Sex In The Military: What Did They Expect?

By Edwin Feulner President,

The Heritage Foundation

May 29, 1997

If you think about all the recent stories concerning sex scandals in the U.S. military,
    you have to either laugh or explode with rage at the harm that's being done by the
    naiveté and cowardice of our leaders in Washington.

    Think about it: Before the Clinton administration began training men and women
    together and placing large numbers of women in combat-support roles in the military,
    it received ample warning from experienced military leaders of the consequences that
    might follow.

                         In public testimony, the military brass told Congress
                         something that should be fairly obvious to anyone: If you
                         place young men and women in the prime of their sexual
                         lives in the kind of close, prolonged proximity characteristic
                         of all military duty, sparks are going to fly. No kidding!

                         Attachments are going to form, sexual activity will ensue,
                         followed by pregnancy (is this beginning to sound
                         familiar?). The fact that there are lots of males and
                         relatively few females will foster clandestine social
                         competition, poisoning the work atmosphere with
                         undercurrents of distrust and animosity, not to mention lust.
                         Regardless of whether the situation erupts into overt rape, it
                         will always be disruptive and undermine the cohesion,
                         morale and discipline so vital to the success of
                         life-and-death military missions.

                         None of this is intended to excuse any of the behavior that
                         has been uncovered. But the horror being expressed is a bit
                         like parents being shocked -- shocked! -- to find that
                         clean-cut Johnnie got straight-laced Suzy pregnant when they
                         were allowed to spend a weekend together in the mountains.
                         Both children must be held responsible for their actions, and
                         face the consequences. But what did you expect? None of
                         this is too difficult to figure out.

                         Or is it? Remember: Military leaders had to explain all of
                         this to Congress and the Clinton administration, and were
                         ignored. Why?

    Because the government still provides a haven for certain leftover, discredited,
    60s-era ideologies that don't recognize normal human behavior as given. On the
    contrary, they see it as the result of social conditioning. People aren't the way they are
    because of any innate qualities -- they're all products of their environment, the
    behaviorists say. Simply change their conditioning, and people will change. They'll
    become radical feminists!

    That's right. Radical feminists and their harebrained ideas about humanity are behind
    the current fiasco. When matters everyone else has understood since the dinosaurs
    were explained to feminist lawmakers like former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo.,
    and others, the reaction was eye-rolling skepticism. Surely, feminists wondered, this
    "urge" can be controlled. What happened, they wondered, to the much-vaunted
    "military discipline" (something they had heard about long ago at summer camp)? Just
    impose that discipline thing, you know -- and the problem will be solved.
 

Believe it or not, our leaders went along with this. Why? Because the current leadership of the United States not only contains a number of people who have been rendered sexually naive by their obtuse ideologies -- it also contains an even greater number who are scared spineless of the first group.

Never mind that traditional military doctrine has never contended that "military discipline" could overcome the sexual urge; in fact, quite the contrary. It has always insisted that the close quarters of combat duty was no place to mix the sexes. Never, in literally thousands of years of military experience, has this wisdom been disproved.

Get real, people: Men and women are too much of a distraction to each other to work at optimum efficiency in close military operations where life and death are at stake.

Is this so hard to understand and deal with?

Casualties of the Navy's Thought Police

By Edwin Feulner

August 17, 1995

Now, the Navy must cope with tragedies like that of Kara Hultgreen, the first woman promoted to fly a Navy fighter jet, who was killed earlier this year while attempting a carrier landing. After first claiming that "engine failure" caused Hultgreen's crash, the Navy later admitted that pilot error was involved. Now they say Hultgreen was qualified for flight duty despite errors in previous carrier landings that would have disqualified male pilots.

A growing number of critics, both inside and outside the military, think the Navy is sacrificing too much on the altar of political correctness, including the high training standards that might have saved Hultgreen's life.

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