On her radio show this week, Janet Parshall spoke with Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and the current senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council, about the Pentagon’s recent decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat units.
Maginnis, who recently wrote a book on the topic, said that allowing women into combat goes against science. He called the situation “tragic,” “unnecessary,” “immoral,” and “un-American.”
Maginnis: I’m concerned about the direction of my country. I see this as a tragic mistake that’s going to weaken our fighting forces, compromise the battle proven standards that we’ve shed a lot of blood over the last couple centuries for. And also it’s unnecessary risk for the people that ultimately are pushed into this environment. And finally I think it’s immoral and I think it’s un-American what these people want to do. And yet, I see- the subtitle I think is very fair- I see cowardice on the Capitol Hill. Because our Founders were wise people. They said we want the Congress to set the rules and regulations for the armed forces. And guess what, they haven’t had a hearing in 34 years in the House armed services and they haven’t had one in 23 years in the Senate. They’ve relegated, they’ve abandoned the responsibility that the founders intended them to have and they’ve pushed it into the administration. And the administration, you know, they’re going to do what’s politically expedient. And that just hurts my heart. Cause I know the environment that we’re going to push these young people into, I know how vicious it is. And it just doesn’t fit with the science and common sense, much less the interests of our country.
Parshall, for her part, blamed the decision on the “radical feminist movement,” claiming the policy change would not only “push women” into a situation that they don’t want to be in, it flies in the face of God and what is “natural.”
“I thought men were made by God to defend women,” Parshall lamented. “It was just a natural.”
Parshall: So it begs the question- and I’m asking it, but at some level it’s rhetorical- and that is, why we got here? But Bobby you and I have been in Washington. We watched the radical feminist movement. We saw the residuals of all of that, so this is just a tendril outreach it seems to me. But it goes deeper than just ardent feminism. It violates a core principle. And I’m going to say something terribly politically incorrect. I thought men were made by God to defend women. It was just a natural. And to push women into combat, front line combat- and you draw a distinction by the way between high intensity combat and high intensity police work which I love and I want you to explain in a minute. It seems to me to violate the very core at some level of how God designed us. Is that an overreaction on my part?
Maginnis: Not at all, Janet. Men are hard wired to protect women.
