Let The Men Be Heroes – Because They Are

This is Part IV and the conclusion of my series on The Problems of Women in Combat. View the previous posts here.

On Thursday January 31,  2012, I had the pleasure of participating in a roundtable discussion on the subject of women in combat roles on the Glenn Beck show (members can view the show in full in the website’s archives).  I didn’t know Green Beret Greg Stube or Navy Seal Pete Scobell before that day, but we got to know each other well over the course of the show and afterward.  I was blown away by their level of sacrifice, what they had endured and overcome, and how they are still serving our country in their current endeavors.  “Heroes” doesn’t begin to cover it, but this is not unusual for men in units like these who have seen action again and again. As I listened, I was reminded once again of the truth about the male bond in these elite units and the superhuman things they do.

Watch the series “Surviving the Cut”, which shows the rigorous training men go through to make it into the elite Special Forces.  They’ll start off with a hundred men who are already the top performers in their branches, but only ten will make it to graduation.  The only example we have of women even attempting such training are two women who attempted the Marines Infantry Officer Course.  One washed out after a day, the other after a week.

The decision to open the combat units to women was done without any testing because testing shows that women can’t cut it.  To be brutally honest, we can’t even approach cutting it, as anyone who watches this series will be able to see.  The truth is that the top 25% of women performers in any branch is equivalent to the bottom 50% of men.  The top woman is no comparison to the top man.  Some pundits like to say “get the best man for the job, even if the best man is a woman.”  The best man in combat is never ever a woman (and women prove it).  The best man is always a man.  Let’s give them credit where credit is due.  Each one who makes it into a combat unit or Special Forces trumps the best woman, and by a large margin.  The caliber of man that a high-performing woman could compete with doesn’t make it into the Special Forces.  He washes out.  Comparing these potential (fictional) women to the men in these units is not just comparing apples to oranges.  It’s comparing apples to steak, and the result is to demoralize our country’s strongest, bravest, and most capable men who risk and sacrifice their lives for us doing things that no woman really wants to do.

Another interesting facet of these men as I’ve gotten to know them is that they shun recognition, even refusing their hard-earned benefits from the VA.  Compare that to the Feminist officers pushing women into combat. (Anyone notice that enlisted women, who will bear the brunt of this experiment, are not being asked for their opinion?).  If you watch their interviews, it’s all about recognition and recognition and recognition.  They will get it thanks to Leon Panetta; but just as the standards are “gender-normed” to show false equal results of current training standards, they will get the same recognition for doing a fraction of what the men in combat units do.

We already know the fact that women are in the military has lowered its overall standards as I point out in my earlier articles in this series.  Adding women to the combat units will destroy the Bands of Brothers, and with them our ability to fight our savage enemies.  But that is the intent.  Under pressure from Washington politicians, the military’s paramount mandate is no longer combat effectiveness.  It is diversity.  The fact that Leon Panetta gave this authoritarian order (and likely unconstitutional, since the power to make such decisions is supposed to rest with Congress) on his way out the door shows his abundant spinelessness, for he will not have to answer for the destruction this foolish decision will cause.

The men in these units are our supermen, and that does not take anything away from women.  They are doing heroic things that women can’t do, and they do it because they love women: their mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives. We want to protect women from participating in the ravages of war, not throw them into the front so they can be ravaged themselves.  The bond of men in combat is something that women cannot share even when they are present.  We serve together in many important military capacities and enjoy our own strong bonds because of some shared training and experience; but the connection that the men have is something very special, different and hard-won.  We should let them have it without disparaging it as brutish and discriminatory.  It not only enhances combat effectiveness; it is a part of our societal moral fabric as a country.  It is frankly vital to our survival, not something passé from a bygone patriarchal age that we should abandon for phony “equality.”

Let us love and laud our Bands of Brothers, not demoralize and destroy them.  They are the only thing really standing between us and slavery.