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," said National Guard Sergeant Brenda Monroe to the Sacramento Bee...
...Among the war dead: Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, mother of two preschoolers...
...While George Bush has said "no women in combat," he acts as if the mat-ter is out of his hands...
...The Army's blatantly barbaric policy of separating mothers from their toddlers is even a point of pride, cast as a principled refusal to surrender the feminist idea that men and women must carry the same responsibilities if they wish to enjoy the same benefits...
...blown off during an attack in Iraq, her old Irish coach Muffet McGraw said to reporters, "It was just a shock to hear she had been injured because she had said that her job was going to keep her on the sidelines...
...A story that much of the media have ignored is that a significant number of female soldiers exposed to the traumas of war are returning from the Middle East with serious psychological problems...
...it would not have been politically correctto note the rampant sexual promiscuity among both the single and the married soldiers within the all male infantry battalion and the two dozen or so women in the support company...
...Claudia Kennedy, a general under Bill Clinton who entered the military after filling out an Army 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 enlistment coupon she found in Cosmopolitan magazine and is credited with launching the Army's "Consideration of Others" program, once said to West Point cadets, "This is not your father's Army any-more...
...it is completing it...
...In another letter shared with TAS, an infantry officer writes that feminizing the military has dam-aged training standards before war (so men are entering war less prepared), undermined the effectiveness of units during war (as men confusedly compensate for a chaotic division of labor in which they must do their jobs and the jobs of unqualified women too, such as helping women not strong enough change the tires of the trucks they are assigned to drive), and caused morale-sapping sexual tension and scandal, a problem that has become an enormous distraction...
...The child may become confused and fearful that Mommy or Daddy will abandon them," the Army counsels, and suggests female troops leave behind a laminated photo of themselves: "the `I want my daddy/mommy syndrome' can be helped by supplying the child with a laminated photo...
...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 Meanwhile, the Army itches to send even more women into crippling combat conditions, as ambitious generals glance anxiously over their shoulders at Hillary Clinton on the Armed Services Committee...
...By contrast, in the Korean War, no woman with a child under 18 was permitted to serve...
...The Sacramento Bee to its credit reported in March that female soldiers are suffering a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder: "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...
...Military doctors fear an "avalanche of cases among female vets will smother the military health care system," it reported...
...One soldier who heard about the new gender-integrated collocation policy described it as a formula for losing battles and getting soldiers killed, since evacuating female troops will mean dissipating crucialresources at the very moment these ground combat units will need them most...
...He recalled his training in a Marine Reserve unit which had women: "The women generally stayed at the drill hall when we went to the field...
...Given the choice between feminism and maxi-mum military effectiveness, the Army is choosing feminism...
...How high will the costs of feminism in the military have to climb before Bush's Pentagon admits that its feminist dream is more like a nightmare...
...Several studies are underway and doctors are reaching the obvious conclusion, that war is more traumatic for women than men...
...The Army cited as its reason for the new policy a shortage of qualified men...
...He was "astonished to discover that the first infantry battalion I was assigned to in the 4th Infantry Division in 2003 depended on a `forward support company' comprised of a significant number of female soldiers...
...I have seen entire headquarters paralyzed from gender-related tensions...
...In brigade and division headquarters areas, sexual discipline was a joke with commanders prefer-ring instead to rely on the local medics to hand out prophylactics while ignoring what was going on...
...During one training cycle, however, some of the women participated in an urban warfare course...
...Nothing has given the Pentagon pause—not reports of eroding standards in training, not the Abu Ghraib debacle of women wardens and run-amok female jailers, not bodybags carrying the nation's mothers and daughters, not women soldiers tortured and held in captivity...
...And menstrual cycles may also play a role in making women more vulnerable in stressful situations...
...After former Notre Dame basketball player Danielle Green had her left hand Given the choice between feminism and maximum military effectiveness, the Army is choosing feminism...
...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...
...Pamela Osbourne, 38, mother of three children, ages 9-19...
...As of this spring, roughly 17,000 female soldiers had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving in de facto combat roles even though their positions are technically described as "support" In February, even as the Army insisted that it wasn't abolishing the prohibition on women in ground combat units, its 3rd Infantry Division con-firmed that it was placing women side by side with combat troops in "forward support" positions, a policy called "collocation...
...This is good for toddlers who are learning how to talk...
...George Bush's military isn't reconsidering the feminist experiment devised under Bill Clinton...
...Later serving in another division, he witnessed the same disruptive effects of women in combat: Since many of the mothers in the military are single mothers—women in the military are twice as likely as men to be single parents many luckless children are left with no parents...
...Her boast is even truer under Bush's Pentagon, which has been pushing more and more women onto the battlefield, forming the beginnings of a coed front line...
...Many female soldiers had an image of life in the military as careerism without combat—an image military recruiters eager to meet female quotas don't discourage...
...it keeps the soldier in touch with their progress...
...It is commonly estimated that 30 percent of the Army will be female by 2010...
...In a "Message from the Army Leadership" earlier this year, its heads proudly related how "women are exposed to combat danger as they perform aviation missions, ground convoy security, united resupply operations, and a host of other critical functions...
...the Army frequently finds itself spending as much energy doing damage control over sexual impropriety as it does to fight battles...
...Melissa J. Hobart, 22, mother of a 3-year-old...
...Is it surprising that out of this raw and coarse culture in the military came the squalid hijinks of Abu Ghraib and now reports of frequent sexual harassment and assault...
...Enlisted troops participated in orgies in secluded areas while senior enlisted and even officers were all too willing to lose their composure over female subordinates...
...But Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness was told by Pentagon officials that "this is how women grow their careers" (A military source who e-mailed TAS also pinpointed feminist careerism as the real Bush's ~inW i i;'JJ' . LJJ11JJ12 : j ^!:1JJ r...'1 In :114: coming due...
...The Defense Department has had to disclose embarrassingly that one out of seven women at its military academies say they have been sexually assaulted...
...The Bee added that at the Veteran Affairs' Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) center in White River Junction, Vermont, researchers "are completing a $5 million study of 384 female vets with PTSD...
...IHE FIRST SHOCK OF WAR for female soldiers is that they are actually in it...
...It is not uncommon for mothers still nursing their children to be deployed...
...In a letter to TAS, one soldier wrote that the Army is rapidly squandering its strength for the sake of placing women in roles they obviously can't fill...
...George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator...
...But as the Army nudges women to the frontlines and unfolds the feminist logic of equal rights requiring equal risks, the shocks of war are becoming more terrifyingly real to women, the majority of whom reveal in surveys that they have no desire to serve on the front-lines...
...There's no change of policy as far as I'm concerned," he passively said to the Washington Times in January...
...not the growing list of orphans...
...Before separating children from their mothers, the Army issues to military moms ludicrous literature on "children and deployment" (one of the accompanying pictures is of a woman cradling an infant) in which books on "Family-Change Situations" are extolled, such as "All Kinds of Families" and "The Good-bye Painting...
...When the policy drew fire from critics like Donnelly (who established that it skirted the law and that the Army has been secretly tinkering with gender codes for units in an unclassified document titled "Combat Exclusion Quick Look Options"), the Army offered up the absurd sop of promising to evacuate the female troops should these collocated units run into battle conditions—an outrageously convoluted plan which only underscored the Army's willingness to juggle feminism at the expense of its essential military mission...
...The Army also suggests that "children record cassettes to the soldier...
...Male soldiers are officially trained not to behave chivalrously toward women soldiers, to accept with indifference that women like Jessica Lynch will be raped and tortured, to work in coed units where women, as the Sacramento Bee puts it, urinate in the open and are told to "shed any qualms about cleaning yourself up in front of men...
...This is due to a physical inability to complete some of the most basic of soldier tasks, such as carrying a full load of equipment plus weapon, changing truck tires, breaking track or carrying a wounded man...
...Katrina L. Bell-Johnson, 32, mother of a 1-year-old...
...BY GEORGE NEUMAYR reason for the change, writing, "All of this is entirely for the purpose of ensuring that women in the military have the opportunity to become generals, even though the only real purpose of having generals at all is for the leading of military units in actual combat and making and deciding on overall strategic considerations as they pertain to the impending battles...
...One of them promptly broke her leg doing a spider drop out a window...
...No one wanted to talk about or admit this...
...Researchers, according to the Bee, "have found female brains may be less efficient than male brains at producing the neurosteroids that help human beings cope with stress...
...Jessica L. Cawvey, 21, single mother of a 6-year-old...
...I am constantly amazed at how little actual time [female soldiers] have spent in the field, how little combat training they have, and how mentally soft most of them are," he wrote...
...Stephanie Gutmann, author of The Kinder, Gentler Military, has reported that many in Congress have long demanded an Army composed of 50 percent women, and that the Army's recruiting philosophy of women is, "Get em on the plane...
...The Army increasingly relies on women even as it lethargically and ineffectually recruits men...
...Assets, he said, "cannot be spared simply to move females to the rear...
...Since many of the mothers in the military are single mothers—women in the military are twice as likely as men to be single parents—many luckless children are left with no parents...
...His "infantry battalion had to send six women from its support company home from Iraq due to pregnancy...
...Women now constitute 15 percent of the active Army, 23 percent of the Army Reserve, and 13 percent of the Army National Guard...
...He writes: "Most fighting men will admit that combat readiness suffers with women, who overwhelmingly cannot be counted on as equals...
...The Army missed its recruiting goal in February by 27 percent...
...T HE CASUALTY LISTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST contain a sick progress report on feminism in the U.S...
...MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27...
...I never dreamed that I would wake up every night and have to run to a MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 25 YOUR MOTHER'S ARMY bunker and take cover because we were being attacked or under direct fire?' The rescued soldier Jessica Lynch makes a similar observation in her memoirs, noting that she never anticipated even being in a position to be raped and kidnapped by the enemy...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4
