Right Side of Left Coast: Every Problem with Women in Combat the GOP Contenders Ignored

February 10, 2016

Which of the enemies America faces is the most dangerous? Is it North Korea? ISIS? Iran? A resurgent Russia? A rising China?

The answer, in fact, is, none of the above.

The warriors posing the greatest threat to our security are the social justice warriors in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon.

...and, sad to say, onstage at the February 6 Republican candidates' debate, in New Hampshire. In response to a question on whether to require women to register for the draft, Marco Rubio replied, in part:

[T]here are already women today serving in roles that are like combat … whose lives are in very serious danger, and so I have no problem whatsoever with people of either gender serving in combat so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised.

He was soon joined by Jeb Bush, who added:

[I]f women can meet the requirements, the minimum requirements for combat service, they ought to have the right to do it.

But the Nobel Peace Prize for P.C. claptrap has to go to Chris Christie:

[M]y wife and I have taught our daughters right from the beginning that their sense of self-worth, their sense of value, their sense of what they want to do with their life comes not from the outside, but comes from within. And if a young woman in this country wants to go and fight to defend their country, she should be permitted to do so.

Part of that also needs to be part of a greater effort in this country, and so there's no reason why young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service.

Or from increasing the risk to male soldiers' lives by serving in combat to satisfy "their sense of self-worth"?

Elsewhere in the debate, on the question of loosening the rules of engagement, Ted Cruz said that we should (emphasis added):

… allow our soldiers to do their jobs instead of risking their lives with politicians making it impossible to accomplish the objective.

Cruz, of course, is the man who vows to rescind all of Barack Obama's executive orders on the first day. Does that promise apply to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus's order – against the strong objection of Marine Corps commandant General Joseph Dunford and notwithstanding empirical test results – to open all combat positions to women? Cruz did not say at the debate, and though he did, in a subsequent town hall, describe drafting women as "nuts," he apparently said nothing about the core issue of women serving in combat period.

Absent any assurances to the contrary, one must therefore ask: could all of the GOP candidates be social justice warriors? Will none of them heed the expert advice of our military commanders and reverse Mabus's order?

As far back as the Carter administration, civilians have been pushing the military to allow women into ground combat. And the military has been pushing back, to no avail.

The results of the Marines' mixed-gender combat test – the results that Mabus willfully ignored – that women were slower, weaker, more injury-prone, and poorer shots than the men – are well known, as are the statements, on military blogs, of numerous enlisted men and officers who have made their opposition to Mabus's order clear. But a Facebook post, by Sergeant Major Justin Lehew, who has "been a part of this process from the beginning," merits quoting at length (emphases added):

We selected our best women for this test unit, selected our most mature female leaders as well. The men (me included) were the most progressive and open minded that you could get. ... No one went in to [sic] this with the mentality that we did not want this to succeed.

[…]

This was as stacked as a unit could get with the best Marines to give it a 100 percent success rate as we possibly could. End result? The best women … as a group … were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group. They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations.

SECNAV has stated that he has made his mind up even before the release of these results and that the USMC test unit will not change his mind. ... Listen up folks. Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to pursue whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security.

[…]

There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is. You will never see a female Quarterback in the NFL, there will never be a female center on any NHL team and you will never see a female batting in the number 4 spot for the New York Yankees. It is what it is.

And young men and women are what they are. Anyone remember the infamous "Love Boat"? No, not this Love Boat…

…this Love Boat, the USS Acadia...

…on which, during Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War, 36 sailors – 10 percent of the women aboard – became pregnant.

As for the total number of female soldiers who became pregnant in that war (emphasis added):

U.S. Central Command is not tracking the number of troops who must leave the Iraq war theater due to pregnancy, prompting military advocates to charge the Pentagon wants to keep secret what could be an embarrassing statistic.

Wild guess: the total number is embarrassingly high.

To say, as Rubio does, that women are "serving in roles that are like combat" provides no argument for their serving in actual combat. And while, yes, female soldiers have served in dangerous locations, such as Baghdad and Mosul, where their lives were in "very serious danger," civilians in those cities faced equal danger. Should we, thus, recruit children and old men for combat?

As for the de rigueur "so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job" and "if women can meet the … minimum requirements" memes, General John Kelly, head of U.S. Southern Command, surely is right when he says:

There will be great pressure [to lower standards] … because the question will be asked whether we've let women into these other roles, why aren't they staying in those other roles? Why aren't they advancing as infantry people?

Evidence in New York, where the writer lives, abounds. The New York Fire Department recently allowed a woman, who failed the physical fitness test six times, to join the department anyway because too few women were passing the test to fill (liberal) NYC's politically correct female firefighter quota.

Pace Dr. Carson, the 14-percent decrease in the number of people joining the military is not partly "because of the way we treat our veterans." It's because of the way liberals treat the military as social justice laboratories and battlefields in the feminist left's War on Men.

The great majority of our military, from all indications, await the election of a president who sees the military's job as something other than ensuring "that everyone has an opportunity to pursue whatever they want" regardless of the outcome on national security. A president who will reverse Ray Mabus's irresponsible order.

If Rubio's, Bush's, and Christie's statements, and the other candidates' silence at the February 6 debate, are any indication, they could be waiting a long, long time.

And those of us who thought that electing a Republican president would herald the end of political correctness and a reversal of policies that have degraded military effectiveness and driven out more than 100 officers may want to think again.

Gene Schwimmer is a New York licensed real estate broker and the author of The Christian State. Follow Gene Schwimmer on Twitter.