The nomination of a U.S. Army combat veteran, Pete Hegseth, to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense has stirred up a lot of comment. Aside from the usual slings and arrows from outrageous legacy media talking heads that we can expect any Trump nominee to suffer, Mr. Hegseth also has one stated opinion that is causing some liberal heads to explode—that is, his opposition to women in our armed forces serving in combat arms roles.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has reignited a debate that many thought had been long settled: Should women be allowed to serve their country by fighting on the front lines?
The former Fox News commentator has made it clear, in his own book and in interviews, that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units. If Hegseth is confirmed by the Senate, he could try to end the Pentagon’s nearly decade-old practice of making all combat jobs open to women.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he said in a podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan on Nov. 7. Women have a place in the military, he said, just not in special operations, artillery, infantry and armor units.
I happen to think Pete Hegseth is right, and I could give you many reasons. I am, however, a man, and while that shouldn’t make a difference, it does in some quarters; so, instead, I thought I would leverage the opinion of a woman who has served in a combat zone. The woman I refer to served in the Army Reserve/National Guard for eight years and deployed for Operation Desert Storm, where, as a First Lieutenant, she set up and ran a novel medical facility on the airhead at King Khalid Military City; for this, she was awarded the Bronze Star. She was also, somehow, according to the VA, exposed to a low dose of a nerve agent which causes chronic pain in her left leg and hip, along with balance issues; for this, she has been on disability for over 20 years. They told her that she would be in a wheelchair by the time our youngest went to kindergarten; she said, “No, I won’t,” and she is still walking, and that kid is now 28 years old.
She agrees with Pete Hegseth and is adamantly against women serving in combat-arms roles. I know this because I happen to have been married to this woman for 32 years.
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My wife is, of course, all in favor of women serving in the military. Her service in a medical unit gave her great insight into the behavior of banged-up soldiers and refugees returning from the field. As she put it, on many occasions, when these young men came in hurting and saw a woman leading the litter teams, one could see the stress bleed off them; they were still hurting, but the presence of a woman meant they were away from the shooting and out of danger. But there’s much more to the issue than just that.
There are physical issues involved, of course. We have been over this time and again; men are not only stronger, faster, and with more endurance than women, but they are also more resistant to traumatic injury. There are, as my wife points out, also hygiene issues women in the field deal with that men do not. There are also psychological issues, not the least of which is a certain rather visceral response some people have to danger; this issue has destroyed marriages and resulted in scandal upon scandal.
But there are even larger issues: As, again, my wife would point out (we’ve discussed it), consider the nature of the foes American troops have been facing in the last few years. Consider the likely fate of women soldiers who are captured by those foes. Men, of course, suffer from capture by barbarians, but women? The physical and psychological trauma of women being, let’s be perfectly honest, gang-raped is something that has to be taken seriously, as does the likelihood that men will do reckless things to protect the women; that’s how we are wired. That’s what men do.
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Pete Hegseth is correct. Women should not serve in combat-arms roles. Support roles, yes, medical units in particular. I’ve seen for myself the reaction of banged-up young men being unloaded from an ambulance and being greeted by a young woman, and seen how their relief is palpable.
It’s bad enough that we men have to serve in direct combat. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary. But we don’t live in an ideal world; to quote a famous movie scene, in this world there are walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. That is the role of a man, and that is for good reason. My wife understands that. It’s too bad that Lloyd Austin doesn’t.
