Women Warriors and the American Empire
by Steven LaTulippe
While surfing the web the other day, I came across a story from the Washington Times titled "Army Charged with Ban Violation." The story describes several controversial new reorganizations going on in the US Army, especially as they relate to women soldiers: A pro-military group is charging that the Army is violating the Defense Department's ban on women in land combat by collocating mixed-sex support units with war-fighting soldiers. At issue is how the Army is transforming its 10 active divisions into multiple, self-contained "units of action." In
essence, the Pentagon brass has decided to change the structure
of Army units so as to combine support groups with front-line combat
brigades. This will, they claim, create a more flexible force which
will be more effective in the field. The law currently forbids female
soldiers from serving in ground combat units, which is the "fly
in the ointment" for this particular reform. Before commenting, I should first confess a certain bias concerning this general topic. While I consider war to be a tragedy that should be avoided by all reasonable means, I find the idea of women engaging in combat to be particularly unconscionable. Call me old fashioned, but I still cling to an admittedly traditional attitude towards women. They are beautiful…they are wonderful…and the idea of having them participate in the butchery of combat is too grotesque to contemplate. But it appears that those in charge of our government have other priorities. What especially caught my attention in this article was the following quote from an Army briefing paper: "Army manpower cannot support elimination of female soldiers from all units designated to be unit of action elements," the Army document states. The document further states that by not including women, it "creates an immediate personnel readiness impact: issue of insufficient male soldiers in inventory to fill forward support companies ... Creates potential long-term challenge to Army; pool of male recruits too small to sustain force." Permit me to translate this paragraph from military jargon: Given our current Imperial foreign policy, we cannot fulfill our missions without utilizing female soldiers in front line units. There simply aren’t enough men in the military or in the potential recruitment pipeline. This represents, in my humble opinion, a new low in our spiral to Imperial oblivion. The last vestiges of Western chivalry are evaporating in the face of the cold calculations of Leviathan’s war machine (and this just refers to the female combat angle…I won’t even comment on how this memo refers to our soldiers as "inventory"). I have been wondering for quite some time just how much the American people are willing to tolerate for the sake of our increasingly belligerent foreign policy, and I see no end in sight. The American people have watched their leaders invade a sovereign nation based on fabricated intelligence and crude deception…and they have "punished" the perpetrators of this policy with an election victory and four more years of power. The American people have shrugged off the increasing violence in Iraq and the mounting death toll from the conflict there. The populace has regarded the blooming fiscal catastrophe of our budget deficits – largely driven by the wars’ costs – with total indifference. Our citizens have passively accepted an accelerating attack on our Constitutional rights fueled by government-induced war hysteria. It is as if God Himself is testing our nation to determine just how decadent we have become. As we glide past each milestone, He sets a new, lower marker. We are sacrificing our sons, our liberty, and our fiscal solvency on the altar of interventionism and "benevolent world hegemony." None of these policies have even one iota to do with our Republic and the well-being of our citizens. Now the Empire is coming for our daughters, our wives, and our mothers. Is there anything currently being contested in Iraq that is worth this new blood sacrifice? Is there anything worthwhile at stake in potential future conflicts in Iran or Syria? When I observe the policies currently emanating from Washington, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that our government has lost its mind. It is literally out of control. Not a day goes by when I don’t hear of some new proposal which is straight out of an Orwell novel. I regularly read about prisoners rotting in secret gulags overseas, of American citizens imprisoned without access to courts or lawyers, of new passports designed with "implanted chips," of individuals nominated for "Homeland Security Czar" who have histories of power abuses that read like those of KGB officers, and of the proliferation of numerous government "data bases" for use in everything from boarding airplanes to opening bank accounts. They even want to screen all schoolchildren – without parental consent – for mental illness and possible psychotropic drug treatment. How have the American people become so utterly submissive? Are they even willing to feed their daughters into this continuing maw of Imperial warfare with nary a complaint? Does this pit have no bottom? There is a 50-50 chance that the feds will have to resort to some sort of military draft in the next couple of years if they wish to continue with their plans. Add this fact to the movement of women into combat units, and you have an interesting combination. What will America do? Have we become so servile that we will allow our daughters to be dragooned into some new crusade to liberate Baluchistan or bring democracy to Waziristan?
Over the next few months and years, we will watch the answers to these questions unfold. I pray that the American people awake before it is too late. December 13, 2004 Steven LaTulippe [send him mail] is a physician currently practicing in Ohio. He was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years. Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com |