DRAFTING WOMEN: WORSE THAN COWARDLY

Imagine your beautiful 18-year-old daughter in a life-and-death struggle with an ISIS fighter in Iraq. It is kill or be killed. She must depend on her own strength. What are her chances for survival? You know the answer to that. A big fat zero.

Only a fool or a coward would send a young woman into direct ground combat where the mission is to seek out and kill the enemy. It appears that the House Armed Services Committee has plenty of both.

Earlier this year Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, dutifully doing the bidding of the Obama administration, lifted the ban that had prevented women from being assigned to direct ground combat units. This move ignored logic and a body of Marine Corps research evidence against such a move.

On April 27, the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee sought to complete this dangerous circle by voting for an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (HR 4478) to “Draft America’s Daughters.” If all goes as planned, the full House of Representatives is expected to vote on this bill early next week.

Presently, we have an all-volunteer military where a draft is unnecessary. Given the current policy, many smart young women will avoid military service knowing they could be sent into direct armed combat due to the capitulation of this administration to the radical feminists in Congress and the Pentagon. And, no, Alondra, Isabella and Selenna, despite what you have been led to believe, this is not a choice. If you join the military, you must go where you are assigned.

Flash forward to 2020. The world is spinning out of control as it once was before World War I and World War II. The United States military has used up its supply of volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The draft is reinstated, and your daughters and granddaughters are conscripted and on their way to the front lines.

Will you then scream, “How did this happen?”

I’ll tell you: Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a conservative stalwart, temporarily lost his mind and introduced the “Draft America’s Daughters” amendment in order to put committee Democrats on record for backing the nutty policy of this administration to send minimally qualified women into battle.

The amendment initially lost (as it should have) on a voice vote. However, since Hunter had insisted on a recorded vote, he then lost when six of his fellow Republicans joined all but one Democrat and voted for his amendment.

Irresponsible Republicans were led by feminist Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a former A-10 pilot. McSally was one of the first women to fly combat planes over hostile areas as part of aircraft patrols over no-fly territories.

Although McSally served with distinction, she has the problem of believing her own press clippings. In her 26 years of service, she never experienced the physical demands of ground combat or the perils of being a POW, which almost certainly would be a reality for women if conscription results from final passage of the Hunter legislation.

Hunter, a Marine Iraq veteran, voted against his own amendment, but the damage was done when fellow Republicans Joe Heck, Nev., Walter Jones, N.C., Sam Graves, Mo., Steve Knight, Calif., and Chris Gibson, N.Y., joined with McSally.

Have these men lost their minds?

If direct ground combat assignments are supposed to be a reward for military women, it is a reward most would gladly do without. An official survey of Army women found that 92.5 percent would reject ground combat assignments if they were offered. Bear in mind, thanks to Obama, this is no choice. It may well be a death sentence. It may not be fair that the average man is six inches taller, 30 pounds heavier and (more importantly) has 42 percent more upper body strength than the average woman, but it is a reality. It may not be fair that, if placed in a combat situation, a woman will not have an equal opportunity to survive!

It is time for all the sane citizens to beseech their member of the House of Representatives to vote against the Defense Authorization Bill unless the “Draft America’s Daughters” amendment is stripped out.

Some members of the House Armed Services Committee may have lost their minds, but that doesn’t mean the rest have to dutifully march to the drumbeat of the radical feminists who want to step over the body bags of their enlisted sisters in order to run things.

The military must not be a slave to political correctness.