Donald Trump is being criticized for considering too many former generals for leading roles within the military. Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article suggesting that putting former fighting men at the top of the military chain of command threatened traditional civilian control of the military. The article focused on retired Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, among other contenders for top slots; Mattis is reputedly being considered for secretary of defense.
The issue of civilian control is certainly a valid one. But Mattis would bring something to the position that no civilian possesses: experience with the exigencies of battle. And such experience should make the idea of inserting females into all-male combat units a non-starter. In the case of Mattis, it appears to have done just that. Last December, Mattis was the only member of a security panel at the Hoover Institution who was willing to question the Pentagon’s current position on co-ed fighting units, particularly in the Marines. (Mattis was at Hoover for a symposium honoring George Shultz, as was I.) William Perry, by contrast, Bill Clinton’s first secretary of defense and a former mathematician, saw no reason why females should not be included in male fighting units, taking the usual line that feminist empowerment was a relevant consideration in deciding military policy. That is also the position of the current civilian secretary of defense, former physicist Ashton Carter.
The Pentagon has already begun devising what it calls “gender-neutral” strength and stamina standards for combat positions, hoping that no one will notice that the military already had gender-neutral standards — they were called the standards. The alleged need to make them “gender-neutral” is a smokescreen for watering them down so that females, with their enormously inferior upper body strength, can qualify. There are virtually no females who would be able to lug a fallen male solider weighing 200 pounds naked, before donning battle equipment, 200 yards out of the line of fire. But even if such Amazons existed, the inevitable introduction of Eros, with its attendant jealousies and resentments, into tightly knit combat units would spell the end of vital unit cohesion.
Trump’s instincts on such matters are as yet unknown. Despite his healthy repudiation of political correctness, he may be clueless enough about the pernicious influence of gender politics that he would be influenced by his daughter, say, to think that co-ed fighting units are a fine idea. Mattis’s awareness of the incompatibility between military preparedness and feminist propaganda is a strong count in his favor.
This piece originally appeared on National Review Online
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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal, and the author of The War on Cops.
This piece originally appeared in National Review Online