[.ca] Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster (ISBN 0895263769)

One-sided diatribe with unsupported conclusions:
Bravo for Brian Mitchell: he's single-handedly solved the problem of women who are not willing to fight. Give any woman a copy of his book to read and she'll be ready to kill after reading ten pages. Ready to kill him that is. To start with, his argument would have been more persuasive if his editor had eliminated the strident sarcastic tone. His arguments are so one sided and so much braying like a donkey that his one or two reasonable points get lost in the noise. Snickering references to perfumed plebes and women whose pregnancies are self-inflicted (that's interesting - did they use basters?) don't make for convincing arguments. ...no one's bothered to look at how undocumented his conclusions are. We have the heavy recitations of who, what, where and when but when it comes to the why, the reason for men and women leaving the force for example, there's no documentation whatsoever. Just unsupported conclusions of Brian Mitchell. For example, he states that Air Force enlistments are on the decrease and that Air Force Academy graduates leave in droves. He cites as the reason for departures the presence of women in the force (with no corresponding note in the margin for a source). Has he ever considered that both men and women are leaving the Air Force for the better paying commercial pilot jobs? Has he ever considered that women leave the service at a higher rate than men because of attitudes like his? The job is hard enough without the friendly fire that women recruits face on a regular basis. And so what if flak jackets have to be redesigned to accommodate female breasts? If the make-up of a workforce is to be limited by the availability of fitting uniforms and equipment, then I guess the Taliban should just move in to the United States and set up shop. All women should leave the workforce because at one time or another there were no female uniforms for the jobs they now have. Mitchell complains about the cost of kitting up women. If Congress can authorize $300 million for Trent Lott's pork barrel ship building program for a ship the Navy doesn't want, I'm sure it can afford to pay for flak jackets for female breasts. And again, so what if women report illness and injury to a greater extent than men? This is true of the civilian population as well. Mitchell believes that men who are injured and just grin and bear it rather then getting medical help are somehow braver and more courageous than women. I'm sure doctors would have another word for it. He recites figures about women using medical services for acne and menstruation as if these conditions somehow affect force preparedness (men have acne too and I don't believe anyone ever suggested men weren't capable soldiers because they suffer from jock itch). Mitchell likes to recite all kinds of numbers and percentages about women in the military and rarely compares the figures for the men in the same circumstances. He assumes that all men are willing to fight and die for their country without hesitation and without sniffles. Men in the face of real battle have similar emotions as those exhibited by the women, as is duly recounted in compelling books such as "Black Hawk Down". If there are only slight differences in the percentages between men and women, Mitchell dismisses the male figures with undocumented conclusory statements because they don't suit his argument. Mitchell's accounts of Tailhook and other earlier instances where the Navy caved to the political pressures of the various administrations makes me wonder where the "fight" is in the Navy brass if it can't defend its own troops against a professedly weak organization like the much-maligned DACOWITS. Kara Hultgreen's story might be more persuasive if it weren't of the anecdotal variety whereby one incident is used to explain why an entire movement should not be undertaken. Of course, it's a shame she died, but an awful lot of men die in training too. For example, it was much discussed during Kosovo that the Apache flight crews were not as well trained as they should be but no one turned that into an argument that men shouldn't fly Apaches. All Mitchell has really accomplished is setting forth the growing pains of an institution as it incorporates the other half of the population. No one professed it would be easy. Mitchell's complaints about how difficult it is to accommodate the female soldier sound just a bit like the whining he condemns among the troops. I can only imagine the reasoning that was put forth to exclude african americans, latinos and other minorities from the armed services for decades. And relying on the beliefs and attitudes of men already in the force as his primary source documentation for why women should be excluded is a bit like relying upon the statements of plantation owners to negate the liberation of slaves. I was ready and willing to read a reasoned argument for why women should be excluded from the military. This diatribe of a book isn't it.

moot point:
Rudyard Kipling wrote, "when you're lying wounded on Afghanistan's plains; And the women come out to cut off what remains..." Brian Mitchell writes that American women are castrating the military. But any point of this book has been rendered moot since the bombing of the USS Cole. The excellent performance of the Cole's female officers and enlisted are a matter of public record. And female military personnel are needed for dealing with female suspects in Islamic gender-segregated societies. In the weeks following 9-11, images of Afghani women's appalling oppression helped rouse American support for Operation Enduring Freedom. With Talibanish zeal, Mitchell declares that women's "natural place is passive, dependent" apartheid! Scythian and Sarmatian cavalrywomen of the Central Asian steppe inspired the Greek legends of the Amazons. Mitchell denounces these historical warriors as makebelieve. He is being willfully obtuse when he proposes that the Greeks merely entertained themselves with the fantasy of "any society so barbaric as to be ruled by women"! Centuries of barbarism have prevailed without matriarchy, in case he hadn't noticed. But according to Mitchell, warfare is the noblest calling of humanity. And as such, in his biased view, it is a profession for which women are unworthy. He sneeringly notes that feminism is pacifict and the antithesis of war. Then in a 180 degree turnabout, he accuses an imaginary "feminist agenda" of trying to usurp men's highest calling! This contradiction sets the pace for the book, which is a lengthy misogynist diatribe thinly disguised as a legitimate study. On practically every page is found erronious "fact", which is either incomplete or outright falsified. For example, a poll is cited, in which most American women were ignorant of the location and recent history of Nicaragua. This is presented as "proof" of women's intellectual incapability to excel in military curriculae. What is selectively omitted from this well-publicized poll is that Americans of either gender were ignorant -- and moreover, most young men mispronounced the name, substituting two G's for the C in Nicaragua! By itself, this example seems inconsequential. But dozens of similar distortions add up to one highly suspect piece of propaganda. The author systematically destroys his own credibility! His duplicity is especially hypocritical, since he repeatedly accuses the femine gender of inherent dishonesty. For instance, when he quotes female pilots saying they expect their training and grading to be equally rigorous as their male counterparts', he insultingly claims they are dissembling for the benefit of the media. Other observations are merely silly; ie. that lower female scores in PT are kept secret to prevent male trainees from "discovering" that women are physically weaker than they! Even more ridiculous is Mitchell's opinion that women are too immoral to serve in the military. Ludicrously, he places the blame for every high-profile sexual scandal, from West Point to Tailhook to Aberdeen, on "predatory" hussies! This self-righteous indignation contrasts with his smirking approval of sexual hazing, sophomoric "WUBA" jokes, and lewd "Tomcat Follies". Women simply "don't understand the need" for these fine military tradition, he complains. Occasionally his contempt takes a vicious turn: his graphic description of a female aviator's demise seems disturbingly exhultant. This author clearly has too many emotional "issues" to write an unbiassed assesment of gender-integration in the military.

Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster:
Once in a great while an author writes a book that clarifies what you suspected all along. This is that book. The author attempts to make several points and does it exceedingly well; there is a cost associated with women in the military including financial but also in readiness, the feminist agenda of outcome trumps opportunity and unit readiness, and military leaders at the highest level caved into social engineering demands for fear of their careers. For those servicemen on the inside who for years tolerated the gross inequality between sexes in the military (much less the services academies) this book explains it all. I found especially entertaining (saddening) the stories of how one female pilot nearly destroyed an entire Air National Guard unit, how a female navy pilot placed herself and crewmembers at risk to "prove" that women were as good as men at flying, how an enlisted woman's view of the hard physical work of training and combat differ from female officers, about female military members who get pregnant either before or while deployed to avoid war then have an abortion on the taxpayer's dime. If you've lived the life on the inside of the military and haven't been sleeping for the last 5-15 years you KNOW what the author says is right on target. You've seen it with your own eyes. Now you can read the stories and through the generous footnotes and scholarship confirm for yourself that women cannot compete on a level playing field with men and that politicians, high-ranking military officers and interest groups know it and don't want them to. This is a very readable book. This book will make you angry because it is true. As an interesting footnote: several male officers ask about this book and more than one commented that they would rather not be seen in public with it. What are they afraid of?

Better Than His First Book:
Great Update to Brian's First Work. As a combat vet with over 26 years in the military, I've witnessed what he describes. It is very unfortunate that we have allowed our armed services to become rife with political correctness. For those who beilieve it is fashionable to open all combat "jobs" to women; it would be very fitting that the women in combat at any cost crowd should be the first ones sent into the next combat zone. Oh by the way, in my 26 years I have NEVER seen a female be tasked more than a male. Those of you who write such goofy things should get their facts straight.

A slap in the face of our Troops:
Mr. Mitchell clearly has a contempt for women, as human beings and as soldiers. I realize his book was written a while ago, but under President Bush, womens' role in the military has been expanded far beyond anything in the past of the American military. And our female troops are performing admirably in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Mitchell's book is a slap in the face to the women sailors of the USS Cole, and the women who are protecting all of us in the War on Terrorism. It's a disgrace that our brave Troops have to defend themselves from the biased and falsified "reporting" of authors who should be seeing a psychiatrist to get to the reasons for their misogyny! One star is really being generous for this worthless junk.