Great Stuff — Drafting our Daughters

A great post written by LCMS Laity Aaron Wolf over on ChroniclesMagazine.org:

 

ChroniclesMagazineThe leftist regime, incarnate in bold and belligerent Democrats and tepid, me-too Republicans, hates women, the same way it hates black people.  The way you can tell is that you often hear them screaming (or sobbing) exactly the opposite, as justification for the passage of unprecedented social-engineering laws.  Yet judging by the effects of both their rhetoric and their policies, blacks are nothing more to them than propaganda fodder for the Welfare State, and your daughters, wives, and sisters are little else than cannon fodder for their Warfare State.

The latter was demonstrated for the American people on what will likely become an immovable feast for the left: December 3, the day Secretary of Defense Ash Carter declared an end to the restriction on women in combat.  According to the secretary, every branch of the Armed Forces must lift all restrictions on what women are allowed to do.  He gave them 30 days to comply.

Ash Carter is a Harvard-trained physicist, former advisor to Goldman Sachs, and professor who never wore his country’s uniform, so it makes perfect sense that he would be the man to build “America’s force of the future,” a job that amounts to taking the stone tablets of natural law and smashing them into a million pieces.

We must now drink the bitter water.  By which I mean it is inevitable that, upon turning 18, the daughters of America will be forced to register with the Selective Service System.  Why?  Because the only thing that has prevented that from happening already has been removed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Rostker v. Goldberg (1981).  Back then, the Supremes reasoned that drafting men but not women did not violate Due Process because the purpose of the draft is to raise combat troops, and women were not allowed to serve as such.  Current law provides only for males to be required to register, but places the administration of the Selective Service System into the hands of the President.  Thus, several presidents have tinkered with the system, by way of executive order—Ford eliminating the registration requirement, Carter reinstating it.  But it remains the task of Congress to amend the language of the Selective Service Act of 1948 to make it violate the natural order.  Otherwise, the SSS risks getting sued by egalitarians who want to give women an equal shot at PTSD, whether they want it or not.

Two such lawsuits are already wending their way through the courts.  One was filed by the ineptly named National Coalition for Men, and the other by New Jersey teen Liz Kyle-LaBell, who is too young to file by herself and was forced to rely on the offices of her progressive mom, Allison Kyle.  “[T]he two sexes are now similarly situated for draft registration purposes,” Miss Kyle-LaBell’s complaint reads, “and there is no legitimate reason for the government to discriminate against the female class, so equal protection applies.”  (I can already picture Miss Kyle-LaBell seated next to Michelle Obama in the balcony at the State of the Union Show.)

Here’s a legitimate reason to discriminate: Women and men are different.

Now, on some level, all of us, including those who champion “gender equality” with a straight face, agree.  Skeletal structures, bone densities, percentage of muscle, testosterone, emotional aloofness, Mars and Venus—we all acknowledge these biological differences exist, and might have some relevance when it comes to warfare.  Who cares?  If we maintain the same standards for both sexes—the same jump, run, carry, and throw tests—then what’s the problem?  Equality of opportunity, remember, not of outcome!  And, incidentally, we have a pill that makes Aunt Flo hide in the closet for months at a time.  Take it away, Harvard physicist Ash Carter!

Defending this country is our primary responsibility, and it cannot be compromised.  That means everyone who serves in uniform—men and women alike—has to be able to meet the high standards for whatever job they’re in.  To be sure, fairness is also important—because everyone who’s able and willing to serve their country, who can meet those standards, should have the full and equal opportunity to do so.

That almost sounds like a moral argument.  We’re not weakening the military or lowering our standards, no sir!  But come on, if there’s a gal who can do whatever a guy can do, it would simply be unfair to tell her no.  Right?

This is precisely where Republicans get sidetracked, because, having no good answer to the charge of unfairness, they focus their attention on the data—those two Army Ranger ladies, Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, for example, who recently “made history” by beating out some men to pass the difficult training regimen.  I will note in passing that this history-making event occurred, historically speaking, mere weeks before the announcement by the DefSec that the U.S. Armed Forces were finally getting on the right side of history.

Smelling a rat, Republican freshman Rep. Steven Russell (OK) filed an FOIA request with the Army for the training records of the aforementioned ladies.  Congressman Russell is himself a Ranger, by the by.  Of course, this was met with howls of horror, and Sue Fulton, who was among West Point’s history-making first class to graduate females (1980), turned the tables by filing an FOIA request to have a little look-see at Russell’s records.  Take that, gynophobe!

Comedy ensued when, after several weeks of stalling, the Army sent Russell a letter indicating that “the documents . . . might not be delivered as they may have been shredded.”  Whoops!  What a tragedy.  I mean, wouldn’t these particular documents be suitable for framing—as the founding papers of the “Army of the Future”?

It wasn’t Infowars but those wacky conspiracy theorists at People who dug into this apparent cover-up.  Did the Army really shred these special documents, they asked?  Nonsense, said a Pentagon official, who “took issue with the term ‘shredded.’”

“Those documents were never meant to be maintained over a long period of time,” a senior Army official told People.  “It is inaccurate to allege that the documents have been shredded . . . Records don’t have a shelf life.”

Nothing to see here.  Move along.

No, seriously.  There is nothing to see here, because one way or another, women in combat was a foregone conclusion.  After all, Physicist Carter insists that he has mountains of data on his side.

The past three years of extensive studies and reviews leading up to this decision—all of which we’re going to post online, by the way—have led to genuine insights and real progress. Where we found that some standards previously were either outdated or didn’t reflect the tasks actually required in combat, important work has been done . . .

We get the drift.  The standards were not changed, except that, when they were changed they were changed because they needed changing, because they were “outdated.”

Outdated how?  Here’s an example.

We like to invade Muslim countries.  When we go from house to house, knocking on doors with assault rifles (N.B.: not with AR-15s), and cracking skulls for information, Muslim men do not like to share.  But Muslim women, we’ve learned, are more open and talkative.  They will talk, but only to other women (Allah’s rules).  So we’ve already been sending our gals along with our guys in rather hairy situations because we fight them over there so they won’t come over here (except to places like San Bernardino).

The DefSec alludes to this in his remarks, under the banner of “international realities.”  And it is in that context that he makes the astonishing and, I think, unintentionally candid statement that “we know the United States is a nation committed to using our entire population to the fullest . . . ”  Indeed, women are half the population of usable people, Carter reminds us.  So it would be foolish for us not to use girls the way we use guys.  And gays, for that matter, as he doesn’t fail to remind us, seeing that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has also been reassigned to the wrong side of history in the Age of Obama.

The SSS website currently features an excerpt from its legally defined mission, “To furnish manpower [sic] to the Defense Department during a national emergency.”  Redrawing the map of the Middle East, preventing Vladimir Putin from bombing terrorists, managing the nuclear program of Iran—all of these things seem to qualify as “national emergencies” these days, particularly with our all-volunteer force spread thin around the globe, defending every border but our own.

Also on that webpage, in large typeface, is the following slogan: “REGISTER: It’s What a Man’s Got to Do.”  By the time you read this article, that sexist statement may have vanished.  But it exists for a reason, which, until five minutes ago, everyone seemed to understand.  It beckons young men to be manly.  It appeals to something deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of all human beings.

And that is the fact that men and women are different.  And not just in the accidents of skeletal structures and testosterone.  These accidents can be, to an extent, mimicked by technology, or simply ignored if we “update our standards.”  But the accidents tell us something about the unalterable essence of who we are—something alluded to in the statement, “Male and female created He them.”  That every civilized culture in the history of the world has recognized it is a shame and a disgrace for women—willing or not—to spill their guts on the battlefield bears witness to the existence of natural law, which in turn suggests the existence of a Lawgiver Who demands obedience.  For decades now, Americans have defied both, turning the honor of being a wife and a mother into an humiliation, and blitzing girls like Liz Kyle-LaBell with propaganda that tells them they can be whatever they want to be, so long as that does not include being a homemaker, the role for which their minds, bodies, and souls were designed.

Where have the churches, the conservatives, the fathers of America’s daughters been, while this hate campaign against women has been waged?  Are we so cowed by feminism that we will let our young ladies be put on the menu for Leviathan to devour, whenever an “emergency” arises?  In the face of an enemy that would claim our daughters’ very lives and liberty, do we even have the will to fight?

“It’s what a man’s got to do.”

 

Aaron D. Wolf is Chronicles Magazine’s managing editor.  His writings have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. He is a frequent guest on Issues, Etc. (Lutheran Public Radio), and has appeared on several other radio programs, including The Tom Clark Show (Wisconsin Public Radio) and Extension 720 With Milt Rosenberg (WGN).

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