‘79 Article Saw Peril to Combat Training : Women Ruining Academies--Webb

Assistant Secretary of Defense James H. Webb, President Reagan’s choice to be secretary of the Navy, wrote in 1979 that women are ruining the military academies by poisoning their ability to train men for combat.

In an article that appeared in The Washingtonian magazine, Webb, a former Marine and successful novelist, built an adamant case against women in the academies, saying, “There is a place for women in our military, but not in combat. And their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation.”

Webb’s lengthy article--entitled “Women Can’t Fight”--included a discussion of men as the more aggressive and more violent sex, and a description of his experience as a plebe at the U.S. Naval Academy in which he “broke down” under the physical and mental abuse heaped upon him by upperclassmen.

He said the experience took him “deep inside myself” and made it easier for him to keep going after 51 of his men were killed in Vietnam.

“I don’t see anything at the Naval Academy anymore that can take a person deep inside himself,” he wrote. “I see refinement. I see an overemphasis on academics at the expense of leadership.”

Webb said he observed women at the academy as “spirited but confused, tolerated but never accepted. They are for the most part delightful women, trusting and ambitious and capable in many ways, and I admire them, more for who they are than for what they are doing.”

But he wrote that he had never a met a woman whom he would entrust with combat leadership.

“Furthermore, men fight better without women around,” he wrote.

He concluded the article by saying that perhaps Congress should consider a separate academy just for women, that women should be barred from the male academies, or that if it is determined the academies have become principally academic institutions, they should be closed down.