By The Truth Hound–Mark Anderson
WASHINGTON, D.C.— The often touchy military question of whether women should fight on the front lines was addressed March 23, 2016 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, where Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and a distinguished panel hit the issue head on — concluding that such a fundamental shift in military policy is a bad idea. This writer covered the discussion for American Free Press.
As Hunter and the panel announced, however, Defense Secretary Ash Carter through an executive action already had decided the matter—having decreed in December that women entering the armed forces, regardless of their military-career choices and related job placements, can be summoned to drop what they’re doing and be transported to “the front” to fight alongside men.
The Pentagon on Dec. 3 stated, “Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced . . . that beginning in January 2016, all military occupations and positions will be open to women, without exception. For the first time in U.S. military history, as long as they qualify and meet specific standards, the secretary said women will be able to contribute to the Defense Department mission with no barriers at all in their way.”
Carter also was quoted as saying, “They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat. They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force para-jumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.”
Hunter and the panelists, including retired Marine gunnery Sgt. Jessie “Jane” Duff and former Army helicopter pilot Amber Smith, concurred that, as women, they still sharply disagree with imposing gender quotas on the armed forces. They rapped a legislative proposal by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) that “calls for a 20% increase in gender-based quotas at the military service academies,” according to the Center for Military Readiness.
A CMR news release added, “The missions of Army and Marine infantry, armor, artillery, and Special Operations Forces have not changed, and all of them require superior physical strength. Congresswoman Sanchez continues to push for women to be assigned to these units, even though more than 30 years of research and tests have not produced empirical evidence that women are interchangeable with men in the combat arms.”
Ms. Smith is a senior fellow of the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), while Ms. Duff is a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research (LCPR). Both women stated their opposition to such quotas because strict basic-training standards would have to be lowered so more women would make the grade.
That, they added, would erode the training standards for the male soldiers and hurt overall combat readiness. The former lady soldiers said that’s unacceptable and maintained that women should remain in auxiliary positions and not enter front-line infantry units.
Furthermore, two other LCPR senior fellows—Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (ret.) and Air Force Major Gen. Bob Newman Jr. (ret.)—noted that men’s natural protectiveness toward women inevitably would creep into the theater of battle and create problems.
“It’s in our DNA,” Newman said, about men protecting women. Others asked whether women are prepared to go all the way with “equality” and be required to register for the Selective Service and possibly face being drafted someday. Hunter invoked scenarios of fighting the Russians, not just Islamic factions, and asked if women in our politically correct society really understand the stakes.
Accordingly, Hunter, himself a former soldier who saw action in Afghanistan, described in gory detail that the infantry is the tip of the spear, whose grim task is to destroy the enemy by “ripping their throats out” in brutal, sometimes up-close combat.
Newman and the other panelists allowed for the fact that some women manage to meet current male-level training standards, at times. Yet Ms. Smith, who has taken part in combat, said the objective is “a mission standard, not a gender standard,” adding, “I don’t believe in lowering the standard to make sure women remain in the ranks.”
Clear differences in women’s and men’s psychological and physiological makeups, muscle mass and strength, endurance etc. were also pointed out, while Ms. Duff added that, in the current war against all-male Middle Eastern fighters, the enemy “will fight harder to kill us” because, due to their manly pride, they won’t want to be killed by U.S. “ladies.”
Thus, thousands of years of tradition, in which men fight to protect hearth and home, including women as nurturers, is being overturned, the panel acknowledged, while concluding that the military is no place for social experiments.
The nonpartisan Independent Women’s Forum, a 501 (c) (3) think tank, says its mission is “to improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty” while also supporting “limited, constitutional government.”
The New York-based LCPR is a national security and energy research institution whose fellows include Lebanese-American Professor Waled Phares, who was just named to the foreign policy team for Donald J. Trump’s GOP presidential campaign. Phares has been an advisor to the House of Representatives Caucus on Counter Terrorism since 2007.
Hunter was asked by this AFP writer why Sec. Carter made this decision when Hunter himself said during the panel discussion that Congress should decide the matter. To which Hunter replied, “Because no one told Carter that he couldn’t,” to which this reporter added, “Meaning he did it because he ‘can’ . . . like the act of a tyrant?”
While caught off guard by the word “tyrant,” Hunter concluded that it’s much harder to roll back an executive decision once it’s a done deal.