They are all just Marines

When is a Marine not a Marine? When it’s a female Marine. Female Marines were known as Women Marines or WMs. A somewhat less affectionate but none-the-less accurate term was often used referring to WMs as BAMs or broad assed Marines. The Marine leadership correctly purged both terms from Marine speak. Unless it was absolutely essential to understanding, female Marines were just Marines.

Now, a few Marines who happen to be women have been killed in Fallujah and they are WMs again. A giant step backward for the women’s movement, I think. This is a sign of my whole problem with women in the military. My experience with women in the service has been that if you treat them like women, they are offended. If you treat them like men, they are offended. Your only truly safe option is to ignore them, if possible. Don’t hold a door or chair. Don’t offer to help carry something. Don’t tell any jokes. Don't swear. Don’t criticize their position too harshly. And whatever else you might do, don’t look at them for more than a nana second least you be accused of leering or ogling. The problem was particularly acute with women in the officer corps. The problem was by no means universal but occurred frequently enough to keep one on eggshells until the disposition of the individual could be determined.

Take the Tailhook debacle. Little that went on there could be said to be in keeping with the good order and discipline of the military. But it’s odd to me that a woman who volunteered to have men suck Jello shots out of her navel, shacked up with a married man and performed some sort of sexual shaving ritual with a half dozen men, can make millions by being offended by the whole thing in the light of day. In the process this “officer” ruins the careers of hundreds and hundreds of male colleagues, many whose conduct was far less lurid than their her own. The whole episode ended with every male Naval Aviator spending the next several years having to prove his innocence in order to be promoted.

Now I have used this space to offer the opinion that a country willing to send its women to war is a kin to a husband that nudges his wife when he hears something go bump in night and says, “Aren’t you going to check that out?” Well under relentless pressure from the MSM and Libs that “women can do anything a man can” the military has caved on this issue bit by bit. Now having gotten ostensibly what they have asked for, watch the MSM and Libs excoriate the military for getting women killed in combat. It is frustrating enough that Joe Marine can be killed with little more than “another Marine was killed today” from the MSM but when Mary Marine gets killed in the exact same circumstances, “STOP THE PRESS – EXTRA – EXTRA – MARY MARINE KILLED IN IRAQ.” This is followed by endless human interest stories about how Mary only joined the Marines because she was poor and need money for college etc. etc. Rarely will the MSM media discover the life altering change for good that the Corps visits upon young people - the esprit de corps, discipline and purpose larger than ones self.

For me they are all just Marines and I hurt for them and their families because I see the faces of the 100s and 100s of Marines I have known and wonder if it might be one of them. If it isn’t, it’s someone just like them and it hurts just as much.