A War on the Military
By Dr. Michael A. Milton

 

Just how much disruption can the Radical Left cause our military while we are at war?

So now the secretary of defense has announced the military will allow women in combat. This egalitarian move supposedly clears the way for better promotion opportunities for women in the Army, heretofore barred by law from combat roles.

The prohibition of women in combat not only had to do with clear, cogent arguments — often made convincingly by women in the military who know better — that differences between the male and female physiques pose more risks to troops in hand-to-hand front-line war-fighting and could threaten a mission with unit-morale issues and long-term sustainability in the desolate environments.

No one contends that women— or men who are fit for military service but unfit to do a full-body lift of a 225-pound wounded soldier while running from incoming fire weighed down with a 75-pound rucksack and weapons on their shoulder — should be denied promotions because of their inability for “tip of the spear” service, if their primary role is being performed with distinction. Yet even that is the Army’s business and not ours anyway; it is not a democracy in the military, believe me.

However, like many other recent changes in core military policies that use the U.S. Armed Forces as a veritable petri dish for social experimentation, this new change will, no doubt, get mixed in, with little to no opposition, with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, women serving on submarines, and other gigantic shifts in U.S. military operations.

When these monumental changes, and the extraordinary money amounts that will be spent on indoctrinating troops into accepting them, are compounded with the threat of dangerous cuts to the military via sequestration, the ability to plan for our nation’s defense will be hamstrung. (Read the current cover of the Army Times to see just how real those deep budgetary cuts are impacting Army plans.) We get not only a threat to the military’s mission, but the administration has the gall to make these radical leftist demands of the military while this nation is at war.

Who are we kidding? We can withdraw from one front, but in this new century’s global war waged by radical Islamic terrorists, the “front” is always moving. Western Africa now looms as a new battlefront. We are at war and to deny it is naive, but to make sweeping changes in military operations plus use the military budget as an expendable pawn in a political chess match is like lobbing hand grenades into our own barracks! Enough is enough. It is getting to the brink of self-destruction.

No, it is not time for putting women onto the front line. It is time for our strongest young men, who always must stand first, to know that we are not playing social games while they are climbing through mountains in faraway places chasing Taliban, or fighting door to door in African terrorist-infested urban centers. It is time to support them — and the men and women who provide cover for them — with our prayers, our thanks, and most of all by letting them do their job without constantly sending them through more sensitivity-training classes or threatening to cut  essential supplies. It is wrong.

So who will stand in the Congress and call this latest plan what it is: another liberal agenda being forced on the U.S. Armed Forces? And who in Congress will have the courage to actually say “enough is enough; we are at war”?

At minimum, can’t reasonable people who disagree affirm this: “Men and women of good will  differ on important issues. Let us not debate those most arguable issues and implement extraordinary changes in operations while our troops are being fired on. There is a time for everything. Now is not the time to make another sweeping change to the military”?

Michael A. Milton, Ph.D., is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the Defense Language Institute. He is a former Top Secret Navy security service member and a veteran with more than two decades of experience in the U.S. Armed Forces. He is also the author of Silent No More: A Biblical Call for the Church to Speak to State and Culture.

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