Feminization of culture is thwarting our ability to win wars
The United States has not tasted total military victory since World War II. It makes sense to try to determine why this is true. I know that I am going to get in deep trouble with this but some folks refer to our recent failures in wartime as the “feminization of society – can’t we just talk it out?”
Men in general are aggressively warlike and women as a group are more gentle and nurturing. It’s a biological fact. We owe our survival as a human race to that difference. We can make all kinds of suppositions but we cannot escape the fundamental fact that the genders are wired differently. Men are from Mars; women are from Venus, as they say. There is a different approach to life as viewed from the male point of view compared with the female outlook. The differences are embedded deeply in our DNA and there is little we can do about it. Men have always fought the wars, hunted, etc. and; women, thank goodness, have always been the glue that holds civil society together by their inherent nurturing genes. I am certain that some feminists will label me chauvinistic but we should be thankful for the differences. I don’t know why some women appear to be ashamed of femininity.
My theory holds that our modern American culture, because of the merging of the gender roles, cannot stomach the horrors of war and, therefore, we have come to expect a “humane” or “controlled” war. There is no such thing. Both a Union and a Confederate general had it about right when Northern Gen. Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is hell.” And went about proving it by laying waste to every square inch of Southern soil and soul he could place his invading feet upon. The Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest opined in the Southern vernacular that the army that always won was the one that got there “the furstest with mostest.”
We have not heeded either in recent wars and things have often ended in a stalemate (Korea) or actual eventual defeat (Vietnam) as soon as we pulled out. Are we about to do even worse in the Persian Gulf wars? A large segment of the US public has spoken of withdrawal for years and many folks started calling for withdrawal a moment or two after the military action got underway. Wars don’t have deadlines. We could win with honor if our fighting forces were allowed to take off the kid gloves and wage a war reminiscent of the distant past. It is unfair to our fighting forces to place them in harm’s way and not give them complete support and encouragement to protect themselves – whatever it takes.
Last year my associates and I interviewed and videotaped about 70 World War II veterans. Without exception, they seemed to agree that if you are going to fight a war – fight to win! Our recent wars have been controlled actions by not allowing our fighting forces to make on-the-spot decisions regarding attack and kill. In Vietnam, it is reported that some units were told how many rounds of ammunition they could fire in a day.
I think the sissyfication of war began in Vietnam because it was the first televised war. Folks at home turned on the evening news and were eyewitnesses to the horrors of war. It was then that the public began to push for a “humane” war. Our brave troops are now forced to get permission from higher up command before taking out an enemy. Many have found themselves before courts-martial because they have acted in self-preservation during a hostile moment.
Put yourself in the position of a US soldier being fired on from a building in the heat of battle. You rush in and there are a dozen people in the room but you must stop and calculate which ones might shoot you before you decide which ones to take out. It’s impossible to make these sorts of calculations and stay alive. So, you protect yourself and your cohorts. Sometimes civilians get killed. That’s just the nature of war. Remember? War is Hell!
US military forces have always been conscious of protecting the civilian population but it simply cannot always be done and expect our forces to come out alive. But let one civilian fall victim and a large segment of the public is ready to hang our patriots.
It was not this way in earlier wars. You know — the ones we actually won. There will always be collateral damage and sometimes it’s planned that way. Take the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for instance. We knew that tens of thousands of civilians would die when we dropped the nuclear bombs but we elected to do it anyway because, by so doing, the war was shortened and hundreds of thousands of lives were undoubtedly saved — including both American and Japanese.
And don’t forget the massive bombing of Germany during WWII. We made every attempt to target military sites but perfection is impossible in war and tens of thousands of civilians died.
Americans don’t like war and we find it hard to stomach but if we are going to win, we must do whatever is necessary to bring the effort to a successful conclusion.
War is, indeed, hell and there is little we can do to change that fact short of giving up to the madmen of the ages and living in subjugation.
Some of you will term me a “warmonger” or perhaps a little bloodthirsty when, in fact, I wish we never had to send another soldier into battle. Although I was never in combat, I was rigorously trained as a combat infantry rifleman in the Korean War Era and we were taught without exception to shoot first and ask questions later.
Absolute peace will not come to pass in this world as long as the sinful nature of mankind prevails. No, we cannot just “talk it out” when we are dealing with insane folks who are incapable of compassion. Sometime armed conflict is the only answer.
All of history provides ample proof of this fact.