By Mary Rooke, Daily Caller News Foundation | November 25, 2024
Due to President-elect Donald Trump nominating veteran Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense, the country is once again revisiting the conversation about military readiness and its recruitment problem.
The Atlantic, a leftist rag if there ever was one, spent precious time and publishing space to claim that Hegseth’s comments about the negative effects of women in combat were wrong. They argue that Hegseth is unfairly lumping female military service members into a broader conversation about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
“These comments reflect a broader tendency among Trump and his allies to treat every evolution in social norms as a triumph of ‘wokeness’—a DEI project gone awry,” The Atlantic wrote. “Men with higher ranks and much greater responsibility than Hegseth long ago recognized that ending combat exclusion wasn’t primarily a matter of women’s equality, but of military readiness.”
Hegseth made headlines when an interview he did with podcast host Shawn Ryan went viral. In it, he argued that women shouldn’t be placed in combat roles because it affects the lethality and readiness of our military.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated,” he said. “And complication in combat means casualties are worse.”
Of course, Hegseth is correct. It doesn’t take an expert in military command to know this. You just have to be a serious person who understands the uniqueness that divides the sexes and how men and women interact in society to see that problems will arise when men and women are forced into the same box. Feminists would like to believe that women and men are the same. But they are not — just ask the Marine Corps.
In 2015, the Marine Corps spent $36 million to study the military readiness of mixed-sex units versus those made up of all males. The results found that mixed-sex ground combat teams underperformed in almost every area compared to the all-male teams.
“Data collected during a monthslong experiment showed Marine teams with female members performed at lower overall levels, completed tasks more slowly and fired weapons with less accuracy than their all-male counterparts. In addition, female Marines sustained significantly higher injury rates and demonstrated lower levels of physical performance capacity overall,” The Marine Corps Times reported.
Also, there is an anecdotal thread from X in which current and former service members recount their experience deploying to combat zones and completing basic training in mixed-sex units.
The Atlantic decided not to mention the Marine Corps study in its piece. Instead, it focused on comments from the current ineffective leadership who made this integration possible.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for example, said women “make us stronger. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said that the enemy doesn’t recognize whether a male or female is firing the round that kills him. Maybe the latter is true, but Austin and Milley are ignoring a larger problem that could explain in some way why the military has suffered to bolster recruitment numbers for decades.
There is little discussion about whether the man in the foxhole next to the woman (who has apparently failed physical tasks repeatedly) feels safe going into battle with her or whether having a woman deploy with a man creates romantic complications. Not to mention that the direct result of emphasizing female empowerment over qualified candidates ensures that men are discouraged from joining.
While this may hurt the feelings of someone suffering from Girl Boss Syndrome, it dramatically affects the performance capabilities of our military if its members have little faith in their counterparts.
The left believes that the answer to the military’s recruitment problem is to continue filling the gaps with women, even in places like submarines. Hegseth suggests that the military return to its original mission, which was to be a lethal defense system to protect our citizens.
Still, our country is drunk on feminism, which clouds our judgment. This is why The Atlantic writes unironically about how the change in military rules reflects “how military personnel operate in the real world.” As we’ve seen in the real world, when war comes to your borders, the government’s first move is not toward female soldiers.
While I’ve seen several terrifying videos of Ukranian subscription officers rounding up military-aged civilian men to be forced into serving on the frontlines, there hasn’t been one showing females being dragged away from their families. Like the generations before us, they come for their men.
Whether the Pentagon (or the left) will admit it, we need men to protect us. It’s not a patriarchal appreciation thing but a reality. Men are stronger, faster and more violent, making them uniquely more capable of military service. Fixing our recruitment problem hinges on activating American men to pick up their swords.
At some point, we either realize that having women in combat is antithetical to that mission, or our country is going to learn the hard way through death and humiliation at the hands of our enemies.
Mary Rooke is a commentary and analysis writer at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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