I’ve been defending Webb for a position he’s already abandoned

Howard Sutherland writes:

The new “conservative” position on women in combat is a travesty. Whatever green stamps Malkin had with me for border firmness she just used up in her feminista denunciation of reasonable opposition to women in combat. What if, say, George Allen were on record from the 1980s as saying the idea of female sportscasters was ridiculous? Somehow I doubt Malkin would find it newsworthy.

Still, if the new Republican insistence on radical sexual equality in even as patently insane a case as the armed forces is a travesty, James Webb’s current position is a tragedy.

On September 13, 2006, Webb issued a statement saying: “I am completely comfortable with the roles of women in today’s military, and I fully support the advancements that have taken place.” What, then, (other than his being the Democrat in the race) is Malkin complaining about? Webb’s collapse on the issue is a tragedy, an abandonment of integrity. With the possible exception of Elaine Donnelly, who doesn’t have his street cred, Webb was the most forthright and eloquent public figure making the best case against the armed forces as guinea pigs for sexual experimentation.

When a friend gave me a ragged xerox copy (U.S. military samizdat, I guess) of Women Can’t Fight in 1981 I was a company commander in the Fifth Marines, Jim Webb’s old regiment. Even in the all-male world of Marine grunts we were hearing plenty of, and were plenty sick of, propaganda about the benefits to us all of having more Women Marines around and how we should all be more accepting…, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Women Can’t Fight was a cold drink in what was fast becoming a PC desert. When the campaign furore arose, I found it on-line and read it again. I wish Webb had just said “I stand by every word.” He has no honest reason to back away from anything he wrote. 27 years after Webb wrote it, Women Can’t Fight is accurate prophecy from a former officer who understood the armed forces well enough to know where the reckless feminizing would lead and who had the guts—working in political Washington, remember—to be blunt.

I don’t live in the Old Dominion, so this is academic. I could not vote for Webb because of his social positions and his endorsement of a “guest” worker program, but I’m not sure I could bring myself to vote for Allen, with his thoughtless hewing to the Bushrovican party line, against Webb. I remember a better Webb. Maybe, after his flirtation with elected office is over, we’ll see that Webb again.

Maybe you have read it already, but in case you haven’t and are interested, here is the cached Google version of Webb’s 1979 article, “Why Women Can’t Fight.” Even if Webb had done nothing else after he got home from Vietnam, we owe him for writing that article and Fields of Fire, based on his time there as a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines.

Mr. Sutherland continues:

It is a big blow to the good guys on the issue. With no flag and general officers willing to stand up and be counted (most are conventionally liberal PC trolls these days anyway; remember the retired generals and admirals’ brief pro affirmative action in the Michigan cases?), we need all the Webbs we can get. The Webb of old, that is, not Webb today.

With the brass so subservient or, worse, converted to PC orthodoxy, the feminist takeover is now so entrenched (and in its wake comes acceptance of open homosexuality) that only major battlefield defeats—with clear evidence of tactical failures due to the lack of unit cohesion that inevitably accompanies sexual integration of combat units and incompetence from inadequate training, with physical and stress standards reduced so that average women can meet them—could begin to lead to a restoration of armed forces that are first and foremost fighting forces. There have been incidents from Iraq (among them the ambush of Jessica Lynch’s unit) hinting that sexually integrated units can’t fight, but none yet on a scale that truly gets attention.

Everything must be subordinated to combat readiness, and anything that might degrade it (as sexual integration so plainly does) rejected. It has been a very long time since the U.S. armed forces were run on that basis, if indeed they ever truly were. Among Western militaries, even the IDF—which really cannot afford these follies—is no longer run that way. An immigrant from South Africa sued there in the late ‘90s for the right to go to pilot training. Needless to say, Israel’s leftist supreme court ruled that she had a human right to attend flight school! Arafat must have had a good laugh over that.

LA replies:

But, realistically, what are we getting upset about? Didn’t Webb abandon his opposition to feminization of armed forces decades ago, when he became Sec. of Navy?

HRS replies:

As I remember, at that time he made his peace with women in support roles, mostly ashore and mostly in the Navy, but he had already accepted a lot of that in Women Can’t Fight. Webb probably did crumble a bit about making more non-combat jobs available to women in the Navy. Any concessions he made on that front I think he made in order to preserve the combat exclusion—a position for which he had Reagan’s support. At the time, the Department of Defense and the service departments were under tremendous pressure from a Democratic Congress to throw the services open to women. It was the heyday of Patricia Schroeder and other harpies, male and female. The whole thing was disgraceful; women officers were allowed to lobby against the combat exclusion at the Capitol in uniform. Any male officers who had attempted to lobby in support of the combat exclusion (which was, after all, DOD policy) would likely have been court-martialed.

Women officers tended to favor opening things up, seeing more promotion opportunities for themselves. Enlisted women, when polled, were always strongly opposed to ending the combat exclusion. After he resigned as Secretary of the Navy (overseeing the Navy and the Marine Corps) in protest at cuts in Reagan’s planned increase of the fleet, Webb was until recently pretty stalwart in his opposition to women in combat. Here is one example, from the Weekly Standard in 1997. There are others at the same website; I notice Webb has not had them taken down since he declared for the Senate.

LA:

“… until recently pretty stalwart in his opposition to women in combat”

But that’s just the standard conservative view. All conservatives are “against women in combat.” But they accept everything up to that and overlapping into it, which is what we already have.

Being against “women in combat” means nothing more than accepting the existing feminization of the services.

HRS:

Good point. I would limit women to the roles they had around the time of WWII: nurses and rear-area clerical support. Anything beyond that is the camel’s nose under the tent. The Webb of 1979 probably thought the same. The old combat exclusion actually went beyond units that actually engage an enemy. It extended to units where there was a risk of engagement. The Army destroyed that distinction when it allowed women into units collocated with combat units.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 31, 2006 04:02 PM | Send