Killing people and breaking things. . . and women in the service.

 The Women's Mounted Emergency Corps.  "A mounted emergency corps of women has been organized as an auxiliary to the Second Field Artillery, of Brooklyn. The women wear a military uniform and are trained in giving aid. They learn to mount and dismount quickly, to help a wounded soldier who needs first aid, and to assist one who Is not totally disabled into the saddle. There is no plan yet for taking women to France in any but nursing capacity but it may be that the Women s Emergency Corps will get to the fighting line before the war is over."  The Oregonian, 1917.

Recently, a dear cousin of mine "liked" a photo that appears in Stars and Stripes of a collection of female soldiers all feeding their babies in the traditional, i.e., the original, way.  She posted something along the lines of "how beautiful".

And it is.

But its not a good thing for our Army, which touches on something I've avoided, but given as I'm getting older by the day, and shy away less from controversial topics more and more, I'll go ahead and post on it.

In the Army, at least at one time, you used to hear in training "What is the spirit of the bayonet?"

The answer is "To kill!"

And that's because an army, and by extension its soldiers, exist to kill people and break things.

Not for feeding babies.

A society that has lost sight of that, is fooling itself. 

Warfare has traditionally been a male thing since day one, literally, no matter what our society may think of that today.  It's in our DNA.  This is not to state that no woman never participated in combat in prior eras or antiquity, but frankly, that's a massive exception to the rule usually indicating a level of desperation that equates with an enemy being on the verge of killing the babies and taking the women.  Truly.

Even some of the most frequently cited examples of female deployments turn out to be spotty at best.  The Soviets used very few women in combat during World War Two, contrary to what is sometimes imagined, and the entire Red Army was pretty much a violent, ignorant mob anyhow, which engaged in activities outside of Russia that have legitimately brought shame upon its reputation in that war ever since. The Israelis don't actually deploy women into combat either, contrary to what is commonly noted, instead using them in support and training roles.  Only Western armies use women in combat, as those armies are heavily influenced by societal thought that requires a degree of un=realistism here, and which further benefit from technology so advanced that they can afford to cut corners on this sort of thing to a certain degree.

Part of the reason that this evolution is a bad one is that it simply doesn't reflect the hard physical nature of being a combat soldier.  Like it or not, the simple fact of the matter is that warfare remains one of the few areas where the ancient male advantage in strength is highly applicable.  Even test results in areas where the military trains hard shows this.  Women generally have a very hard time passing military courses that remain traditionally tough, while generally men do not.  An added real fear here is that the courses will be adjusted to allow for women to pass them, which at some point will catch up with the service in terms of combat results.

A second, and just as applicable reason not to welcome this tread, however, is that there are real and established psychological differences between men and women.  Men generally peak more rapidly in anger than women, and trail off more quickly as well.  This seems to hearken back to the era when every man was a combatant of a type, and it serves men well in combat.  It doesn't serve women well, and indeed that doesn't serve the service well either.  In part, slow to anger women remain angry thereafter, which is a dangerous thing for military order.

But another psychological aspect of this is that it doesn't take into account the relationship between men and women that is also in our DNA.  Like it or not, that attraction is going to exist as well as deeply ingrained urges. It is already the case, even in peacetime, that a frighteningly high percentage of servicewomen become pregnant during their service, note the item that we started off with here in this entry. That makes them, effectively, a casualty in a combat situation.  

And, at their best, men will tend to protect women, which creates a bond other than that which exists between male combatants. The "brotherhood" nature of men at war is often noted, but less well noted is that soldiers are trained to, and do, leave men behind when it served their larger goal.  Leaving women behind, which would be a military requirement, would be, I suspect, much more difficult.  And by leave behind, I mean leave behind to die.  Men are left behind to die at crossroads and in buildings, to allow the escape of the whole.  Leaving a young woman behind would not be as easy.

At their worst, and their worst frequently occurs in a combat scenario, men in uniform are violent to women in the very worst way.  Without going into detail on it, if anyone doubts this they should read the books written by Max Hastings that deal with the end of World War Two. Some armies in that conflict were horrific in these regards, but it happened in all of them. And it happens in ours now, which is another story that frequently hits the news but seemingly not in this context.  The number of female servicewomen who are assaulted while in the service is frighteningly high, and introducing them into combat units where the worst things humans do is routine stands to only make this worse.

Finally, there's something really indecent about putting women in this role.  That sounds chauvinistic, and perhaps it is, but its true.  On the average, quite frankly, women are better than men in every deep and meaningful way.  Making them combat solders, and ignoring their feminine aspects, makes this worse. There's no reason to convert women into men, even though our society seems to have forgotten that there are two genders, and only two, and they have very real natural attributes.

I have no doubt that views like mine are not doing to carry the day, at least right now. But I also suspect, as I write this, that we're about to get into a ground war against a group that believes women captured in war make fine slaves, suitable for any purpose.  We're not going in a sane, and dignified, directly.