Sunday, June 19, 2005

Recent commentary: Women in Combat

Should U.S. women be allowed to serve in combat?

(published 20-Jun-2005, Appleton Post-Crescent)

For years I've told friends about the column I read in the Post-Crescent back at the time of the U.S. invasion of Panama. I don't remember the columnist's name, but I do know that he wrote about our use of women in combat roles when we went after Noriega. He compared men fighting one another to furry animals going at it: fur flies for a minute, then one is hurt. The victor establishes dominance, maybe beats his chest, and then they become buddies and have a beer. Women, however, fight like gila monsters: no holds barred, eyes gouged out, limbs torn off, until one of them lies dead, dead, dead. The columnist seemed to say that women don't have an innate sense of when not to destroy an opponent. That's why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in combat.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The idea that the enemy should be fought and contained but not destroyed is just weird. Because women would KILL the enemy, they complain? Idiots.

Steve Erbach said...

I think that the modern idea of war is to preserve as much of the defeated country's infrastructure and such as possible. That is, don't bomb 'em back to the Stone Age. The columnist felt, I believe, that women are definitely Stone Age when it comes to the enemy. My mother told me that she agreed with that. She said that she's still sore at the Germans and Japanese for WW II. Maybe if a woman had been President instead of Truman, the U.S. might have dropped on Japan every single one of the atom bombs we had at the time instead of just two. Not that we had a whole lot of atom bombs (half a dozen were ready, I think), but that isn't the point. Is it better to obliterate the enemy or to soundly defeat him and then see if there's a way to become allies?

Anonymous said...

You don't get even -- you get ahead. You have to make the enemy so sorry that they never have the guts to come after you again. The defeat has to be so complete that you stop the logic that sent you to war in the first place. That's not mean or hateful -- it's just a matter of putting grievances to an end once and for all. You don't just defeat them... defeat isn't enough...ordinary defeat doesn't last. I don't believe that's a female sentiment.