Let's Not Leave Anything Good Standing

In the march towards the "progress" seen by the progressives, the one aspect that is always present is that ideology must triumph over reason.  If reality says one thing but ideology requires another, then the progressives side with the ideological view.  For example, forty years of data now shows that children who participated in Head Start programs performed no better as older students or adults than comparable children who were not in Head Start.  Rationality says that there is no need to spend tens of billions of dollars each year for a program that does nothing.  The progressive ideology, however, requires "doing something" to improve the lives of poor children, so the Head Start program continues.  That, however, is old news.  Today's big news is that in the name of "equality", women are going to be added to front line combat units of the armed forces.

The United States Army, Navy, Marines and Airforce are perhaps the most successful institutions of the federal government.  The brave folks who comprise these institutions have carried out every mission given to them by Washington with great success, often at a terrible price to themselves.  They ought to be above politics and ideology, but Washington just cannot let them alone to continue with their successes.  They need to be "reformed" to meet the ideology of the progressives.

First came the admission of open homosexuals.  The worry there was that this might cause dissention in the various fighting units.  Also, there might be men who otherwise would have joined who decided not to do so in order to avoid mixing with gays.  It has been too soon to determine if the change has harmed either morale or the ability of the armed forces to carry out their assigned missions.

Putting women in combat, however, is very different from admitting open gays to the military.  Gay men may have different desires than straight men, but they have the same military capabilities as straights.  Women do not have the same military capabilities as men.  Wow, I just wrote that and the world did not end.  Let me say it again:  WOMEN DO NOT HAVE THE SAME MILITARY CAPABILITIES AS MEN!!!!!!!  Women have less upper body strength than men.  If they have to march for forty miles carrying a pack weighing 75 pounds on their backs, women will fail at much higher rates than men will.  If women have to endure physical hardships and then perform physical tasks that require strength, they will fail at much higher rates than men.  And if one member of a unit fails in such a task, it puts at risk all the members of that unit.  In other words, in service to the false god of "equality", the progressives are putting the efficacy of our military at risk.

Look, this is not some diatribe about the gentle nature of women.  There are plenty of women (including many I have met) who are sufficiently hard and vicious to operate well in a combat environment.  There are also many tasks that women are suited for in the military.  Being a combat engineer is a good example.  The problem is that the basic infantry or other truly front line troops ought not be composed of women.

There are a myriad of other problems with putting women into combat units.  I will leave discussion of those problems to others.  They are not important compared to the basic issue.  Women cannot do the job of the front line infantry as well as men.  The change announced by the Obama administration is nothing more than something that will greatly harm military readiness in the name of ideological purity.