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Greetings:<br><br>
Kudos to Keely for a beautifully written and insightful response to Ed
Iverson. I wish that I could write like that woman!<br><br>
I just rented my basement apartment to a female soldier, whose move to
Moscow was temporarily delayed because she was to be given an award by
her local Texas Veterans of Foreign Wars this week. <br><br>
I've already thanked her for her service over the phone, and I cannot
wait to get to know this very competent woman, mother, and
husband.<br><br>
Nick Gier<br><br>
At 02:20 PM 7/9/2007, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">During each and every day of my
20 years of military service I NEVER had<br>
reason to doubt the veracity, capability, dedication, or loyal
camaraderie<br>
of those female soldiers with whom I was proud to serve.<br><br>
>From today's (July 9, 2007) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special
thanks<br>
to Keely Emerine Mix -<br><br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
HER VIEW: Other reasons for decline in military enlistment<br>
By Keely Emerine Mix<br><br>
Ed Iverson, in his recent column on the "feminization" of the
U.S. military<br>
(Opinion, June 30 & July 1), has found another way liberals and
feminists<br>
are harming the testosterone-drenched world he cherishes. <br><br>
In noting the difficulty military recruiters have in fulfilling
enlistment<br>
quotas and ever mindful of the social chaos caused by shifting gender
roles,<br>
Iverson offers his cheerfully sexist reason for the declining numbers
of<br>
young men signing up for combat. Not surprisingly, it involves uppity
women,<br>
the evidence of a society run aground on the fluffy, quilted shores
of<br>
egalitarianism.<br><br>
The decline in enlistment couldn't be because American youths see the war
in<br>
Iraq is not a war of liberation or national security, simply a festival
of<br>
carnage based on lies and a push for nothing more noble than
American<br>
hegemony in the Middle East. It couldn't have anything to do with
the<br>
apparent endlessness of the conflict, the reasonable certainty of injury
on<br>
the battlefield and uncaring, inefficient service from the government
once<br>
back home. No, it's that red-blooded American boys just don't want to
take<br>
orders from women and are offended the gals don't stay in their place
as<br>
"nurturers," not soldiers.<br><br>
Iverson's diagnosis and prescription? The military has become
"feminized,"<br>
and the solution, before all is lost, is to stop the madness and restore
the<br>
military as a place where only men do battle. No women needed, nor<br>
appreciated; our presence on the battlefield and in the barracks is<br>
destroying the very fabric of warfare as we know it, as evidenced by
the<br>
horror of American soldiers playing soccer with Iraqi children as part
of<br>
their tours of duty. <br><br>
"Real" soldiers kick butt, Iverson would say. They don't engage
in<br>
relationships with those they purportedly defend, and they certainly
don't<br>
indulge in attempts to understand and engage the culture around them.
<br><br>
Of course, Iverson and his ilk believe that a nation defended by its
women<br>
is a nation not worth defending, and so the United States already has
cursed<br>
itself by allowing women near the frontlines. The unworthiness of the
nation<br>
apparently is evidenced by the fact that our boys are so disheartened by
the<br>
thought of working alongside, maybe even submitting to, the gals who
fight<br>
with them that they're unwilling to sign up for a trip to Fallujah.
To<br>
Iverson, that's not a truculence that would bring about a
well-deserved<br>
rebuke in the world most of us know, but a defiance expressed by men
who<br>
know their place, by God, and seek to occupy it without the interference
of<br>
women. Iverson sees nobility in declining to fight for a country that
would<br>
imperil both sons and daughters in battle, and he suggests that when
women's<br>
presence in the military is sufficiently scaled back, their menfolk
will<br>
flood the battlefield to defend a nation duly chastened and, cleansed
of<br>
feminization, appropriately renewed. <br><br>
His analysis is woefully ignorant and tragically callous. Iverson
believes<br>
that Scripture informs his bigoted bloviations, while the Old
Testament<br>
records the military heroism of Israel's divinely appointed judge,
Deborah,<br>
and the strength of Jael in killing the invader Sisera. But however<br>
inconvenient these passages are in defending an ethic of military
might<br>
through masculinity, it's the New Testament that causes his argument
more<br>
problems. In his drive to root out all instances of creeping
feminization,<br>
Iverson fails to see the real threat to all that's good and holy.
Nations<br>
are imperiled by an unbridled masculinity exalting power over
righteousness<br>
and exulting in a strength that comes from angry men and the weapons
they<br>
fashion. The problem "over there" is not that women are
fighting and dying<br>
instead of men, but that anyone is fighting and dying in this senseless
war.<br><br>
<br>
Does Iverson protest the loss of Iraqi women and children who never
chose<br>
the battlefield but became casualties anyway? Is it easier to lob
another<br>
macho grenade at feminists, peaceniks and liberals than to engage in
serious<br>
debate? <br><br>
>From his perch of masculine privilege, Iverson is unwilling to
address the<br>
sinfulness of a worldview that favors him and his fellow men of chest,
and<br>
his views reflect no Gospel I'm familiar with, other than a gospel of
hope<br>
in might and masculinity that really is no hope at all.<br><br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
Seeya round town, Moscow.<br><br>
Tom Hansen<br>
Moscow, Idaho<br><br>
"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the
tranquil<br>
and steady dedication of a lifetime." <br><br>
--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.<br><br>
<br>
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<font size=2>"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the
application of it to human affairs."<br>
--Ralph Waldo Emerson<br><br>
"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings
who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."<br>
--Mohandas Gandhi<br><br>
"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot
be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on
the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science,
religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its
various parts." --Ma</font><font size=1>x Planck<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm<br>
</a>208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
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