Controversy Over Women in Combat

In response to “What If Mom Does Wear Combat Boots?” Commentary/Excerpts, by Cal Thomas, Ellen Goodman, Colman McCarthy and Edwin J. Yoder Jr., Op-Ed Page, Jan. 11:

The example of women with guns in their little hands and the training to use them is guaranteed to make men like Cal Thomas become faint with horror. People like this cling to the stupid tradition that the proper role of women in war is to be a helpless victim. Colman McCarthy seems to uphold the old double-standard that males are violent and females are nurturing, come what may. But what of the realities of war and actual human nature?

In World War II, the majority of casualties were civilian. Thousands of men came home to find their wives, mothers, and daughters dead from bombing raids over Coventry and Cologne, from firestorms through Hamburg and Tokyo, even killed by invading soldiers in Stalingrad and Berlin. Armies were no more chivalrous to women in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. If Russia and the United States went to war, civilians would be the first victims of a nuclear exchange.

So why all the hysteria over women in combat? Unarmed nurses serving at the front were killed without endangering all our sacred nonsense about women’s roles in war. Why do people now act as if women getting killed while fighting their country’s enemies is worse than women getting killed while sitting all passive and feminine at home? Either way, they’re just as dead. Ellen Goodman is right--any war that women wouldn’t be willing to fight and die for isn’t worth fighting.

VIRGINIA VINEYARD

Long Beach