It's The Lies...

  

It’s the lies that upset me.

Philip Hammond, the British defence secretary, wants women in combat units. And rather than wait for the 2018 deadline imposed by European law for an end to this egregious example of discrimination, he has decided to jump the gun. He wants he says to “send out a message” that the army is fully inclusive to women.

As he told a Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch:

“We have frankly a problem – there is a big gap between what our society looks like and what our armed forces look like. The image of the military I think is still a macho image, the last bastion of male chauvinism. The reality is very different.”

Why the hell shouldn’t the armed forces look different from society? The staff at a steelworks or a kindergarten also look different from our society, for good reasons. In short, thank God it does look different. Imagine how our  mollycoddled, waddling society would cope in a war zone. And as for being “macho”, that is the job description of a soldier. Who but a macho idiot would be willing to risk his life and health for what we pay our soldiers?

But I do agree with the defence secretary on one thing:

We have frankly a problem.

But that problem has nothing to do with a lack of women at the sharp end. Though I must confess that in arguing the case against women in combat I’m beginning to understand how Galileo felt putting the case for heliocentrism. I know I’m right and I can prove it, but I’ve got a feeling that the inquisition boys and girls aren’t listening.

In short there are three obvious reasons why women shouldn’t serve in the infantry (four if you include the horrific sight of Demi Moore in GI Jane).

1)    Physiology

Women are physically not up to it. A woman’s upper body strength is only about 40-60% of a man’s. Whenever women have been integrated into combat units the guys in the squad have always ended up humping their kit (and sometimes the broads too, but that’s another point).

2)    Sex

Sexual tension and relationship drama play hell with unit cohesion particularly at squad level. It is ridiculous in the extreme to imagine that you can mix very young and fit men and women in an environment which alternates between long periods of extreme tedium interspersed with a few of  intense exhilaration and not expect sexual sparks to fly.  A squad is a unit of equals who rely absolutely on each other in extremis. Jealousy, unrequited love and infatuation are just about the last thing you need in the stress of a war zone.  

3)    Feminists

Paradoxically, the sisterhood itself seriously undermines the case for women in combat by its endless demands for the favoured treatment of women.

A good example concerns the need to test women for pregnancy before they deploy. Over 200 women were sent home from Iraq and Afghanistan after realising they were pregnant. Most of them had conceived before deployment but the Ministry of Defence has declined to make pregnancy testing before deployment mandatory. This is because it was considered “offensive to women” to require it. When is anything ever considered offensive to men? If male soldiers got pregnant such tests would be considered an obvious and logical necessity. But feminists demand preferential treatment for women so the requirement is delicately ignored.

If female psychology is really as fragile as feminists are intent on proving with their endless bleating, then perhaps they’re not the best choice to go mano-a-mano with the Taliban. 

Another example was the reaction to the behaviour of navy Ldg Seaman Faye Turney. After the illegal capture of her boat she caved in to Iranian demands that she remove her uniform, wear a veil and make a broadcast about Britain’s guilt in the affair. She justified her assistance to the enemy by suggesting that she feared being raped. That may have been a real danger, but she should have been criticised for her cooperation with her illegal captors. Instead everyone empathised with her vulnerable situation. We can’t have it both ways. Either women are equal in combat situations or they are especially vulnerable to certain kinds of threat. Of course, the latter is true, which is why women should not be exposed to the danger in the first place.  

4)    Demi Moore in G.I. Jane

***

OK, I get it, Phil. You want to burnish your liberal credentials at the expense of the safety and effectiveness of our armed forces. I don’t agree with you, but I get it.

What upsets me is the lies.

Hammond can’t just come out and say that he accepts that more of our soldiers will die and the army will be less effective, but he believes that enhancing the career options of women in the army overrides that. No. Hammond has to have it both ways and claim that:

“The key factor informing this judgement will be the delivery of operational effectiveness”.

He also stated unequivocally that fitness requirements would not be reduced.

These are both craven lies. Operational effectiveness is bound to suffer and women cannot be incorporated into the infantry without reducing fitness standards substantially as the U.S. Marine Corps has just had to do in its own similar incorporation of women in combat roles.

The policy of allowing women into the infantry depresses me. One day in the near future we will all be able to enjoy the spectacle of sexual equality in action when an enemy releases its latest snuff video of one of our women soldiers being tortured to death.

That depresses me.

But what upsets me is the casual lies used to sell this reform.  And the lack of scrutiny that those lies get from our liberal journalists.

Maybe they are salivating at the prospect of reporting that taboo breaking, high definition enemy snuff video.