\doc\web\97\07\gijane.txt


Date sent:        Tue, 2 Sep 1997 16:32:30 -0400
From:             Michael Fumento <MFumento@compuserve.com>
Subject:          letter to editor on "GI Jane"
Letters to the Editor
Investors' Business Daily


September 2, 1997


To the editor:


        If anything, David Price's August 29 story, "Can `G.I. Jane' Really
Hack It?" severely understated the problem of women in the military.  Just
ask any recent male vet.
        I served in the Army from 1978-1982, when there were perhaps half
as many women in uniform and long before the impact of Les Aspin's and Pat
Schroeder's ideological crusades.  Yet even then it was clear that usually
women couldn't cut it in positions outside of clerical, supply, or cooking
duties.  In airborne school, the women did a small portion of the exercises
the men were required to do, yet they got the same Silver Wings we did. 
When I was in Special Forces school trying to earn the Green Beret the
old-fashioned way, a woman who flunked out won it the new way–from a judge.
        Although most of my time was spent in combat units that had no
females, to the extent I did work with them they usually just got in the
way.  Often they couldn't do the job because they didn't have the strength.
 Often they simply wouldn't, and their male superiors let them get away
with it because, after all, they were women.  Blame that on the men, but
it's as natural as a woman's lack of physical strength.  Men are driven
genetically to protect women.
        The United States now has the most feminized military in the world,
for the simple reason that we have the strongest feminist movement in the
world.  This didn't haunt us in the Gulf War, simply because the victory
was so lop-sided and fought almost entirely at long distance.
        But we have since entered an era of  "small wars," such as in
Somalia, in which massive firepower takes second place to the ability of
the individual soldier armed with his light weapon.  During a battle in
Somalia which could have well become another Little Big Horn, U.S. Army
Rangers armed with little more than rifles and light machine guns
nevertheless inflicted ten enemy casualties for each of their own losses
and extricated themselves successfully.  That's reality.  `G.I. Jane,' like
the Amazon warrior stories, is myth–and a very dangerous one at that.


Michael Fumento
Resident Fellow
American Enterprise Institute