Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the U.S. military will drop its ban on women serving in combat.
For many, this was a long overdue, a commonsense step and an acknowledgment that women are fighting in combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and have been for more than a decade, only without being included in the military promotion pipeline.
For radio host Mark Davis, this was the beginning of the end of American's military.
"This is a disaster," he said on his radio show this morning on 660 AM The Answer. "It is an outrage against humanity."
It's also a "sick perversion," "pernicious," and "one of the worst ideas since the beginning of time."
Don't get Davis wrong. He thinks women are "good and strong and wonderful," not to mention tough for enduring that whole childbirth thing. He just doesn't think they can pass the military's physical standards for those engaged in combat.
As proof, he points to the recent failure of two women to pass Marine infantry training, failing to note the small sample size, the fact that one of the women had already passed the punishing endurance test, and the fact that the Marines combat test is significantly tougher than that in other branches.
And what if women do meet the physical standards? Davis dismisses this out of hand, insisting the number who could to be "infinitesimally small," maybe five in the entire military, and predicts that those standards will inevitably be watered down when this becomes embarrassingly clear, thus weakening the country's fighting force.
If that doesn't convince you, Davis has another ace up his sleeve. Combat situations put soldiers in danger of being captured by the enemy. Part of a soldier's job is to withstand torture and to be able to endure hearing one's fellow soldiers do the same. Since men have a natural inclination, "wired by God himself," to protect and shelter women, they couldn't bear to hear the rape and torture they might be subjected to.
"To ask a male soldier to do that is unconscionable," he said.
What Panetta's decision amounts to, he says, is a misguided attempt to conform to liberal notions of diversity. Just like people who support same-sex marriage do so to be nice "to our gay brothers and sisters," and just like affirmative action was an attempt to "be nice to our brothers and sisters of color," letting women serve in combat is simply a way of being nice to women.
"When our military becomes a touchstone of diversity, and that becomes more important than winning wars, then we are screwed," he says.
