Weak Link
Mitchell, Brian
rr he feminization of the American military is perhaps the greatest peacetime military deception ever perpetrated." With that opening salvo, Brian Mitchell mounts a full-scale assault on one of...
...He may even find his present position in jeopardy as a reporter for the Navy Times...
...Third, the champions of women in uniform have resorted to verbal flimflams while redefining concepts such as fraternization, single-parenthood, and combat...
...Second, the most obvious biological obstacle to female warriorness—pregnancy—was supposedly bypassed by reclassifying this God-given, uniquely female privilege as a "temporary disability...
...The AVF might still exploit the need for young American men to prove themselves," Mitchell concludes, "and easily make up the number of women now in service, if it aggressively portrayed itself as a place for men only...
...The three phases of this political and ideological warfare may be termed "reshaping," "reclassifying," and "redefining...
...Perhaps Mitchell has instigated a new guerrilla war for the body and soul of the American military...
...Mitchell's juxtaposition of the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment and the institution of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in the early 1970s may seem somewhat contrived...
...But the women in uniform are now so firmly entrenched that there is no chance they will abandon their military careers in large numbers—at least not without a fight...
...He's been there...
...Mitchell describes eloquently the role conflict between mothers and warriors: "The killing spirit and motherly love are necessarily inimical to each other, and . . . where the two are combined, the one is weakened and the other perverted...
...And now that he's out of uniform, he can, unhampered by the same military discipline and honor code currently in jeopardy, demythologize the new feminist orthodoxy and expose the Big Lie that the feminist zealots have foisted on the military and the American people...
...First, the reshaping of values substituted "equality" and "androgyny" for the more familiar virtues entailed in a masculine, hierarchical community...
...Even this shell game has not satisfied the most ardent feminists, who continue to insist that the restrictions on women in combat be eliminated altogether...
...The modern battlefield is so fluid that even support elements in what was once known as the "rear" would be subject to direct attack...
...Fraternization used to mean any social involvement between officers and enlisted men...
...It is hardly a coincidence that that body has acquired a more distinct feminine form even as its soul has, since the inglorious American withdrawal from Vietnam, suffered a crisis of confidence and an erosion of the will to fight...
...Despite occasional militaristic depicFr...
...The expanding role of these women has also crippled our very national defense posture...
...With that opening salvo, Brian Mitchell mounts a full-scale assault on one of the sacred cows of the contemporary American military...
...When women soldiers, sailors, and airmen failed as a group to meet even minimal requirements of physical readiness, the military established separate, significantly lower "standards" for women, while protesting, seemingly innocently, that it was not fostering a double standard...
...Not bad on paper: dumping a selfish, individualistic, career-oriented appeal in favor of a true warrior's call to arms...
...Brian Mitchell may expect a murderous counterfire from the feminists and their cronies in government, academe, and the upper echelons of the military establishment, who receive the brunt of his criticism...
...And his narrative goes into a tailspin in the last two chapters after expending all of his ammunition fulminating against feminism in contemporary American society...
...But Mitchell is right on target in linking the burgeoning feminist-dominated "women's movement" with the proliferation of women in military uniform...
...Even in World War II—the era of the legendary "Rosie the Riveter," the civilian role model for women—the number of women in military uniform was negligible...
...Enter the feminists...
...Thus it could claim disingenuously that three-quarters of single-parents in the military are males and conveniently deny the charge that single-parenthood is a predominantly female problem, which erodes unit cohesionand siphons off valuable resources that could be devoted to military missions...
...In accordance with militant feminist orthodoxy, distinctions between the genders, whether physical or psychological, were either minimized to allow women entry into traditionally male jobs and units or stressed when the survival of women in their new assignments was at stake...
...He would simply scuttle the Army's recruitment slogan, "Be all you can be...
...But to allow women to serve in a wider array of military specialties, the meaning of combat has been refined to the rarefied level of direct physical contact between opposing forces at close range...
...If a pregnant service member elects to leave the service, she increases the attrition rate and undermines the stability of her unit...
...His mission is to show the American people that their military empresses have no clothes...
...Alexander F. C. Webster 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989...
...WEAK LINK: THE FEMINIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY Brian Mitchell/Regnery Gateway/232 pp...
...17.95 Fr...
...is a chaplain (captain) in the Virginia Army National Guara having served previously on active duty in Fort Ord, California...
...The issue of physical strength is typical...
...tions of women in classic mythologies, the American military ethos has never incorporated the distaff side of humanity...
...It was a clear distinction and a matter of good discipline in preparation for combat, when authority, not friendship, might lead to victory...
...There are no Valkyries or Amazons or helmet-clad Athenas in our collective consciousness...
...armed forces to fulfill their classic mission: to engage and prevail over the enemy in battle...
...T he feminists and their weak-willed 1 accomplices within the upper echelons of the military services and the Department of Defense conquered this previously all-male bastion by executing perfectly a classic three-pronged attack...
...This brainchild of civilian feminists placed the military, however, into a double-bind...
...and replace it with the Marine Corps' version, "We're looking for a few good men...
...Scattered throughout an essentially historical narrative one may find anecdotal evidence pointing to the adverse effects of women on the presumed ability of the U.S...
...In the more permissive military resulting from the widespread presence of women, officers need only avoid social contact with those under their own command...
...If she chooses, however, to stay, her activities become so restricted that she poses a burden to her fellow soldiers, since they must pick up the slack for the duration of her "disability...
...But if Mitchell proves unable to fend off the fusillades of his opponents, he is nevertheless prepared by training and temperament to go down fighting...
...To meet the demands of the feminists, the Pentagon has yielded so much ground on the question of women in combat roles that in any major conflict thousands of women would certainly find themselves effectively engaged in battle...
...And he reveals the stark, naked truth that the continued presence of so many thousands of uniformed women in the armed forces of the United States not only has eroded the morale of the majority of male soldiers, sailors, and airmen and undermined the classic military values of hierarchical command, obedience, and self-abnegation...
...Mitchell never explains systematically how military women have eroded our national defense...
...Alexander F C Webster, a senior research associate at the Ethics and Public Policy Center...
...Army, Mitchell served as an Airborne-Ranger infantry officer and intelligence agent, demonstrating his military moxie by earning the Expert Infantryman Badge and senior parachutist wings...
...When this tack proved ludicrous, the next move was to pretend that the difference was unimportant...
...rr he redefinition of "combat" leads 1 to the heart of the problem as Mitchell sees it...
...This has opened a Pandora's box of imprudent trysts between men and women in uniform irrespective of rank...
...For every un-uniformed Molly Pitcher who has taken up arms in the heat of battle, there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Betsy Rosses, whose contributions to national security are strictly supportive rather than directly in the line of fire...
...The emerging "androgynous" ideal simply devalues physical prowess as a military virtue...
...A seven-year veteran of the U.S...
...He bares all the relevant facts, garnered from sociological studies and the official reports of several service branches...
...This evidence includes, for example, the Army's selection of inferior pistols and rifles to accommodate women's lesser physical strength, the greater medical non-availability and attrition rates of women, and challenges to male-bonding and the morale of the male service members...
...In its zeal to guarantee women's "rights," the feminized military establishment ignores the disturbing impact of pregnant soldiers on their comrades...
...Though an obvious oxymoron, the "androgynous warrior" became the military ideal for cadets and midshipmen at the service academies during the 1970s...
...The Pentagon began in 1980 to include as single parents not only those parents with actual custody of children but those who merely pay child support...
...The author's solution to this problem is also far-fetched and unrealistic...
...In each phase the advocates of women in uniform vigorously sought to overturn traditional views and practices by all manner of means at their disposal including, ultimately, the Big Lie...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
