Unnatural Born Killers

There is plenty of news out there that turns the stomach but this story, intended to be innocuous, from NPR was just awful: Can Female Marines Carry The Load And Kill The Enemy?. The title was bad enough, the content was even worse.

More than a dozen Marines from Alpha Company fan out across California's Mojave Desert, far into the distance. Machine-gun fire gives them cover. The small forms dash ahead. Some drop to one knee, others fall on their stomachs, firing at pop-up targets.
Only one woman is part of this group. Until last fall, Sgt. Kelly Brown was fueling helicopters and trucks. Now she's running with an assault rifle.

"Sgt. Brown. She's a good Marine, she's adapted well," says Capt. Ray Kaster, Alpha Company commander, as he walks up a gravel road toward the training range at a Marine base in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

"She's a natural leader. She's been very good for us. Very good to have a positive influence amongst the females," he says.

But the number of women is dwindling. Kaster estimates he's lost about half of them, though Marine officials later say about one-third of the nearly 30 women dropped out.

Kaster says the majority of those dropouts were due to hip and leg fractures, injuries that come from the heavy load an infantry Marine must carry: weapons, ammunition, a pack that can weigh from 50 pounds to more than 100 pounds.

First the simple facts. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the women have had to drop the program. Not a knock on their toughness or character, just a simple matter of biology. Women are just not meant to carry packs weighing over 100 pounds where the weight has to ride on their hips. One female Marine interview weighs 130 lbs. One stands 5'1", petite by any standards. So basically they are women, in spite of our cultural attempt to feminize men and make women masculine. They are being asked to perform a physical task that is difficult for a young, fit man and so difficult for women that it is literally crushing their skeletal structure, all to make some sort of political statement.

Second, the ethical issue. I know this question is largely settled in the culture but not for me. Do we really, with a military larger and vastly more potent than any other in the world, need a 5'1" woman, who needs to shop for petite sized dresses, being sent around the world to "kill the enemy" on our behalf? I don't want anyone killing anyone else on my behalf but I especially don't want a woman doing so. It is awful to think of a woman being asked to point a rifle at someone and pull the trigger so that my "way of life" can be preserved. It is even worse to think of that young woman lying in the sand somewhere with her life draining out from a gut wound, dying in agony or falling into the hands of the enemy who undoubtedly has a far less "enlightened" view of women than we allegedly do. I mean, is it really more demeaning to ask a woman to wear a burqa than it is to ask her to kill someone else instead of a man doing it?

You can teach a woman to "want" to be a cage fighter or go off to shoot the bad guys or any other activity that historically has been a male dominated one. You can't change their nature or their physique. Nor can you make it palatable and acceptable for any actual man to be comfortable with a woman serving as a blood-spilling proxy so he can continue to eat, drink and entertain himself into an early grave. The general state of American masculinity is disgusting and the enlisting of women to kill to satisfy the perverse motives of a radical few is second only to legalized infanticide under the guise of "choice" as the most egregious examples of how far we have fallen.

Men in this country are already sent off to kill, die and be maimed in foolish, unconstitutional and likely illegal war after war. Please stop compounding this by beguiling women with the false glory of blood-letting.