You can either be a bleeding heart loser, or you can live in the real world and win.
That’s the reality that faces any military.
Of course, any sane Australian would hope that the Australian Defence Force would choose the latter option. But, of course, any sane Australian can also see that it has not.
The truth is that the Australian military is pushing the new-age feminist agenda. It’s choosing to become a bleeding heart loser. That’s why it’s trying to increase the number of women in uniform. And not just as a raw number; a token show of diversity while the overall force grows in size. But as a percentage of the total.
And as any Grade 8 school kid knows, if you increase the percentage of something in relation to the whole, you’ll necessarily have to decrease the percentage of something else.
In the case of the Australian Defence Force, this means reducing the number of men slinging guns around.
Whatever. I get it. These days women are miraculously as strong as men. So let’s not even consider the inherent stupidity of this thought bubble and its bizarre delusions about the reality of humanity. Let’s just ignore the fact that women can’t compete on the rugby field and pretend that they can on the battlefield.
And let’s just assume that the cliché about there being no front line anymore is true and correct. After all, it’s the fallback line for every pro-woman army advocate.
It goes like this:
Women have served overseas. There is no front line anymore. That means everywhere is the front line. That means women are already at the front line. That means that we can safely put women everywhere else as well.
Actually, let’s not pretend this illogical nonsense is true. Because it’s not.
Anytime two armies fight, there is a front line. And just because the Australian Army wasn’t fighting another conventional army yesterday, it doesn’t mean it won’t tomorrow.
But even in Iraq and Afghanistan there was a front line. It was called the perimeter. Outside of it was where the fighting took place. That was the badlands. And even with smart bombs and jets and tanks and drones and night vision goggle, that fighting could get nasty.
Real nasty.
This is one example. It involved a knife. This is another. It included seizing a machine gun off the bad guy and beating him to death with it. And in this example, a young officer yelled ‘have some of this’ before shooting one enemy and bayoneting another because he was out of ammunition.
Thankfully, I’m not yet aware of him being reprimanded for using language that is offensive to the Islamic community. But don’t be surprised if he is. It happens. All the time.
I know about this kind of warfare because I have read about it. Not because I experienced it. And this is proof that there is a front line because most of the time I was behind it, inconvenienced by things like regular indirect fire, but generally out of harm’s way while I pondered the enemy. That’s what intelligence officers do.
However, the ‘front line is everywhere’ crowd pretend that I was on it. They make soldiers like me out to be braver than we were, and they devalue the work of those who did the fighting.
Of course, just because I was not on the frontline does not mean that I had received no combat training. And every time I did the ‘real’ Army stuff, it also involved loading up the blokes with things that the women couldn’t carry. Like rations and ammunition. And radio batteries. And weapons. And sometimes even their pack itself. That’s the real world.
In fact, I was once asked to help teach some female soldiers how to cock their rifle. It was bizarre. They understood the theory. The practical application was the problem. They just didn’t have the strength to do it. And I’m not yet able to teach anyone how to channel ‘The Force’, Star Wars style. It was a waste of time.
It is into this real world of warfare that the Australian Defence Force is thrusting women. And not just in some pretend and imaginary ‘the front line is everywhere’ way. But in the ‘women should be in the infantry’ kind of way.
Everyone says that standards will be maintained. And everyone knows that this is a lie. In every army that goes down this path, basic standards are lowered because the decision to recruit women is not based on performance, but politics.
Of course, the feminine touch has also been thrown in. So we now have women in the infantry who can get maternity leave whenever they want it as well.
Now, I’m not opposed to new mums bonding with their bubs. But in practice, it’s a bit hard for an army, six months ahead of time, to reconcile the baby-making plans of its women warriors with the requirement to deploy at short notice to a combat zone. You can’t recall a pregnant soldier and send her overseas to wage in hand-to-hand combat.
Being in the army is not like any other job. It’s not a career in the normal sense of the word. But when the military head honchos start pretending that it is, the nation has serious problems. You either have a bunch of people in uniform juggling the competing requirements of family and the workplace, or you have a coherent force that the government can send somewhere to solve a problem with brutal firepower.
Maternity leave fits the first option, not the second.
However, in today’s brave new world, there is an alternative to maternity leave. It’s called abortion.
If you don’t think that there will be pressure on women to have an abortion so that military units can maintain effectiveness, then you are wrong. And it doesn’t even need to be as blunt as saying, ‘If you had an abortion it would really help us maintain unit effectiveness.’ Although bans on pregnancy have already been tried.
No, this pressure can be applied in a much more positive way. Like having commanders liaise with their subordinates to discuss career plans and children. The goal is nice: coordinating military requirements with the biological clock and the decision to fulfil oneself with a child. This is how you promote the Army as an ever more female-friendly career option.
Once it’s decided that Xena the Warrior Princess will be posted to a ‘respite’ job in two years so she can start her family, there is an unwritten acknowledgment that bub will be put on hold until then. Her womb, by de facto, has now become the Australian Defence Force’s womb.
So if bub unexpectedly comes early, there will be tremendous psychological pressure on the woman to ‘do the right thing’. The best part is, she doesn’t even need to tell anyone about it if she takes the initiative herself.
And this isn’t even opening the Pandora’s box of operational pregnancies.
Yes. They do occur.
And yes, the military does have rules forbidding fraternisation. But they are never enforced, as far as I know. Even when there is a bun in the oven.
In fact, it seems like soldiers in Western militaries manning those ubiquitous front lines get up to a lot more than fighting. Australian women get sent home pregnant. British women get sent home pregnant. And American soldiers give birth in Afghanistan.
Combat pregnancies are reported in the media because they are hard to ignore. However, there has been no reporting about access to abortion in the Australian military.
However, it’s highly likely that abortions occur. That’s obvious. If they weren’t available, Christine Milne would have called a Senate inquiry to demand answers as to why the Australian military was not offering its women the full range of ‘reproductive health services’.
In fact, Christine Milne would probably also want to know why blokes couldn’t access an abortion too. That’s the kind of gal she is.
After all, the Australian Defence Force does have a directive about IVF support for lesbian soldiers. We know about that one because it’s proudly displayed on the Defence Force Gay and Lesbian Information Service website.
And if IVF is on the table then someone, somewhere in the military is probably paid to produce briefs and documents about abortion.
However, in the unlikely event that abortions are not yet included as part of the conditions of service, ramping up the oestrogen is certain to change that.
Who knows, maybe some investigative journalist out there might bug the Chief of Defence Force’s office to explain what kind of ‘reproductive health care’ is available for women serving in places like Afghanistan. They might also like to ask how often it gets used. I would inquire, but the CDF and I are not on speaking terms at the moment. His dubious statement that the expression of my Catholic faith undermines the values of the Australian military can be blamed for that.
And we all know that abortion is condemned by the Catholic Church but not by the military. I guess there’s a conflict of values right there. However, I argue that just because some people do evil things, it does not follow that I should lose my commission.
Logic is mostly lost from the world today, but surely this equation is self-evident. More women in uniform will lead to more military pregnancies. And that includes on deployment.
We all know where this is going: battlefield abortion. It’s feminism’s final frontier. In the brave new world, killing the enemy is not enough. We have to be able to kill our own children in combat zones as well.
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POSTSCRIPT: Commenting on the reality that comes with the ever-increasing numbers of women in the military is not being disrespectful to women. It is acknowledging the truth. To do otherwise is to disrespect women by pretending they are something that they are not.
Furthermore, even though combat roles for women is an idea sitting somewhere near the pinnacle of stupidity, I accept that the very small percentage of women who want to join in the fighting are motivated somewhat by a sense of patriotism. However, just because you have a good motive, it doesn’t follow that you should do something stupid to the nation’s defence capability.
Anyway, the vast majority of women don’t want to go to war, while young blokes are eager to sign up by comparison. It is not a good use of the taxpayer dollar to engage in recruiting campaigns that are inherently inefficient and targeted at groups that are not interested in the military.
Finally, there are some jobs where women can increase military capability. Some. And that some is small. I’m more than happy to see women fill those roles. However, it is just new-age nonsense to pretend that a female mechanic or female clerk or female pilot will bring some kind of capability increase over what is already there. They won’t. But it does lead to sexual tension and complications that reduce team cohesion. Just as homosexuality does. Militaries should not be increasing complicating factors when they are engaged in a death fight. They should be removing friction sources that endanger morale and effectiveness.
April 11, 2014
If the military were really concerned with saving Australian lives, they would be deployed outside abortuaries where over one hundred thousand Australian children have already been brutally slaughtered – often one limb at a time – and the massacre continues to grow with each passing day!!! This begs the question:- in terms of demonstrated thirst to annihilate young Australian lives, who is more dangerous – Afghan muslim militants – or homegrown Australian feminazis????
April 11, 2014
In 1988 I took part in a gruelling 3 day military skills competition at the Mt Stuart training area near Townsville. On one of the nights we had to do a night navigation challenge. The weather was overcast and very humid. It was a shocker of a night to be stumbling around the ridges and gullys (re-entrants) surrounding Mt Stuart. Some 90 minutes into our navex, one of our members came down with heat exhaustion. The area was not accessible by vehicle so we were ordered to stretcher carry him back to the starting point. Some 3 hrs later later we got there utterly exhausted. It was one of the hardest physical tasks I ever had to do in the military. (the b*&%$#@s then made us resume the navex, only to later radio out a halt for the night as other soldiers started dropping in the humidity) This event was more than training as we were evacuating a real casualty suffering from heat stress which can turn deadly. Thankfully no females were in our unit at that time. Imagine what may have happened if our section of 10 had contained 5 typical female soldiers? Our sections load carrying ability, pushed to the limits as it was, would have been seriously weakened. It would have been a recipe for increased risk to our incapacitated comrade and an increased risk to everyone on the team as we all would have had to do more work per individual. One of the combat fitness tests (CFTs)when I was a soldier, was the requirement to carry a comrade [and his weapon] the same size and weight as yourself, still wearing his basic webbing, in a fireman’s carry a minimum distance of 100m. The reason was obvious. In a battlefield situation every soldier needs to be able to carry a wounded comrade to a position of relative safety. This basic test I understand has now been scrapped because women cant safely perform such a task. Obviously political correctness and “equality” are now valued so highly in the military , high command and their political masters are willing to increase the risk of death and serious injury to achieve them.
April 12, 2014
I’ve encountered similar problems with physical capability in the volunteer fire brigade, with young women collapsing and having to be withdrawn from the field. Now, I know that anyone can collapse firefighting, it is tough physical work, but in one season to have only two such incidents, and both concerning lightly built young women, struck me as telling, and it was complete collapse, body gone floppy type collapse. A Bad Scene.
Then I unhappily encountered this in another context, I had to try to rescue a friend who was being assaulted on a public street, the assailant’s girl friend decided to take up with me and started punching me in the face. Oddly, I wasn’t particularly concerned. Adrenalin was part of it, I’m sure, but her punches were simply inconsequential. I’m sure in a military setting she would have not been able to stop an enemy.
April 11, 2014
When I was a younger soldier, we had PTT’s (Physical Training Test) and BFT’s (Battle Fitness Tests). The unit Commanders I had, stipulated we had maintain a set standard (A pass) to remain in a field unit. Otherwise remedial PT was conducted in your own time.
I remember the briefing we received from our RSM when he informed us we were all going to be issued double breasted groundsheets, and counter sunk soldiers. Suddenly the 300 male soldiers had to relinquish access to an SAL block for 4 female soldiers to be able to go to the toilet. We were required to set up showers and screens in the field for the female soldiers, even though, due to “hygiene reasons” they went into a town for a hot shower every 3 days. Some females, (NOT ALL), were not capable of being in the field at all for 3 months of the year due to “girl problems”.
Please do not take this as a sexist rant. I am stating how it was.
The physical requirement was lowered, so more women would be eligible to work in field units. There are lots of female soldiers who are physically capable of the tasks. There are many more women capable of being a constructive asset to a small military team. The physical standards of the Army have been compromised, so unwilling women can be forced into combat roles, they mostly do not want.
Imagine, I want to be a court stenographer. The only problem I have is, my blokey fat fingers prevent me from being able to type at 100 wpm.
Maybe I should apply for the job, and then seek compensation for the sexual discrimination.