When Equality Kills

When Equality Kills

The all too predictable, if not lamentable, fruition of decades of prayer at the altar of equality means our young women will now be dying in record numbers. Indeed the US military has now given the green light to female combat soldiers maintaining the front lines of battle in all our wars scattered across the globe. Instead of the enemy raping and devastating villagers, now the villagers are coming to them for defiling.

We may anticipate endless reports of valor and the new era of battle-ready equivalency but alas, what will public reaction be to an American woman dragged naked and bloody through the streets in foreign lands? How might a parent’s grief be exacerbated knowing the horrors their daughter suffered in her final moments and subsequently televised and cheered on Al-Jazeera networks?

Women have had a crucial role in the defense of our nation providing tactical support, communications, first-aid and logistics far from the slaughterhouse of front line combat. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned and perhaps even chivalrous, women do not belong in the trenches—that’s a man’s dominion. Even from a purely genetic standpoint of physical strength and endurance men are better suited; equipped to employ the brutality called for when destroying the enemy in war.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta removed the barrier to female combat units last week with backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among this group of decision-makers is there a one of them with a daughter that will be on the front lines? Are any of them at risk of having personal loss or making special provisions for their girls returning to Thanksgiving dinner missing limbs? Or are perhaps those horrors reserved for other people’s children?

Women comprise only 15% of current military personnel and many strategists believe that percentage will fall (diminishing new recruits) once the reality of wartime dangers come to our living rooms. Like many of my countrymen, I was taught to both respect and protect women and children even at the risk of personal harm. Apparently in 2013 that is no longer a ubiquitous tenet of manhood.