Combat is a deadly lab

Tell me, ladies, have you any real awareness of what you are demanding and setting yourselves up for?

Some years ago, this newspaper published a photo of a young woman soldier – a war casualty in Iraq. She had not been wielding a rifle and bayonet, or anything like that. She had been a crew member of a support helicopter ferrying supplies, which had absorbed a blast of enemy fire.

One of her arms in its entirety had had to be surgically removed (amputated), plus a portion of the adjoining shoulder. Seeing a man so gruesomely mauled would have been bad enough. But a comely young lady – I was shocked and stunned beyond all belief.

If there’s one thing we should never use as a laboratory for social experiment or testing some half-baked theory of gender equality, it’s our armed forces.

Nothing is so dangerous, tough and demanding as wartime soldiering. Recognize the obvious physical and psychological differences (not inequalities) between males and females. Let’s leave fighting to men with their superior strength and stature, leaving women things at which they always have and always will have men hopelessly outclassed: loving, caring, nurturing.

Dennis Roberts

Spokane