Letters to the Editor

Sir:

In ignoring reports of American women at risk in the military (even in our own country!), American males show surprising hebetude (like the comical Prof. Higgins, they seem to prefer women to be more like men). The use of female soldiers is not the result of reasoned debate or sound military planning but the feminized politics of Washington D.C, intent on “sex equality” regardless of common sense and right order. Both political parties are derelict, subservient to DACOWITS (Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services) and other womanly creations.

The fault obviously lies in Washington, D.C., where legislative and executive leaders originally fought the idea but lost out to feminist activists and enacted Titles VII, IX, and later the Stratton Bill mandating “equal opportunity” for women, etc. It’s now a hot potato without direction in matters involving women, as vote-conscious civilian leaders slough the job off on the military as the “experts,” again showing Adam’s perennial inadequacy without help from wise women. They still defer to Eve, or women like Pat Schroeder:

 . . . the capture and rape of women takes place in war and peace-time in every corner of the globe. . . . I think that it is time for military service to be based on qualifications, not gender. (Letter, dated May 5, 1990.)

Ms. Schroeder seems not to realize that the object of war is to kill an enemy, not be raped or killed by him.

The fact remains, however, that our civil government--Congress and the Cabinet--should be the responsible authority on military affairs (inevitably also involving crucial social matters), not soldiers. As Karl von Clausewitz put it in his War, Politics, and Power:

. . . it is impermissible and even harmful to leave a great military event, or the plan for such an event, to purely military judgment. Indeed, it is unreasonable to consult professional soldiers on the plan of war that they may give a purely military opinion, as cabinets frequently do. Still more absurd is the demand of theorists that a statement of the available means of war should be laid before a general, so that he may draw up a purely military plan for the war or for the campaign in accordance with them. General experience teaches us that, in spite of the great diversity and development of the present system of war, the main outlines of a war have always been determined by the cabinet, that is, by a purely political and not a military organ (p. 180).

The S-2’s (intelligence officer’s) after action account of “The Battle of Salman Pak” is a good example (June 2005) of the 2005 military’s approach. Col. Melvin Kriesel points out that “women in combat, if well trained, are as deadly with their weapons as their male counterparts.” While servicemen are trained to accept this, it is another question whether society will benefit from potential mothers being judged alongside their male counterparts. For the S-2, after years of indoctrination, it’s a done deal. “Let’s not talk about women in combat,” he urges, as if inured to protests.

A large majority of retired officers sense the problem with a co-ed military but, probably to avoid ruffling wives’ feathers, prefer to defer resistance “until disaster strikes,” etc. (My views are based on fifteen years debate, research, two books, and countless mailings.) Actually, for the percipient citizen, the evidence is already in! The Jessica Lynch experience wasn’t a trivial interlude to be casually dismissed. Officers who protest sex-integration are down-rated and careers aborted, as the Big Brother Brass now deceive themselves into thinking we’re only one sex. The Salman Pak heroine E5 Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester got a Silver Star awarded by the same Brass for knowing how to fire back at an enemy while under fire, etc. Whether this amounted to the manly heroism of past years will forever be questionable when the urge to promote women in combat is so painfully obvious.

Recently, our local TV reran the 1999 movie “The General’s Daughter”--a mystery with John Travolta--seemingly innocuous enough at first but turning into a revolting, nightmarish reminder of America’s disregard for women. It was a popular book by a fellow named DeMille. Along the same line, Danica, Annika and Michelle Wie’s much touted “touching human side” “reaping the benefits” of the sports business are hardly signs of progress for females, society, or sports. As with Jessica Lynch’s trauma in Iraq and the present mystery of teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, there’s a lurking dark side to “sex equality,” one we cannot long ignore by passing the job off to the military. Like it or not, “Man and woman made He them.”

Although strength, size, and natural propensities (listen to the voices!) obviously make men better fighters (motivated by women as the core of families, see Brownson, below), the mainstream media is using the Silver Star episode to celebrate women as combat soldiers! Although the Pentagon thirty years ago still possessed common sense and cultural sanity and fought the idea, commanders now are brainwashed to consider females doing male jobs “irrelevant.” (Washington Post and Fresno Bee, June 26) Ninety years ago, the Titanic men gave their lives for the women and children “because it was the civilized thing to do”; now women are being masculinized to serve in wars while American males relaxing at golf and tennis clubs declare it “progress.”

Unsuspecting Jessicas and unwitting Leigh Anns will carry to their graves their encounters with an enemy. Meanwhile, as Phyllis Schlafly comments,

Recruitment goals aren’t met because men don’t want to fight alongside women who can’t carry a man off the battlefield. No country in history has ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in Iraq.

* * *

The Lawrence Summers case at Harvard makes the issue even timelier. Men and women are indeed different, which leads to James Burnham’s Law #2, “Who says A must say B,” i.e., how best to deal with it. When people resort to clichés such as “times have changed,” or we “can’t roll back the clock,” they’re only temporizing--frolicking in a masquerade. Lacking both perception and knowledge, they go with the flow. Despite post-60s pretense, however, we can’t change Mother Nature. “Plus ça change, plus la même chose.” (The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Alphonse Karr, 1808-1890.)

What Orestes Brownson wrote in 1873 is as true today as it was then:

There is also even a larger number of . . . young women annually coming forth from our conventional schools and academies, with fresh hearts, and cultivated minds, and noble aspirations, who are no less interested in the welfare of the country, and no less capable of exerting an influence on its destiny. They have no more sympathy than we have with so-called “strong-minded women,” who give from the rostrum or platform public lectures on politics or ethics; but we have much mistaken the training they have received . . . if they have not along with the accomplishments that fit them to grace the drawing-room, received that high mental culture which prepares them to be wives and mothers of men; or, if such should be their vocation, to be accomplished and efficient teachers in their turn. Men are but half men, unless inspired and sustained in whatever is good and noble by woman’s sympathy and cooperation. We want no bas bleus, no female pedants, nor male pedants either, as to that matter; but we do want cultivated, intelligent women, women who not only love their country, but understand its interests and see its dangers, and can, in their proper sphere, exert a domestic and social influence to elevate society and protect it from the principles and corruption which lead it to barbarism. This is no time and no country in which to waste one’s life in frivolities or on trifles. . . . And seriously should those of either sex whom the world has not yet corrupted, soured, or discouraged, take it, and labor to perform its high and solemn duties. (Emphasis supplied.) (“The Democratic Principle,” Selected Essays, p. 225, edited by Russell Kirk. Transaction.)

Until a majority of both state and national politicians regain their savvy regarding men and women, we’ll continue our heteroclite confounding of women’s role. One hopes The St. Croix Review readers do their part in resisting.

Sincerely,

W. E. Chynoweth, USMA ’46

Sanger, CA

To the Editor,

Support for war in Iraq reached 70 percent following 9/11. It has since fallen below 40 percent.

The American Revolution had broad support at its outset, yet we’d have lost without George Washington’s inspirational leadership in the face of diminishing support.

Abraham Lincoln saw families gathered on the heights above early battles; they didn’t want to miss the Civil War that would end in a few months. When it didn’t, support dwindled to almost nothing.

F.D.R.’s problem was twofold: He could not inspire Americans to join in the war against fascism though Europe was dying. Yet he too saw diminishing support in the waning months of the war in the Pacific.

War is terrible! Thoughtful people cringe at the thought of it, yet where would we be if we had lost the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II?

Can civilization survive unrestrained terrorists with today’s fearsome weapons in their hands?

                                                                  Harry Neuwirth,

                                                                  Salem, OR