http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/15/lynch/index.html
Do women belong in combat? Are women assets or liabilities under fire? Some say that women soldiers caught in combat all too easily become “victims” – especially if they are killed, wounded, maimed, or made POWs and subjected to such heinousness as rape, etc. On the other hand, male soldiers facing enemy fire and capture – and all the standard viciousness that goes along with that – invariably emerge as either cowards or heros, but never as victims. Why is that? Is it because women in uniform serving in combat- or combat-related jobs in the military serve a creative social fiction being dished out by the feminists, albeit at the expense of the working-class and underprivileged women that don the uniform in search of opportunities, such as former U.S. Army PFC Jessica Lynch?
Specifically, I think the idea of women in combat serves the needs of the feminist agenda and the feminist power elite, as is currently represented by the likes of Patricia Schroeder, Patricia Ireland, Gloria Steinem, et al. I think the feminists have no compunction about lobbying for putting women – especially uneducated and economically disenfranchised women – into harms way in order to prove their point: “Anything a man can do, I can do better!”
But proving such a point at the expense of the women who actually have to prove it, puts a whole new twist on ‘grrrl power’, and ‘female solidarity’ – the ostensible staples of modern feminist idealogy – doesn’t it?
The above article featured in this week’s salon.com , which details the media’s ad nauseum sensationalism of the eternally pathetic Jessica Lynch and her embarrassing fiasco in the desert, raises some interesting issues – especially with regards to the above-referenced quote – about the overall suitability of women in uniform serving in combat, or more specifically, women working in MOS’s (military occupational specialties) where they could encounter combat situations (as Lynch – an Army truckdriver – did).
From personal experience, I feel a woman can do any job in the U.S. Army or the U.S. military that a man can do on a one for one basis – as long as that job is in an office.
However, give a woman a combat support or combat service support job in the field, and the woman soldier is an instant liability. In combat- and combat-related situations in the field, a woman just does not match up to a man in terms of stamina, ability, aggressiveness, strategic and tactical thinking skills, and other basic soldiering skills that save lives on the battlefield.
In any office environment, women have it in spades. In an office, women invariably have the upper hand over men in such areas as playing office politics, nail filing, flirting, eye-batting, back-stabbing, seducing the boss, gossiping and other feline activities – regardless of whether that office be military or civilian.
But given the fact that the physicality and sheer brutality of today’s battlefield has progressed little from the days when men fought each other with sticks and spears, women, for all their evolving, still bring little, if any real value into the fray.
That being said, I feel nauseous whenever I see Jessica Lynch’s dopey face being featured prominently all over the Internet and the U.S. media like she’s some type of hero. (As if she deserved the Bronze Star for what she did, which was basically cower in the back of her HUMMVEE while all her buddies were getting shot to hell.)
Admittedly, Jessica Lynch has tried to spurn the publicity that has been thrust upon her. Nevertheless, she seems to be unable to cast off the title of “world-class victim”, specifically, in terms of being a victim of the feminists that lobbied ceaselessly during the Clinton years to throw more women like her into combat-related jobs she was pathetically unprepared for, a victim of the Iraqis who physically and sexually assualted her, a victim of the Pentagon’s blatant lies and jingoistic propaganda machine, a victim of the media’s sensationalism and the shameless spectacle they created about her, a victim of the antiwar movement who is trying to use her story to support their agenda, a victim of her own working-class and impoverished Appalachian background that made her vulnerable to multimillion dollar book and miniseries deals, and, finally, a victim of her own naivete for failing to protect her own privacy with a good media lawyer and a PR firm to run interference for her.
Have you ever seen anyone so victimized before?