Women in Combat, Women as Beasts: Wafa Sultan and Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about American exceptionalism; the American experiment,
If I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their women.
– Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
Your Business Blogger is not sure that this is what Alexis de Tocqueville meant:
Vanessa Dobos, gunner: the superior woman?
Following is Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American woman and psychologist from Los Angeles. She is debating the clash of civilizations. She reviews the fact that inferior civilizations use “women as beasts.” There might be some confusion on how Islam jihadists and the American armed forces use women in combat.
Watch the clip here.
The video is a must see.
Thank you (foot)notes:
President George Bush said our women will not be in ground combat.
A C-130 doesn’t count, I guess.
Thank you to Alert Reader Stan Honour for finding this vagina warrior.
I’m trying to correlate the article about the female Air Force gunner with the ranting Arab-American woman. Please do tell us what one has to do with the other?
Also, I don’t see where anyone is saying that the gunner is a “Superior Woman” as you have called her. I do see a woman who is making great sacrifices to perform a duty with excellence. Not necessarily any better than a housewife, but CERTAINLY not any worse.
It is my belief that less women would be serving in our military, if our country (and our churches) were sending more qualified men. And the military would be a much less immoral atmosphere for women to provide support services, if those men were moral (which the majority are not today.)
(as an aside/qualifier : I am in full agreement with the PCA report on women in the military published in 2005.)
Thanks! I look forward to hearing how you will connect these two… God bless!
Jack,
I would be happy for you to put my full name to this. I served as a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers in the late 80’s early 90’s. I was fortunate to be in the military when Ronald Reagan was president. I was one of the men and women that manned the picket lines in Germany against the USSR. I experienced firsthand the fall of the Iron Curtain in Germany. I did not serve in the first Gulf War, I was part of the Reduction in Force that happened just prior to the ramp up for that War. Ironically, I was among the last of the people given an involuntary early out before the Army initiated a Stop-Loss and kept everyone in. I missed going by about 2 weeks.
One other thought that boggles the mind: the media and the Democratic party are screaming that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Republican party, to my utter dismay and to THEIR shame, is not countering this with the most obvious fact available to anyone; the Iraq government, and Saddam in particular, already USED a weapon of mass destruction, and with devastating effect!
Recall what happened during the final days of Desert Storm… We had told the enemy that they could retreat, if they would leave all their military hardware behind. Then, as happened in Vietnam, the politicians stepped in and ALLOWED the Republican Guard to retreat INTACT. The reason – Turkey feared a Kurdish uprising if there was not a strong government suppressing the Kurds in Northern Iraq. Why? Because – Turkey’s majority population is in fact Kurdish! Just like the kingdom of Jordan is 80 or 90% Palestinian, the nation of Turkey has a huge portion of her population that are historically and geographically Kurdish.
Fast forward to several months after the Allied withdrawal from Iraq and Kuwait. International news agencies start showing pictures of entire villages dead in Northern Iraq. Saddam had GASSED THEM! The Kurds thought that the U.S. would support them, and they were in the process of trying to break away from Iraq. Saddam suppressed the uprising by killing everyone he could in Northern Iraq. Do you really think that a dictator like Saddam would use up all his chemical weapons, or that he would not replace what he had used?
Chemical weapons are hideous in that desert environment. Remember the pictures of our soldiers trying to conduct NBC training prior to THIS war? (NBC stands for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical). They could not keep their gas masks on for longer than about 15 min. and they were suffering from heatstroke. I know firsthand how hot our NBC gear is – I was the NBC officer for my company while in Germany. We had trouble keeping our guys in their gear in the middle of Winter – in Germany no less! Picture it this way – take a black plastic trash bag, poke a couple of tiny holes in it to breath through, then duct tape it to your entire body and go out on a hot summer day. Stay that way for 2 or 3 days straight. That is what is required to survive most attacks by persistent Chemical Weapons. In addition, you would need to go to a Decontamination station, and be washed down with highly caustic substances before you could remove your suit.
Remember GULF WAR SYNDROME??? Remember what they think caused it? They think it is caused by exposure to low levels of chemical agents that our forces were destroying after Desert Storm. They were incinerating the chemical weapons, and the smoke carried the toxins for miles. The same thing happens when you burn Poison Ivy, you can get the rash from the smoke. A weapon of mass destruction if there ever was one…
Apparently we, as a country, no longer know how to do anything anymore. Mustard gas used in WWI is STILL bubbling out of the ground on warm days all over France!!!! This is not a NEW phenomenon. Yet, apparently, 90 years later we have forgotten those lessons.
In a similar vein, no other great civilization that I can think of actively used women as soldiers in their regular armies – the Romans didn’t, and their idea of corporeal punishment was Crucifixion. Not squeamish, those Romans. So why are women soldiers in combat a GOOD idea? Riddle me THAT, Batman! Just because women in Corporate America have historically been underpaid? So, the solution is to allow them to be SHOT AT??? HOW DOES THAT SOLVE ANYTHING?
We have, collectively, lost our damn minds. I could go on and on, common sense seems in short supply. Sorry for the extra rant, I feel better now.
Dave
David Hilgartner
Davis Partnership P.C.
Jack,
The placing of women in combat is part of the same erosion that caused a woman to snap at me (for holding the door open for them) in those long ago days of yesteryear when I attended Mr. Jefferson’s University. Our collective response will someday mirror mine, where, when accosted, I let the door hit the gal in the face.
Women need to allow men to be men, and part of that is men are supposed to do the fighting and dying. Otherwise, women need to quit complaining that violence towards women is growing, and they need to become more like men and fight back. Understand, I am not advocating this – I merely am suggesting that the continued erosion of courtesy and civility towards women is a direct result of the attitude that “women can do anything a man can do” – and this includes fighting in combat zones as part of the active force. The mere fact that a woman would be offended if I hold the door open for her, yet expect a different standard elsewhere, is mind boggling.
I get a lot of flack for this. I am not disputing that women are fierce fighters when needed – one needs only examine the Russian army vs. the Nazis to see fierce women soldiers taking out a ruthless opponent. What I am saying is that wars are incredibly UGLY when women are part of the fighting forces. Women captured by an opposing Army are ruthlessly brutalized, more so than their male counterparts. It’s just wrong to deliberately put women in harm’s way, and I am opposed to it. We are currently fighting a Male Dominated Muslim society. They are not Politically Correct, and they will be offended by US female women soldiers. They can respect a male opponent, but they will be furious if they get their hands on a woman who was firing at them.
My cousin told me about some of the atrocities committed by Saddam and his army when they rolled into Kuwait (he would not tell me all, they were too gruesome). Same Fanatics, different time people – what do you expect?
The other side of this coin is that men need to step up. When women take over what the man is supposed to do, don’t be surprise when MEN become missing in action. Emasculate a man, chain a boy and prevent him from learning to channel and harness his innate and inherited violence, and you wind up with a nation of pansy wusses. Read Wild At Heart if you wonder what the heck I am talking about. This I think is actually the greater issue – men need to be able to rescue the princess, not have the princess rescue them. And yes, they will get bloodied and killed in the process. It is what we were designed to do, it is our calling, and it is one of the reasons that this current generation lacks the backbone of the WWII generation.
CowBOY up people!
Dave
David Hilgartner
Davis Partnership P.C.
Jack,
A minor detail–Airman 1st-class Dobos is the gunner for an HH-60 Pavehawk rescue helo, not the special ops Specter gunship.
I was reviewing the past couple of weeks e-mails and your weblogs, and googled the following this morning:
http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1103/02-07_TheBigGuns.pdf
Manning a rescue chopper is not quite the same as being a part of the patently offensive missions of the AC-130, but it is still a dangerous, front lines and behind-enemy-lines type of job.
Whoever lifted the photo off the net and created the cute bi-line got confused: the main article covered the “Spooky”, and gunner jobs throughout their history.
The article on Airman Dobos was just a short aside–almost like an “oh, by the way…” on the AirForce’s part.
–r.
r.
Thanks for your update and correction on the post.
As you know the Air Force and Navy have alerted Congress that they will put women in harm’s way; into combat.
Women are not permitted on submarines, but are working on surface warships. And as jet drivers.
President Bush said that women will not be in combat — but he meant that women will not be in land combat with direct fire weapons. A direct fire weapon on an Air Force platform is with in the law.
But it is still not right…
Thanks again for your correction to the article.
Jack
I have to agree with you Jack, as I’ve thought long ago before stumbling into your site today. I think that the one strength that we as Americans will always have will be the fact that we treat our women as women, and not like a bunch of cattle.
Rosie the riveter lives on.