Women and War

As a young man I joined the Navy. I served amongst equally naive men and women as we travelled where we were told, did our 'duty' and came home.

I remember one particular day we were scheduled to pull into port in Bahrain (in the Persian Gulf). We didn't pull in however because instead we bombed Iraq. Later that day watching the Iraqi news, it was clear why we were there. The dead bodies and bloody messes were clear to see. We are a War machine and we are there to bring death to the enemy.

Today I was watching a USO show from Baghdad and seeing the young men and women got me thinking.

As a husband one of my duties is to keep my family from harm. When there is a strange noise in the house, I don't send my wife to investigate. I go check it out and make sure it's safe. It's not that my wife needs me to do this, but that is the role God has given me. I accepted the role of her protector the moment her father gave her away.

So if I wouldn't send me wife to investigate strange noises in my home, why would I send my daughter to war? Now that I have a daughter I can't imagine doing anything to put her in harms way. At the same time, I expect my boys to stand on their own. From the moment my daughter was born I knew my feelings for her, were far different than for my sons. It's not something I expected or wanted, it just IS. And I'm not saying I don't expect my daughter to learn to stand on her own. But if my daughter is ever in a situation where she has to use force to protect herself, than either I have failed or her future husband has failed. And having two older brothers and me as a Dad, she will certainly learn how to defend herself. I just hope she never has to use it.

We fail as husbands and fathers when we send our daughters to war. I know this notion offends the Feminist worldview, but as a husband and a father I can take no other stand. Our nation does a great disservice to our women when we let our young ladies join the military. We are putting the burden of War on our daughters. And we look down upon anyone who dares to say this is wrong.

It's bad enough to have our young men dying and seeing others die. Why submit our women to it as well, when they are the ones we are supposed to be protecting. They are the ones we are fighting for. When did we stop protecting our daughters? When did we lose the notion that it is our job, our duty, to protect our daughters? When did it become our daughters duty to protect us?

Why will many reading this call me sexist? If acknowledging the natural and overwhelming need to protect my women makes me a sexist, so be it. It's how God made me. As a father it will be hard if I ever have to watch my sons march off to war. It will be utterly devastating if I have to watch my daughter march off to war.

Maybe it because we don't even recognize our military as a military anymore. It's just a job, a road to college, a free education. It's a good school of discipline and order. These are just technical jobs, we aren't sending them to battle.

NO! It's a military and militarises are for WAR. War is for killing. The winner of a war is he who kills best or he who can sustain the most casualties. This is not where we want our women.

Maybe it's because we don't recognize the God ordained positions of Man and Woman. I'm learning in my "old age" what it means to be a man, a husband, a father. I'm learning what it means to be a mother, a wife and a daughter. We aren't the same. We can't be the same. God made us different. As long as we continue to reject God's order our daughters will continue to be in danger and our sons will never know what it is to be men. Our daughters will fail to be mothers and wives and our sons having been supplanted by the women will fail to be husbands and fathers.

And our children's children will pay the price for our failures and our rejection of God. I pray my Boys will know what it means to be a Man and that my daughter knows what it means to be a Woman.