Political correctness, having run roughshod over American universities and institutions, has finally taken hold of the Pentagon - the absolute last place in the world it should be.
Last week, the Pentagon released its recommendations that women should be required to sign up for the military draft. The recommendation is misguided and steeped in politically correct rhetoric. But it is also closely related to another misguided and politically charged military decision - specifically, the 2015 decision by former Defense Secretary Ash Carter to open all combat jobs up to women.
Since Carter’s decision, the question has arisen on several occasions as to whether or not women should be included in the draft. After all, the primary reason women had not been required to register for the draft previously was that they would have no role in combat.
Congress owes it to our men and women in uniform to take seriously all recommendations put forth by the Defense Department. But this recommendation to expand the draft to women is so divorced from anything that would improve our military and overall defense program that Congress, in this instance, should ignore the Pentagon’s recommendations.
Instead of expanding the draft, this report from the Pentagon actually offers a good opportunity for Congress to provide some much-needed oversight and investigation into whether or not women should be in combat roles. And the answer to that question, once it is stripped of its feminist mandates, is a resounding “No.”
The simple truth, rooted in scientific fact, is that women are not as physically capable as men. That is such a simple fact, and yet it flies in the face of feminist spin, so we are reluctant to even voice those basic realities. And yet it is true: The average physically fit woman is far inferior, physically speaking, to the average physically fit man - and thus, she is less combat-ready than her physically-fit male counterpart.
A 2014 study by Britain’s Tri-Service Review to examine women’s readiness and capabilities for Ground Close Combat (GCC) identified several basic physiological differences between the sexes. Among them, that women generally have smaller hearts, approximately 30% less muscle than men, and smaller skeletal structures - all of which translate into “less explosive power and upper body strength.” Women were also found to be 20-40% less capable in aerobic fitness tests, and overwhelmingly more “susceptible to acute short term injury than men.”
Mike Freedenburg, writing for National Review Online, notes an Army study on women in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which found that women are “almost twice as likely to suffer from non-combat related disease and injuries,” and that women suffer significantly more fractures and ACL injuries.
In the U.S. military’s attempts to integrate women into the military, and especially into combat roles, the answer has been to take one of two approaches: to establish double standards for men and women, allowing women to perform at far less capacity than men, or, alternatively, to erode the standards for the men. Neither approach is desirable.
Elaine Donnelly, in a lengthy article in the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, observes that the double standards in the U.S. military training result in requirements that are severely downgraded for women, allowing women to do approximately forty percent of the number of pushups as men, and allowing women more time to run or swim the same lengths, to name only a few of the different achievement standards. With these double standards, what matters is the individual’s effort.
The liberal idea that has seized America’s schools that A’s should be awarded for effort has no place in our defense system. On the front line, the difference between life and death is not a matter of effort, but of achievement.
Even the Israel Defense Force (often celebrated by feminists as an example where women are fighting in combat roles) has had to reverse its policy of allowing women to participate in combat units on the front line.
Retired IDF Maj. Gen. Yiftach Ron-Tal commented that he thinks it would be a grave mistake to expand women’s service in the Israel Defense Force’s combat roles. “I cannot even imagine a female soldier serving inside a tank or in elite infantry units, mostly because of operational considerations.”
Feminist dogma has dictated policies that damage our military, put our servicemen and women in greater harm, and yes, will cause more women to be killed on the battlefield.
The U.S. military’s singular obsession should be on our operational capabilities and preparedness. And Congress, for its part, should review the effects of placing women in combat roles.
The physical laws of the universe are unyielding to feminist fiction. The Pentagon should be equally impervious to the feminist agenda.
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