May 31, 2012
Greg Jacob, spokesman for the Service Women’s Action Network, complains:
If women remain restricted to combat service and combat service support specialties, we will not see a woman as Commandant of the Marine Corps, or CENTCOM commander, or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The military is viewed not as a fighting and killing machine, but as another sandbox for identity-politics skirmishes. Winning wars does not seem to be the chief concern, but rather litigious disputes over what group gets a bigger slice of the pie.
Jena McGregor of the Washington Post assures us that it is necessary to allow females to enter combat roles so we have a military in which “talented women advance,” though the male troops will have to make psychological “adjustments” to this new reality. She is making the usual diversity argument: More diversity will help the military become better somehow, no proof required. What if men in combat who actually risk their lives don”t like it? Too bad, because a virtuous journalist has instructed them to adjust.
In corporate America, the odious “diversity” argument may sometimes be plausible. It is advisable to have women in an ad agency, for the agency will inevitably need to target a female demographic in an ad campaign.
There are no such practical advantages here. McGregor admits that there are some women who will “not meet the physical demands required of them” to be in combat forces. I cannot imagine that many women would meet these demands if the standards are kept equal for men and women. In middle school I came dangerously close to losing a physical fight against a female classmate, but in adulthood it is rare to find a woman stronger than a man.
If the repeal of Don”t Ask, Don”t Tell is a harbinger of things to come for the military, combat forces will cease to be a brotherhood of prowess and ruthlessness. Instead of trained snipers, we”ll have petty sniping.
