Capitol Ideas: Our Meter Maid Military
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Our Meter Maid Military I t was not hard to foresee that the U.S. military would come a cropper after the Cold War. The institutions and service academies were left...
...One wonders which side the U.S...
...The military budget has been cut sharply...
...The "ungendered vision" will produce an unmanned military, and those who have in the past found the armed forces suited to the manly virtues of courage and loyalty will turn elsewhere, no doubt to the private militias...
...The estimable Kate O'Beirne, who served on the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, spoke eloquently about the disaster that is inching forward...
...The small threat posed by foreign regimes can be ignored...
...What is shocking is that all this has met with so little opposition...
...Hair spray in the exhaust systems is another worry...
...I said nothing, made a mental note...
...Everyone seemed to be saying that it was required by the U.S...
...Then I met, and grew to know quite well, a man who had gone to West Point but had refused to go to Vietnam...
...particularly at a time when promotions are put on senatorial "hold," as though they were high-level political appointments...
...One day in 1975 he told me that he had done his best to ensure passage of the legislation, not because he gave a damn about the rights of women but because he knew that its effects on the service academies would be destructive...
...Abandon them...
...The task has therefore been redefined as one that requires four people...
...14 22 July 1997 • The American Spectator...
...civil rights laws, or some such absurdity...
...Why would they want to put women into something they despise...
...Social engineers never had it so good...
...The House Appropriations Committee is balking, however...
...Livingston has shown that he does understand the problem...
...Richard Trefry, who observed that integration by sex "strikes at the heart of individual discipline, as well as organizational discipline...
...20 Ju y 1997 • The American Spectator ed and trained...
...Let the liberals wallow in their own mess...
...In response to mounting criticism of these feminist follies —even Richard Cohen has written a critical column in the Washington Post— she argues that women, now 14 percent of the force thanks to shameless double standards, are "absolutely essential to meeting the force requirements under the current voluntary service system...
...Rep Buyer said that there is now a "double standard for throwing hand grenades" in the army...
...Which reminds me: the other day a friend of mine told me a remarkable story...
...The Air Force is now spending millions constructing a new trainer aircraft for smaller-bodied women...
...going more about what has been going on I went to a mid-May symposium at the Heritage Foundation, "The Military Culture Wars and their Discontents...
...We heard repeatedly that, in their eagerness for promotion, mid-career officers at the level of commander or lieutenant colonel are abject in their deference to the spirit of Sen...
...chairman of the subcommittee on military personnel, and one of the few congressmen to speak out...
...They privately agree with their conservative adversaries who say that the presence of large numbers of women in the military will transform it into something quite different...
...And the experimental "subjects"— soldiers, sailors, and airmen—must submit to military discipline...
...Roscoe Bartlett's amendment to end the mixed-sex training of recruits just might pass in the I louse, but is going nowhere in Trent Lott's Senate...
...Only the money, not the "values," gets any attention from the armed services committees...
...They will not want to close down what they have so carefully set up...
...There were 70 pregnancies last year in Bosnia, some 500 women a year get pregnant on ships...
...Olympia Snowe, liberal Republican from Maine...
...The rot is spreading rapidly...
...We are about changing the culture...
...Army advocate general from Columbia, South Carolina, who has handled many legal cases, said that there is "chaos army-wide right now in the training environment...
...It is now about 16 percent of the federal budget, down from 27 percent in 1985 (43 percent in 1965, 90 percent in 1945...
...a re-education camp for retrograde minds...
...Those who speak out do so only from the safe haven of retirement...
...Meanwhile, we have failed to notice that those, such as former Rep...
...Steve Buyer (RInd...
...civil war, in which "the heartland" did battle with "the coasts...
...But these force requirements are dictated more by pork-happy congressmen than by military calculation...
...He said on "Good Morning America" recently: "Men and women are living in close proximity in the same tents in Bosnia...
...We heard from retired U.S...
...Personnel is down 39 percent since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989...
...We heard from Rep...
...He made friends with Senator Fulbright and got himself a cushyjob on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...He deplored the "gutlessness" of officers of flag rank...
...Notice that the array of political forces is quite unlike what it was ten years ago, when the non- and anti-Communist majority were united against the Soviets...
...That is the basis on which they are selectCongressional porkers are no match for the feminists...
...Single custodial parents ought not to be allowed to enlist at all, she said...
...That will mean lighter, less explosive hand grenades...
...We expect young men and women to live together in the military without any distinction between the sexes...
...Today it's only a slight exaggeration to say that the military is being redesigned as a massive social engineering project...
...Incidentally, once large female quotas are established in the military, the feminists and the liberals will probably emerge as strong opponents of further military cuts...
...Barbara Pope, an assistant secretary of the Navy in the Bush administration, said in the early lino's: 'We are in the process of weeding out the white male as norm...
...The generals are scared to death, he said...
...he military should be a thing apart...
...The Congress had recently passed legislation mandating the sex-integration of the service academies...
...Cowed by gender-gap polls, the GOP would prefer to take on the Soviets...
...Which is nonsense...
...Every year the army holds war games at Fort Leavenworth...
...In Britain, Parliament would not be able to destroy the old regimental traditions without a huge fight...
...And we have lost all common sense...
...Henry Hamilton, a retired U.S...
...Because the feminists meet with so little resistance, their ambition knows no bounds...
...A vast social experiment is underway with no congressional oversight," she pointed out...
...Like many with the best interest of the military at heart, he has hitherto concentrated on weapons to the exclusion of morale...
...exceptions...
...Yes, but that was the whole idea, General...
...Because they want to destroy what they despise...
...My introduction to this issue came in 1975, shortly after I came to Washington...
...The luncheon speaker was Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness...
...Somehow he landed on his feet as a Hero of Liberalism...
...I believe this is already happening...
...Women are exempted from all consequences of their behavior...
...It was a rare moment of ideological candor...
...Cutting it out will involve a sharp confrontation with the feminists...
...Patty Murray...
...I don't see why a lean, mean fighting machine should have the largest day-care operation in the entire world...
...Most women can't throw one outside its blast radius...
...Today, the tendency on the right is to abandon the federal government to the enemy—the domestic enemy in our midst...
...Federal law already has built into it the necessary interpretation of "rights" and "discrimination...
...Music to the ears of Sen...
...government supported...
...The institutions and service academies were left standing, but their mission was obliquely put in doubt...
...the social mission can be pursued without regard to military cost...
...Apparently, the most recent scenario involved a U.S...
...Shepointed out that two-woman teams aren't strong enough to carry a stretcher with a 170-pound body...
...Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy spoke briefly, saying that he was only beginning to acquaint himself with these issues...
...He said he was told this by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger...
...But most officers of flag rank, as I keep hearing, are "scared to death...
...Defense Secretary Cohen recently sought a new round of such closings, and he was no doubt right...
...Did someone say that public education and inner cities are a mess...
...The weapons systems will be vestigial, and mission coordinators, psychologists, stress counselors, and lightly armed meter maids led by pantywaist generals will be running the show...
...A naval commander doing time at a Washington think tank proved the point with a craven speech arguing that everything was going fine and the military should, in his opinion, reflect society at large...
...By then, of course, the military will have been redefined to their satisfaction...
...Endingthose federal payrolls across the land will be tough to sell, say aides to chairman Bob Livingston (R-La...
...Maybe it really will come down to 'fimothy McVeigh versus Kelly Flinn...
...Lock and load...
...No doubt there has been more of this than we realize in the cultural wars...
...Our great technological lead is disadvantageous...
...Of course, military men are not supposed to be afraid...
...This utopian project, unlike most, is fully financed...
...What they are afraid of is telling the truth...
...Madeline Morris, a paid adviser to the secretary of the Army on gender issues, recently recommended that the military should eliminate its "masculinist" tendencies and adopt an "ungendered vision" in which the military looks to Alcoholics Anonymous as a suitable model...
...marine, now an aide to a conservative senator, said: "I'm hoping I can get through the morning without him finding out I am here...
...The feminists saw their opportunity...
...At the time I was scarcely even a conservative but I had served briefly in the Royal Navy and attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth (England...
...I wouldn't have minded having girls around then, of course, but by the time I arrived in Washington, integrating the academies struck me as foolish...
...Their goal is nothing less than "fifty percent women in combat ships by the year 2000...
...She is one of those bright, energetic ladies without whom America would be a much poorer place...
...Former secretaries of the Navy James Webb and John Lehman have been TOM BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Women's rights" is intoned as a mantra, and it has the desired effect: Republicans back off in fear...
...Duke Law School Prof...
...See also John Cony's "Dames at Sea" in the August 1996 TAS...
...And the media of course will be on the wrong side...
...Then a former U.S...
...Rep...
...Since last July, Heritage deputy director Thomas G. Moore noted by way of introduction, "the military's culture wars have continued unabated, with the issues at hand fueled by incidents such as the Army's troubles at Aberdeen Proving Ground and elsewhere...
...Patricia Schroeder, who have most vehemently proclaimed the rights of women in the military have been hostile to the military...
...If Congress is in the business of ladling out jobs in congressional districts, blurring the Pentagon's mission by adding job-creation to national security, the feminists will continue to prevail...
...But in order to maintain efficiency and install new weapons systems it is essential that all unneeded bases be closed...
...Standing armies should be swept aside anyway...
...No military was ever so politicized as ours is today...
...Army Lt...
...0 ne problem is that Congress tends to see the military as a pork barrel project, which plays into feminist hands...
...All you get on the Senate side is "one big dial tone," he added...
...If we keep going like this, Donnelly concluded, "we're going to see the same thing in the military that we have seen in the public schools...
...It's a comment on our times that she is today the leading expert on this subject and yet she works out of her own home (in Livonia, Michigan...
...That could be won, but who will stand and fight...
Vol. 30 • July 1997 • No. 7
