http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-200047182627.htm
EDITORIAL . April 7, 2000, Washington Times
Kinder, gentler warriors
Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, the highest-ranking woman in
the Army,
likes to launch her stem-winders by stating, "This isn't your
father's Army
anymore." You can say that again. The aggressive effort to
integrate women
into the military is a revolutionary change, not just in the
armed forces,
but also in what it means to be a human being. The push to
feminize the
military, as Stephanie Gutmann, author of "The Kinder, Gentler
Military,"
puts it, became "a kind of madness" in the 1990s as "the brass
handed over
their soldiers to social planners in love with an unworkable
(and in many
cases undesirable) vision of a politically correct utopia, one
in which men
and women toil side by side, equally good at the same tasks,
interchangeable, and, of course, utterly undistracted by sexual
interest."
Dream on. Of course, dreaming on is precisely what social
planners do.
One has to wonder, though, how a handful of utopians, with
visions of
political correction dancing in their heads, were empowered to
transform the
military and undermine a range of long-cultivated behaviors and
loyalties
without any kind of a national debate. It just sort of happened.
Now and
again, the country takes notice, clucking over the plight of
young mothers'
leaving their kiddies to answer a bizarre call of duty,
"gender-normed"
grenade throws and the like, rapacious drill sergeants who use
girl recruits
as sex slaves, and, not least, a military in shambles, seriously
undermined
by attrition and low morale. But nothing happens. After all, as
Gen. Kennedy
is wont to say, "This isn't your father's Army anymore."
Maybe one thing to make a 21st-century citizen pine for
Dad's Army is
the Alice-in-Wonderland spectacle of Gen. Kennedy, said to be
Hillary Rodham
Clinton's favorite general, filing a formal complaint of sexual
harassment
against Maj. Gen. Larry G. Smith, a combat veteran and career
armor soldier.
This, in fact, is one for the record books. Gen. Kennedy,
already the Army's
top intelligence officer and its first female three-star
general, has become
the very first general to file sexual harassment charges against
a fellow
general. As first reported by this newspaper's Rowan
Scarborough, the
52-year-old general called late last year for an official
investigation into
an act of "inappropriate touching" said to have taken place in
her Pentagon
office in the fall of 1996. What reopened Gen. Kennedy's wounds
- or,
rather, gave the old touches a twinge - three years after the
alleged fact?
It seems that the inappropriate toucher received, or came in
line to
receive, a plum assignment, that's what.
There has been surprisingly little editorial comment on the
case. Maybe
that's because the known facts give off a strong whiff of a
that'll-fix-him
attitude that is regrettable in a feminist poster-girl. Of
course, even if
proves to be the case that vindictiveness is not behind the
charge, Gen.
Kennedy doesn't look much better. That is, if a woman who has
ascended to
the pinnacle-post of general - general -isn't up to rebuffing
and laying to
rest an act of "inappropriate touching" by one of her equals at
the
Pentagon, one has to question whether warfare - even
peacekeeping - is the
best use of her talents.
As Mr. Scarborough noted, Gen. Kennedy confounded a
conference of
sergeant majors last year by lecturing them, not on intelligence
matters as
expected, but on the service's Consideration of Others (COO)
program. COO?
According to Mr. Scarborough, "COO brings soldiers together to
talk about
personal and professional problems and their feelings." Gen.
Kennedy chided
the group, "giggling, much like a girl," according to one
sergeant, for not
"COO'ing." Could Gen. Smith, now being investigated on charges
of
"inappropriate touching," have been a clumsy, perhaps creepy,
but
nonetheless wishful COOer? Hard to say. Meanwhile, regardless of
the case's
outcome, Gen. Kennedy plans to retire this summer, proving, once
again, that
old soldiers never die. These days, they just file sexual
harassment
charges.
