[Vision2020] Other Reasons for Decline in Military Enlistment

[Tom Hansen]

During each and every day of my 20 years of military service I NEVER had
reason to doubt the veracity, capability, dedication, or loyal camaraderie
of those female soldiers with whom I was proud to serve.

>From today's (July 9, 2007) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special thanks
to Keely Emerine Mix -

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HER VIEW: Other reasons for decline in military enlistment
By Keely Emerine Mix

Ed Iverson, in his recent column on the "feminization" of the U.S. military
(Opinion, June 30 & July 1), has found another way liberals and feminists
are harming the testosterone-drenched world he cherishes. 

In noting the difficulty military recruiters have in fulfilling enlistment
quotas and ever mindful of the social chaos caused by shifting gender roles,
Iverson offers his cheerfully sexist reason for the declining numbers of
young men signing up for combat. Not surprisingly, it involves uppity women,
the evidence of a society run aground on the fluffy, quilted shores of
egalitarianism.

The decline in enlistment couldn't be because American youths see the war in
Iraq is not a war of liberation or national security, simply a festival of
carnage based on lies and a push for nothing more noble than American
hegemony in the Middle East. It couldn't have anything to do with the
apparent endlessness of the conflict, the reasonable certainty of injury on
the battlefield and uncaring, inefficient service from the government once
back home. No, it's that red-blooded American boys just don't want to take
orders from women and are offended the gals don't stay in their place as
"nurturers," not soldiers.

Iverson's diagnosis and prescription? The military has become "feminized,"
and the solution, before all is lost, is to stop the madness and restore the
military as a place where only men do battle. No women needed, nor
appreciated; our presence on the battlefield and in the barracks is
destroying the very fabric of warfare as we know it, as evidenced by the
horror of American soldiers playing soccer with Iraqi children as part of
their tours of duty. 

"Real" soldiers kick butt, Iverson would say. They don't engage in
relationships with those they purportedly defend, and they certainly don't
indulge in attempts to understand and engage the culture around them. 

Of course, Iverson and his ilk believe that a nation defended by its women
is a nation not worth defending, and so the United States already has cursed
itself by allowing women near the frontlines. The unworthiness of the nation
apparently is evidenced by the fact that our boys are so disheartened by the
thought of working alongside, maybe even submitting to, the gals who fight
with them that they're unwilling to sign up for a trip to Fallujah. To
Iverson, that's not a truculence that would bring about a well-deserved
rebuke in the world most of us know, but a defiance expressed by men who
know their place, by God, and seek to occupy it without the interference of
women. Iverson sees nobility in declining to fight for a country that would
imperil both sons and daughters in battle, and he suggests that when women's
presence in the military is sufficiently scaled back, their menfolk will
flood the battlefield to defend a nation duly chastened and, cleansed of
feminization, appropriately renewed. 

His analysis is woefully ignorant and tragically callous. Iverson believes
that Scripture informs his bigoted bloviations, while the Old Testament
records the military heroism of Israel's divinely appointed judge, Deborah,
and the strength of Jael in killing the invader Sisera. But however
inconvenient these passages are in defending an ethic of military might
through masculinity, it's the New Testament that causes his argument more
problems. In his drive to root out all instances of creeping feminization,
Iverson fails to see the real threat to all that's good and holy. Nations
are imperiled by an unbridled masculinity exalting power over righteousness
and exulting in a strength that comes from angry men and the weapons they
fashion. The problem "over there" is not that women are fighting and dying
instead of men, but that anyone is fighting and dying in this senseless war.


Does Iverson protest the loss of Iraqi women and children who never chose
the battlefield but became casualties anyway? Is it easier to lob another
macho grenade at feminists, peaceniks and liberals than to engage in serious
debate? 

>From his perch of masculine privilege, Iverson is unwilling to address the
sinfulness of a worldview that favors him and his fellow men of chest, and
his views reflect no Gospel I'm familiar with, other than a gospel of hope
in might and masculinity that really is no hope at all.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.