Yawning over a woman's death

WorldNetDaily
May 27, 2006

By Ted Byfield © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Canada lost its first woman soldier to enemy fire near Kandahar, Afghanistan, last week, and the unquestioning public acceptance of a female combat death was hailed by the Defense Department as indisputable evidence that the Canadian public has now acquiesced in the feminist vision of the fighting woman soldier.

However, conservative columnist Barbara Kay in the National Post has not in the least acquiesced in it. While commending as heroic, "manly" and admirable the quick death from a mortar shell of Capt. Nichola Goddard of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, she also noted that it raised none of the issues likely to excite popular misgivings about female combat troops.

"She died instantly and with dignity. Had she been captured (like American PFC Jessica Lynch in Iraq in 2003) and raped or tortured, Canadians would have experienced anguish of a very gender-specific kind."

Under successive Liberal governments, the feminist agenda was imposed on Canada's armed forces, just as it was imposed on every other department of government. Since they played no part in the Vietnam War and their role has been largely confined to "peacekeeping" activity, Canadian forces have had little opportunity to test this sociologically based innovation under actual combat conditions.

Such opportunity as there was did not turn out gloriously. When the Canadian Navy sent a small force into the Gulf War, which included a number of women sailors, the only notable casualties were cases of pregnancy. These, when word of them leaked out, reduced the whole experiment to something of a farce.

Still, the Army pushed on, and in 1997 one general predicted that by 2009 women would comprise 28 percent of the armed forces and 25 percent of front-line troops. Today, nine years into his 12-year prophecy, women comprise 14 percent, not 28 percent of the armed forces, and about 10 percent, not 25 percent, of the 2,300 Canadian troops in Afghanistan are female. Capt. Goddard was the 17th Canadian killed there.

I remember hearing a speech by an Israeli colonel, some 10 years ago, on the problems posed by female combat troops. Since the Israeli forces, unlike those of the other Western democracies, must constantly be kept at combat readiness, his comments still seem instructive.

The Israeli army had found, he said, that women were particularly effective in certain non-combat roles. Since they tended to be more fastidious than men over detail, they were more useful in certain intelligence work, for example. But the Israeli army no longer used them in combat for three reasons: First, when they are captured, they are almost always raped. Second, men behave irrationally when a female member of their unit is threatened or wounded. Third, a combat soldier is trained to kill people, and killing is incompatible with the Israeli view of womankind.

Such wisdom was lost, however, on the Canadian military, which instead conformed to media hype, instilling in female recruits that women had played a major front-line role in World War II. One recent study demonstrates this as nonsense. It found that where 300,000 American servicemen died in World War II, only 470 service women died from all causes, exactly 12 from enemy fire. Yet Life magazine in a commemorative issue 40 years after the war ended, ran a layout of war heroes, 10 males and seven females.

What's noticeable in all this is the readiness with which the modern bureaucratic mind sacrifices practical reality in the service of ideological dogma, even at the cost of danger to human life. Some fire departments, for instance, have reduced their requirements of physical strength to meet an imposed quota of women. Dragging a heavy fire hose up a steep, slippery roof requires a certain physical strength. This necessity, however, is simply ignored.

If the individual required to do the dragging lacks the strength to do it, then lives are in danger, perhaps those in the burning building, perhaps those of other firefighters. To the liberal mindset, however, there is a higher cause at stake here. The quota must be met. The social order must change.

How long, one wonders, can we run a society in defiance of physical reality and self-evident truth before it collapses out of its own absurdity? It's hard to escape the premonition of some impending and cataclysmic disaster, the direct consequence of our breaking too many rules, ignoring too many irrefragable moral necessities. Is this merely old age talking? Perhaps and perhaps not. For historically, whole civilizations have in fact collapsed, almost always from inner flaw and folly.

An exceptional woman ( . . . in combat: a Canadian perspective)
National Post - Canada ^ | Wednesday, May 24, 2006 | Barbara Kay

An exceptional woman

Barbara Kay, National Post
Published: Wednesday, May 24, 2006

When news broke of Canada's first female combat death last week -- that of Captain Nichola Goddard in an Afghanistan firefight -- Canadians greeted the news in a gender-neutral way. It was not a female soldier we mourned per se, but simply a soldier. The Department of National Defence's chief historian applauded this as "a reflection, really, on society saying we have accepted the implications of gender integration."

I don't think that's true. Canadians accepted Captain Goddard's death without ambivalence because she was a career soldier, on a necessary, well-executed mission, who had willingly undertaken the risk of combat duty. She left no children behind. Her death could not be imputed to lesser physical strength or other female handicaps. Most importantly, she died instantly, and with dignity. Had she been captured (like American PFC Jessica Lynch in Iraq in 2003) and raped or tortured, Canadians would have experienced anguish of a very gender-specific kind.

Captain Goddard's courage and impeccable service record do not indicate a wider trend for women in the military. She was a "manly" soldier -- I say that with great admiration and no irony -- and the exception to a general rule. Women do not, and have never sought, military careers in more than token numbers. Moreover, even combat-trained women rarely opt for combat.

Over the past 15 years, a vast amount of money and good will has been expended in developed countries to support the PC value of gender integration in combat training. Amongst other accommodations here and in the United States, we've witnessed lowered combat training standards for some women, rigorous harassment codes and the enlargement of aircraft carrier bathroom facilities.

Nevertheless, in 30 or so wars currently in progress, most uniformed women are still choosing the traditional (and honourable) path of their non-uniformed historical sisters -- providing logistical, administrative and medical support to the men who kill and get killed. As competent and professional as Captain Goddard was, her attitude was unusual. There are about 8,000 women in the Canadian Forces (CF), of whom 225 actually occupy the "combat arms" trades. What have we spent to recruit, train and service women in order to deploy this low number? Don't ask (because they won't tell).

Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld recently unpacked many of the myths promoted to sustain the illusion that men and women are equally keen to face combat.
A case in point: After a November, 2005, column on the folly of integrated combat training, I received indignant e-mails from female CF members who mentioned, amongst other examples supporting their received wisdom, the heroism of servicewomen in the Second World War. Where did they get this idea? Van Creveld illustrates the collusion of liberal media with feminist theory by citing a 1985 Life magazine WWII commemorative issue that grossly misleads the reader by featuring portraits of war heroes: 10 male soldiers alongside seven female soldiers. The reality, according to Van Creveld? From 1941-45, 15 million American men were conscripted. Of those, half went overseas where 300,000 died. During the entire war, 470 servicewomen died of all causes, 12 from enemy fire.

In 1997, General Maurice Baril predicted that by 2009 women would comprise 28% of the CF (currently 14%) and a full 25% of front-line infantry troops (currently 0.6%). Nothing in the experience of our military -- or any other Western force -- supported such a projection. The fact that the DND was seriously entertaining such a fantastic delusion speaks to a willed disregard for optimal institutional strength in the interests of political correctness.

The government does not promote gender equity in nursing, teaching, library science or childcare, because these are all intrinsically female professional bastions. Intrinsically male bastions, however, are regarded as fertile ground for cultural "re-education," and now even military spokesmen docilely toe the feminist line as expressed by one retired woman lieutenant: "In this modern era of equality of the sexes, [soldiering] has no gender."

A pretty notion, but a falsehood nonetheless. The Forces need women in most occupations, but for combat purposes most women are inferior to men in both body and spirit; and most uniformed women self-select out of combat, just as most civilian women self-select out of other male-dominated high-risk professions.

By all accounts, Captain Nichola Goddard was a great combat soldier who defied such generalizations. But our recruiters and policy-makers would be well-served to understand just how exceptional this woman was.

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