"A woman is human..."

"A woman is human. 

She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. 

Likewise, she is never less. 

Equality is a given.

A woman is human."

-Vera Nazarian

More likely than not, you've heard that Leon Panetta has cleared women for ground combat. This is an overturning of the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule, which prohibited women from fighting in ground combat units as well as some of the more physically demanding portions of the military. This ruling expands on the decision from about a year ago to allow 14,500 women into combat positions, mostly in the army, and will open up about 230,000 infantry jobs in the army and marines to women. Right now, women comprise of 207,308 about the roughly 1.4 million active duty soldiers. Despite the 1994 rule, around 280,000 women have fought in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with 152 being killed and 946 wounded.  

This announcement has been met with mixed reactions. Liberals, of course, are praising it, calling it "ground-breaking" and a step forward in women's rights. I'll come back to that "women's rights" idea later, but let me tell you what I think of it.

Let me preface this by saying: I am a woman. And I'm a very patriotic woman who has considered military service. On the surface, I think the gender equality of this decision is great. I know strong women. I know powerful and intelligent women who the military would only be so lucky to have fight for them on the battleground. My roommate is in our university's ROTC program and she is ecstatic about this decision, but if she asks me what I think, I'll tell her the truth: I think it's a bad move militarily, but a good move politically. 

To begin with, traditionally, men have been the protectors of their families. "This isn't the 1940's!" I can hear some femi-nazi's screeching. And they're right. Times have definitely changed since then. Like I already mentioned, there are strong women in this world, women just as strong or more so than men. I'm not denying that. But the fact remains that women are viewed, quite often, whether rightfully or wrongfully, as the sex that needs protection. And some men, not misogynistic pigs but chivalrous, traditional men, might feel the urge to act on chivalry and protect the women they are supposed to be fighting with. Then, I ask, when they're on the battlefield, fighting for their lives, will women be a distraction, one more thing to look out for, even if women don't necessarily want that extra protection? I can't answer that, but I think it might be. 

A friend of mine raised another issue with this. She said she had a former military serviceman as teacher in high school and he believed having a mixed gender base was distracting for an entirely different reason: there was sexual tension. And when armed forces members are flirting, they might have trouble fighting. 

Speaking of sexual tension, the close quarters that soldiers share could lead to some very uncomfortable situations. Marine veteran Ryan Smith agrees with me. In the linked article, he recaps one of his own missions in Iraq and the conditions that he and his infantry squad lived under and, in his opinion, having to strip naked after a shower-less month of vile sanitary conditions and dysentery in front of members of the opposite sex would be uncomfortable for everyone involved, no matter how professional they are.

My last point of concern here deals with the exact opposite situation: what if the very people that women need protection from are the men they are fighting with? The Department of Defense estimates that roughly 19,000 sexual assaults occur in the military each year. Of those, about 16% are reported. Of those, about 17% are prosecuted and a grand total of about 6% of these rapists ever face jail time. This is a huge problem. "The Invisible War" documents some of the rape investigations (or lack there of) and shows just what kind of toll this takes on the women involved. And this is happening without ground combat roles; increasing the number of military positions for women isn't going to make that problem any better. And then imagine if a infantry woman is taken by the enemy...

But these are apparently mute points because Panetta's made his decision. So now I wonder: will women have to meet the same physical qualifications? They should. There's a biological difference between men and women but if women want equal rights they should have exactly the same requirements to gain positions. And war won't go easy on them just because they're women. So, assuming that the requirements are the same, there's a good chance that many women won't meet the qualifications to join infantry squads. That works out pretty well for Panetta - he can claim that the government is making the necessary changes for women to advance, but it's not their fault that some women don't meet the physical requirements. 

What happens when a woman becomes pregnant? If the draft returns, will it include women? For all those liberals cheering, will they be cheering when the government comes for their daughters? 

And this just leads me to a much larger topic: this "war on women" that I'm sure affected this decision. Why else? There are so many more important things going on in this country right now, why is this getting any attention? Because if the Obama administration can't win the war on terror (but, of course, they have won that), they will defeat this "war on women," which shouldn't be too difficult seeing as they created it.

So that I could be as accurate as possible, I googled "War on Women" to see if I could get a definition for what it actually is...and it is defined, I kid you not, as "a political catchphrase...used to describe the Republican Party's initiatives in federal and state legislatures that are seen as restricting women's rights...". The Republican Party's initiative. Gotta love it. Can we start a "War on Unborn Children" as a political catchphrase to describe the Democratic Party's initiatives in federal and state legislatures to murder babies? 

Here's what it really is: a political agenda created by the Democratic Party and turned into an issue in order to win female votes during the election, a plan that was unfortunately successful as 55% of women voted for BO. Gawd. I have never been so ashamed of my gender. But here's where the problem for the Democratic Party comes in: there was no war, but they promised to end the war and protect women's rights...so now they need to find some women's rights to protect. 

This is what desperation looks like. This decision, right here, is happening because BO's administration realized that, after preaching about women's rights, they were nasty, lying hypocrites, not only for the whole country, but in their own administration. Here's why. BO has filled four large positions since his re-election. 

Secretary of State: John Kerry (aka a white man)

Secretary of Defense: Chuck Hagel (aka a white man)

Secretary of the Treasury: Jack Lew (aka a white man)

CIA Director: John Brennan (aka a white man)

Now, I don't think these men were bad choices because they are men (I think they were bad choices because they are incompetent buffoons who are determined to see the United States reduced to a third world country under the dictatorship of their savior, Barack Obama). I don't care what gender anyone is as long as they can do their jobs...which they can't, but that's truly not the point. In his first-term, 8 of the 23 cabinet positions were women (36%). That's better than George W. Bush but not as high as Bill Clinton. Here's my thing: I. DON'T. CARE. There is no "quota" for the number of women who are working in the White House and nor should there be. The person best for the job should get the job. But for a man who owes women for his re-election, replacing all the women who are leaving and then some with white men is bad. And hypocritical. And totally not unexpected.

But wait, there's more! In 2011, The Washington Times surveyed the 121 White House members who made more than $100,000 a year (whose taxes all better have gone up like all the rest of ours). 47 of them were women and 74 were men. And more still! Female employees for BO have a median salary of $60,000, 18% less than that of their male co-workers ($71,000). 

And this is just a small part of the hypocrisy. Lena Dunham comparing voting for Barack Obama to losing your virginity is one example; Slow Joe feeling up the congresswomen he swore in and telling one to "spread your legs, you're going to be frisked" is another; BO accepting TIME'S Person of the Year over Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for fighting for women's rights at age 15, epitomizes it all. 

So, ladies, here are the facts: Their "war on women" as it is currently defined is a myth, but there is a war on women out there, and it comes from the government. It's not about equal pay or reproductive rights, it's about feeling like we are oppressed because they tell us that we are oppressed. Instead of turning to men, then, they want us to turn to the government because they protect our 'rights' and they will help us 'advance'. The government doesn't want to make us strong, though, they just want us to depend on them instead of men...or ourselves. But we don't need them. We are strong. We are smart. We are independent. Don't let the government tell you anything otherwise. 

God bless America.