[Vision2020] Women in Combat - My Final Answer!

[Tom Hansen]

From:
http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/final.html

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Women in Combat - My Final Answer! 
Barbara A. Wilson, Captain USAF (Ret)**

The issue of women in combat has been analyzed, legislated, dissected,
argued, debated, prattled, and eschewed so often that this dead horse is
beyond the glue factory. 

Arguments by young and old, knowledgeable and ignorant, fill books, columns,
and sound bites. Word jousting - with worn out barbs like upper body
strength, feminization , social experiment and a gentler military - has
created an indigestible alphabet soup for the media, stirred by harpies and
seasoned by banshees. 

The one song that nobody sings is this. 

"Being an infantryman, a firefighter, a police officer, a submariner, or a
jet pilot, does not bolster one's manhood if women can do it too!" (To
paraphrase an excellent quote by the Women in the Fire Service). 

This falsely perceived threat to male self-image is the key to the whole
enchilada about women in combat roles. 

It has more to do with masculinism, or perhaps even emasculation, than it
ever will with feminism, social experimentation, gender norming or physical
strength differences. 

Men, and even some flibberdigibbet women, didn't want women doctors. 

Over ten thousand women doctors practice medicine now. 

Men, and some intimidated women, didn't want women dentists. 

Over twenty five thousand women practice dentistry now. 

Women can't be veterinarians harped the naysayers. 

Over eighteen thousand women veterinarians practice now. 

Men didn't want their manhood threatened by women police officers, women
firefighters and women medics. 

Thousands of women are fighting fires and are effective law enforcement
officers, as are female emergency medical technicians and para medics. 

These women see blood, death, crime, raging fires, casualties, and even
gunfire. 

Yet military women are still denied the opportunity to qualify for combat
roles in the modern forces. 

The harpies hawk that they "can't carry a back pack". Tell them to stand
outside a super market and watch a young mother carrying groceries in one
arm and a four year old in the other. 

The banshees scream "running ability". Tell them to watch Mia Hamm, Brandy
Chastain or Julie Foudy on the soccer field. 

The harpies hawk "physical endurance". Tell them to watch Lisa Leslie or
Becky Hammons in a WNBA game. 

The banshees scream "motherhood and pregnancy". 

Tell them to ask the thousands of military mothers who serve without griping
and have the best day care in the country. 

The armed forces draw their members from our modern society - it follows
that the make up of the services must reflect that society from which they
are drawn. This is not a social experiment - it's the reality of the times. 

Putting those women who choose to apply and qualify into combat roles will
not render the men "hors de combat". It will not render them impotent and it
will not emasculate the modern military. 

The answer to the "men only want to protect women" spiel is in a great quote
by Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War Medal of Honor recipient - "You men
are not our protectors... If you were, who would there be to protect us
from?" 

As Lt General Claudia Kennedy has said "It's not your father's war." 

With a few possible exceptions there is no "front line" anymore and it's not
unrealistic to think that the next front line could even be the internet or
the intranet. It will be with sophisticated equipment easily operated by
male or female personnel or completely unmanned. See UAV below. 

These would-be experts - many of whom have never marched a step in any
uniform; many of whom have never fired a gun, or been fired upon - are doing
the greatest disservice imaginable to the women of our country. It is time
for these pusillanimous pundits to stop spreading their pond scum and focus
their misguided energy on real issues like crime, drugs, gun control, porno
and domestic violence. Talking pot shots at military women is no longer in
vogue - it's gauche - and the ultimate hypocrisy. 

As Colonel Rhonda Cornum has said - "The qualities that are most important
in all military jobs - things like integrity, moral courage, and
determination - have nothing to do with gender." 

I repeat - The design of the military of the 21st Century is not for a corps
of blackguards and thugs led by Atilla the Hun. It is for a sleek,
intelligent, synergetic group of highly motivated and skillfully trained
troops. To advocate excluding our young women from this aspect of our
nation's future is tantamount to sedition. 

Would those pontificating pundits change this motto to: 

"Be All You Can Be - Unless You're a Woman"

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Statement by Barbara Wilson:

"Granted I've never been in front line combat but then neither have eighty
percent of the men in the military. In my 22 years of active duty I have
however - survived two military plane crashes; rescued a sergeant from
drowning ; helped remove dead bodies from the flight line after an RB-47
crash; disarmed a knife-wielding troop in a barracks brawl; disabled and
removed a would-be rapist from my squadron's barracks; thwarted two bloody
suicide attempts; and performed many casualty and mortuary duties too
gruesome to mention."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.