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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Women In War An Attack On Logic A Bad Idea We’re Already Reaping A Whirlwind Of Scandal.

Radical feminists aren’t going to be happy - if, indeed they’re capable of being happy - until our wives, sisters and mothers are coming home in body bags by the dozens, like their unlucky forefathers before them.

The military’s crazy social experiment that began by putting a few female recruits in harm’s way during the Persian Gulf War is undermining morale and could lead to the conscription of women during a future draft.

We’re already reaping a whirlwind of scandal as our military struggles to accommodate the politically correct Clinton administration.

We have white female soldiers claiming that Army investigators coerced them into saying they’d been raped by black drill sergeants. We have Navy officials who admit privately they expect 10 percent of a ship’s female contingent to become pregnant during a six-month deployment.

And we have Emma Cuevas. Trained as a helicopter pilot at a cost to taxpayers of $500,000, Cuevas now wants to quit the Army because she’s on call and being deprived of her “constitutional right” to breast-feed her baby.

The situation, which would have been ridiculed by the tough World War II leathernecks and GIs who won back Europe and the Pacific islands, calls to mind a political cartoon. In it, two survivors look out over a battlefield strewn with fallen soldiers. Says one: “They weren’t very good, but they sure were diversified.”

Women belong in the military but not in combat.

The bottom line to the military shouldn’t be political correctness; it should be killing, blowing up things and beating the other guy’s army. Anything that detracts from that goal - and mixing women in their peak child-bearing years with young men at their sexual peak certainly does - ought to be eliminated.

Bill Mauldin, creator of World War II’s “Willie and Joe” cartoons, would have had a field day with a handbook now being circulated to Army unit commanders. Among other things, the handbook acknowledges that a pregnancy “disrupts unit cohesiveness.” Duh.

The handbook goes on to say that deployed female soldiers are more prone to injuries and fatigue than men, risk dehydration because of reluctance to use public latrines and “may have greater difficulty staying warm enough to sleep well at night.”

War is hell when you can’t get a good night’s sleep.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Women can make military stronger”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides

For opposing view, see “Women can make military stronger”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides