Panetta is Pandora
Both written and unwritten rules of land warfare in modern times have long provided a demarcation between combatants and innocents. American troops have traditionally been more observant of that line than some of the forces aligned against us. For the most part though, that term, Women and Children, has long been the line in the sand for the warfighters of most nations. Exceptions abound, that’s true, but for most modern, major militaries, the killing stops when there is no one left but the women and the children.
How then will that stark line continue to be honored when the United States unilaterally introduces armed female infantry into the battle lines? Our enemies, most certainly, will no longer have any moral proscription against killing fully-armed, professionally-trained and thoroughly-lethal, American, female troops. By putting women on the battlefield as infantry, the US will have erased the line that has held throughout modern times. By placing them in firefights, we will have signaled the rest of the world that the United States now approves the killing of women in combat. Our foolish, politically correct government, with deliberate, liberal intent, will have introduced women into the realm of ground combat, where, by necessity, on the part of our mortal foes, they must be killed, wounded or captured to render them no longer a threat.
Once the United States of America, under the liberal administration of Barack Obama, has removed the universal and historical proscription and stigma of killing women in war, women will become fair game in any conflict around the planet. And that doesn’t just pertain to those few American women who manage to demonstrate the strength and prowess to qualify as infantry, but all women who have the misfortune to find themselves in an area of armed conflict. Who, in our own forces, will be able to know which women among those in the cities, the villages and the farm huts out there are not armed and dangerous? Will the default judgment not be that they are armed and dangerous? Facing the prospect of female American infantry, are not other nations of the world justified in training and arming their own women to fight the American forces?
As is so often true of liberals’ social reforms, they haven’t begun to consider the negative outcomes of this political success, such as the possibility that it will nullify the long-standing rule of warfare which has guided warriors of most nations for centuries. By putting American women into frontline combat on the ground, the Obama administration will put all women in the world into the crosshairs of ground combat. To satisfy liberal orthodoxy, the gender-neutral fools of the Democrat Party will have rendered uncountable millions of vulnerable sisters around the world as helpless targets. Not inconsequentially, their American sisters will go in harm’s way as well; for what nation or radical cause cannot now justify an attack on any American woman or group of women as an attack on potential combatants?
A final thought: we already suffer a high incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. How high will those rates climb when our male troops begin killing female hostiles as a predictable outgrowth of this policy decision by the Obama Administration? For that matter, how many female infantry, who are traditionally and congenitally supposed to be more sensitive than men, will succumb to PTSD after experiencing the blood and guts of engaging enemy combatants?
Panetta, you have become Pandora.
Crossposted at American Thinker.
Category: Military issues
Our enemies have never observed this rule. Viet Nam is a good example of how this was known, at times commented on, but was off limits for any kind of discussion. As you say the liberals have reentered us into the realm of all out war as policy not as an aberration.
Rape as a tool of war. The Japanese didn’t invent it but they sure as hell perfected it. This policy change was effected for all the wrong reasons after a couple of pandering fools, Penisetta and Dumpster, lunched over it off and on for a year.
More and more, I get the impression that the left-leaning end of the political spectrum, which includes a lot of people, actually despise women, and this is a way to disguise how they really feel.
There is nothing specific, just a feeling.
Getting raped is a disgrace in Islam, and the only means of redemption is to blow up a bus full of civilians… or something like that:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12655
You think American female soldiers have it hard? The IDF has been dealing with Arab women carrying everything from acid to explosives even before the Beirut barracks were attacked.
The enemy has always fought dirty.
But then… when did Obamallama recognize the enemy through his rose-colored lenses?
What really pisses me off is that people will die because of this and the scumbags who initiated this shit will never be held accountable.
How would they fare in this mess?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268602/Mud-blood-horror-The-brutality-Vietnam-War-captured-selection-stunning-images.html
With 1/11 in support
#3
As a woman I agree with your feeling :). The left doesn’t have much of a regard for women. Saying that the sexes don’t have the same ability levels is taboo but it is true. I know that I am tough and strong but also know that I could not perfrom at the same level that my husband did when he served. There are actually a lot of specifics that one can go into, besides women in military service.
Ahh, PH, it is much more than a feeling. You may not be able to articulate it to your satisfaction at the moment, but your instinct is on point.
In the name of “liberation,” the lefties have objectified women more than we have ever observed in our history. War on women? That is exactly what they have waged for decades. Would we really need abortion if virginity until after marrage was still considered a virtue? Would we need to hear all the blather about “all kids are going to do it so we need to teach them about birth control” if they were not encouraging children to be sexually active? How does having hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers encourage them to pursue excellence in life? And don’t even get me started on how aspiring to be someone’s “baby mama” has become a lofty ambition!
If all this seems natural, will someone kindly explain the virtually nude dress code to which young girls are expected to conform. If you observe young women and girls in crowds, you will catch quite a few of them adjusting shirts and shorts (such as they are) with regularity, body language screaming how uncomfortable they are with so little covering them.
Yeah, it is those crazy lefties who are responsible for this lunacy and so much more. Watching what they do to the military beyond what they have already done is not something I really want to see.
@7 (and Ex-PH2): If it’s the case that liberals have less regard for women than conservatives, why is it that women typically identify more with the Democratic party than the Republican one? This is one of the most recent Pew studies I could find, and it shows women in 2012 identifying as D (37%), I (33%) and R (24%). In fact, this same study shows women are MORE likely than men to identify as D.
Link: http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-9-trends-in-party-affiliation/
You can claim media bias, but that was also tried with respect to the polling in the lead up to the recent elections, with, in my opinion, equally poor results. When there’s a difference of a few points, sure, media bias might play a role. When that difference is that one and a half times as many women identify with the Democrats than the Republicans, chances are one needs to look inward.
I keep an open mind and I’m more than willing to hear counterpoints, but data speaks more than ‘feelings’ in my experience.
@8 Anon
Stockholm Syndrome?
Opening up combat arms to women does not mean women will actually go into the combat arms.
The immediate purpose for doing this is to reward the loyalty of the feminists who eagerly got on their knees for Bill Clinton, and got out their wallets for Obama.
The long term goal is to have female service chiefs and CJCS. It’s a cultural shibboleth that service chiefs must be combat arms, as if pulling a trigger 30 years prior qualifies them to shape the service in the context of achieving national security in an evolving global environment.
If you want women out of the infantry, or commanding Ranger Batts, change the FOGO culture that says only killers are superior enough for service chief and CJCS.
Oh, dear me. If you didn’t grow up in the 1960s, the era of Women’s Liberation, it’s difficult to describe the effect it had on college women and women in general. I did not personally know anyone who burned her bra, but the object of it was to call attention to rape as a crime of power, to get better wages and benefits for women doing exactly the same jobs as men, and to open doors, especially in employment, that had previously been perceived as closed to women. It’s not that women were not lawyers, doctors, scientists or accountants. There was rampant discrimination in the workplace against women, who were passed over for positions for which they were completely qualified while a man less qualified got the job. It was seen as an old boys’ club. And there still is such discrimination 50 years later, but women are more likely to get those positions at the top of the heap than they were 50 years ago. The reason women moved to the left or more liberal end of the political spectrum was that very discrimination: it makes no sense to pay someone less for putting a car together on an assembly line because she’s a woman instead of a man, but that is what happened to women who were able to actually get those kinds of jobs. But discrimination never left. It never went away. When Toyota built an auto assembly plant in Bloomington, IL, 25 years ago, women lined up for jobs and were routinely threatened, bullied and harrassed by their male co-workers. The liberal left, which is perceived as favoring women because of its support of equal opportunity and fair labor practices, became more attractive to women as a place to find better treatment, freedom and equality, than the conservative right, which was perceived as being rather grinchy and unwilling to change and move forward. Unfortunately, the perception has been rather glowing and the reality is less than the ideal. Women still are not paid equally with men EXCEPT in the military, they still do not have the… Read more »
Panetta was sent to DoD to oversee it’s dismantling.
@ #8: What in the world does having a full 1/3 of women (assuming the accuracy of the poll) not identifying with either party have to do with anything? A lone percentage point higher identifies with the Dems??
None of those figures supports or disproves the lies coming at us from the left for decades. They are expert manipulaters. Why more people do not see through those lies is incredible to me. But then, we would not be in this mess without the compliant right. Oh, well.
Personally, I don’t see whining about the media as an effective way to neutralize the bias.
@8
There are a lot of women who have bought into Islam, too. Yet Islam wages war on women.
I do agree with OWB (@7). I would take things farther though and say that this is much more than a political issue. We are in the middle of a culture war. Those who are conservative wish to preserve the concepts of femininity and masculinity, while liberals wish to blur or eradicate them. Hence, the push to have women serve as combatants. Women and men are different and there should be nothing wrong with saying so.
Why should women have to become like men?
>Those who are conservative wish to preserve the concepts of femininity and masculinity,
# 14 What I never understood is those that think sexuality is inherent and can’t be changed are perfectly fine thinking that gender is a “made up” concept that has no genetic basis.
#8 And the reason women “support” the Dems is that the Dems are really good at playing special interest groups against each other without actually giving them any benefits. It is the same plantation mentality that says that “strong feminist” women should be relying on daddy government for help.
@15
That is kind of a contradictory statment. I believe that most people who think sexuality is inherant also hold the belief that gender has a genetic basis. I haven’t run into anyone who holds one position withold holding the other.
With all due respect, I’m not buying into this one. The current enemy doesn’t mind booby-trapping the bodies of children to get to the parents. I wouldn’t worry about crossing any lines by example. Americans generally aren’t capable of scandalizing these savages.