Just to preface this: All Americans owe a debt of gratitude for anyone, man or woman, who has fought on the front lines of combat to protect the sovereignty of this great nation.
Truly and from the bottom of our hearts: Thank you.
But that still doesn’t mean women should be fighting on those front lines — and President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for the United States Secretary of Defense agrees.
To wit, as is often the case anytime Trump does anything, his announcement of “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host and accomplished military veteran Pete Hegseth as his nominee for Defense Secretary was met with the usual scrutiny from the left.
“Oh, but his tattoos!” they whined, not realizing that Hegseth is simply a proud Christian.
“Oh, but he’s not qualified!” they cried, while ignoring Hegseth’s master’s degree from Harvard (undergrad from Princeton) and multiple deployments on duty.
“Oh, but he hates women!” they said … Wait. What?
Yes, apparently, the left has honed in on a clip of Hegseth from the Nov. 7 edition of the “Shawn Ryan Show,” waxing on his thoughts of women fighting in combat, and the shrieking feminists who would gladly welcome World War III in exchange for “muh abortions” did not take it very well.
You can watch the whole conversation for yourself here, but the relevant clip is below:
Trump defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth rips the U.S. military for changing standards for women so they can serve in combat positions.
This is the common sense take which is exactly why the left is losing their minds over it right now.
“If they were lowering the standard to… pic.twitter.com/lQ5Vm84eXW
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 13, 2024
“You don’t like women in combat,” Ryan began.
“No,” Hegseth flatly stated, without missing a beat.
“Why not?” Ryan asked.
“I love women service members, who contribute amazingly,” Hegseth said. “Because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated.
“And complication in combat means causalities or worse.”
Hegseth is 100 percent correct about “or worse.” A known wartime tactic (See: Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea during World War II) is to rape and impregnate women, before sending them back to their home countries with the mixed-race babies to demoralize male troops.
Sending women to the front lines is begging for the enemy to take a similar approach.
Is Pete Hegseth right about women in combat?
But why let the chivalrous desire to protect women from the horrors of war get in the way of a good leftist tantrum?
Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois — a combat veteran who lost both of her legs and partial use of her right arm after Iraqi insurgents shot down her Black Hawk helicopter in 2004 — took issue with Hegseth’s remarks, seemingly unaware that she was almost making Hegseth’s point for him while speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins:
Veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Pete Hegseth saying women shouldn’t serve in combat: “I would ask him, ‘Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight?’ I’m pretty sure I was in combat when that happened.” pic.twitter.com/Lfc4TDnTJ4
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 14, 2024
“What did go through your mind, as a woman who has served, when you heard [Hegseth] saying women should not be in combat roles?” Collins asked Duckworth.
“Well, he’s showing his absolute lack of experience and his lack of suitability for the job because anybody that truly knows the military knows that we cannot go to war without [the] over 225,000 women who are serving on active duty right now.
“Our military cannot go to war without our female service members.
“You know, this is not the Revolutionary War where there’s some sort of line in the sand, and combat is on one side, and the rest of us can stay behind this line, and that’s not ‘combat.’
“I would ask him, ‘Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight?’ I’m pretty sure I was in combat when that happened.”
Again, I thank Ms. Duckworth for her service … but her argument doesn’t make any sense.
How is the fact that she lost her legs in combat in any way an argument for putting women in combat? Wouldn’t it imply the exact opposite?
Women are literally necessary for the continuance of the human species. Why in the world should a country be putting them in position to lose multiple limbs?
Another issue with Duckworth’s screed: It’s clear she didn’t actually watch the whole clip of Hegseth’s remarks.
Hegseth was never denying that women had been in real “combat” during war. In fact, Hegseth echoed Duckworth’s concerns that there’s a blurring demarcation in what “combat” actually constitutes.
More so, Duckworth also completely ignored Hegseth’s key concern about how the military was lowering admission standards to accommodate women. When it comes to war, lowering standards in any way feels like a terrible idea.
Look, nobody is saying Hegseth is perfect — if you think he is, I’d advise you not look at his marital past — but he clearly has a strong military mind on his shoulders, and he knows that women can make things “complicated” on the battlefield. That counts for something.
But even if you do want to disqualify Hegseth’s opinion for whatever reason, there’s a simple moral component to this entire women-in-combat debate.
And that is this: God created men and women differently, period. Men were always designed to be the protectors and providers, per His will. Sending women off to be maimed or otherwise tortured in war literally subverts His will on that matter, and any country that gleefully does it can and should be shamed.
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