This Woman’s Army: Obama to Complete Gleichschaltung of the American Military into the World’s Most Expensive, Non-Fighting Force by Forcing Combat Units to Accept Coeds

 

"Cpl. Christina Oliver of the Marines on patrol in 2010." The New York Times used this and the next two pictures to wordlessly "win" its argument that "women have already been in combat for years,so the new policy is merely acknowledging reality." The reality is that affirmative action has put millions of people in position for which they are unfit. The "fact" that there are female "Marines" and female "cops" and female "prison guards" in men's prisons does nothing to change the reality that women are unfit for such jobs, and damage every institution on which they are forced, no less than do unfit blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, Hmongs, jihadis, etc.

 

"Capt. Emily Naslund on patrol in Marja, Afghanistan, in 2010." 

"Lance Cpl. Stephanie Robertson of the Marines in Afghanistan in 2010."

 

"Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, left, last year with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

 

 

By Nicholas Stix

In response to the announcement by the dictator calling himself “Barack Obama” that he is gutting the nation’s ability to effectively wage war against any real enemies, I publishing a New York Times press release announcing the official change, and reprinting two prior items on this subject.

* * *

Pentagon is Set

to Lift Combat Ban

for Women

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said Wednesday.

The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have frequently found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died.

Defense officials offered few details about Mr. Panetta’s decision but described it as the beginning of a process to allow the branches of the military to put the change into effect. Defense officials said Mr. Panetta had made the decision on the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Women have long chafed under the combat restrictions and have increasingly pressured the Pentagon to catch up with the reality on the battlefield. The move comes as Mr. Panetta is about to step down from his post and would leave him with a major legacy after only 18 months in the job.

The decision clearly fits into the broad and ambitious liberal agenda, especially around matters of equal opportunity, that President Obama laid out this week in his Inaugural Address. But while it had to have been approved by him, and does not require action by Congress, it appeared Wednesday that it was in large part driven by the military itself. Some midlevel White House staff members were caught by surprise by the decision, indicating that it had not gone through an extensive review there.

Mr. Panetta’s decision came after he received a Jan. 9 letter from Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stated in strong terms that the armed service chiefs all agreed that “the time has come to rescind the direct combat exclusion rule for women and to eliminate all unnecessary gender-based barriers to service.”

A military official said the change would be implemented “as quickly as possible,” although the Pentagon is allowing three years, until January 2016, for final decisions from the services.

Each branch of the military will have to come up with an implementation plan in the next several months, the official said. If a branch of the military decides that a specific job should not be opened to a woman, representatives of that branch will have to ask the defense secretary for an exception.

“To implement these initiatives successfully and without sacrificing our war-fighting capability or the trust of the American people, we will need time to get it right,” General Dempsey wrote.

It will be carried out during what the administration describes as the end of the American combat role in Afghanistan, the nation’s longest war.

A copy of General Dempsey’s letter was provided by a Pentagon official under the condition of anonymity.

The letter noted that this action was meant to ensure that women as well as men “are given the opportunity to succeed.”

It was unclear why the Joint Chiefs acted now after examining the issue for years, although in recent months there has been building pressure from high-profile lawsuits.

In November 2012 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ban on behalf of four service women and the Service Women’s Action Network, a group that works for equality in the military. The A.C.L.U. said that one of the plaintiffs, Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar, an Air National Guard helicopter pilot, was shot down, returned fire and was wounded while on the ground in Afghanistan, but could not seek combat leadership positions because the Defense Department did not officially acknowledge her experience as combat.

In the military, serving in combat positions like the infantry remains crucial to career advancement. Women have long said that by not recognizing their real service, the military has unfairly held them back.

The A.C.L.U. embraced Mr. Panetta’s decision with cautious optimism. Ariela Migdal, an attorney with the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project, said in a statement that the organization was “thrilled” by the decision, but added that she hoped it would be implemented “fairly and quickly.”

By law Mr. Panetta is able to lift the ban as a regulatory decision, although he must give Congress a 30-day notice of his intent. Congress does not need to approve the decision before it goes into effect. If Congress disagrees with the action, members would have to pass new legislation prohibiting the change, which appeared highly unlikely.

Although in the past some Republican members of the House have balked at allowing women in combat, on Wednesday there appeared to be bipartisan endorsement for the decision, which was first reported by The Associated Press and CNN in midafternoon.

“It reflects the reality of 21st century military operations,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, called it a “historic step for recognizing the role women have, and will continue to play, in the defense of our nation.”

Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that she was pleased by the decision and said that it “reflects the increasing role that female service members play in securing our country.”

Representative Loretta Sanchez, the California Democrat who has long pressed to have women’s role in combat recognized, said that she was pleased that Mr. Panetta was removing what she called “the archaic combat exclusion policy.”

Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who has pushed for lifting the ban, called it “a proud day for our country” and an important step in recognizing “the brave women who are already fighting and dying.”

But the leadership of a conservative Christian group, the Family Research Council, immediately weighed in with its opposition, sending out a statement from Jerry Boykin, a retired three-star general with a long career in Special Operations Forces.

General Boykin said that “the people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment.” He especially criticized the concept of placing women into Special Forces units where “living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions.” It remains unclear if women will be permitted to fight in Special Forces and other commando units.

Public opinion polls show that Americans generally agree with lifting the ban. A nationwide Quinnipiac University poll conducted a year ago found that three-quarters of voters surveyed favored allowing military women to serve in units that engaged in close combat, if the women wanted to.

Policy experts who have pushed the military to lift the ban said that it was striking that much of the impetus appeared to come from Joint Chiefs, indicating that the top military leadership saw that the time had come to open up to women.

“It’s significant that the change came from the uniformed side, rather than being forced on the uniformed side by the civilian leadership,” said Chris Jacob, the policy director of the Service Women’s Action Network.

Under current rules, a number of military positions are closed to women — and to open them, the services have to change the rules.

Under Mr. Panetta’s new initiative, the situation is the opposite: Those combat positions would be open to women, and they could only be closed through specific action.

Capt. Emily Naslund, a Marine officer who saw ground combat in Afghanistan in 2010, said Wednesday that she embraced the decision. “This is awesome,” she said.

Marjorie Connelly and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

* * *Claire, the Lean, Mean, Killing Machine: This Woman’s Army
By Nicholas Stix
Toogood Reports/A Different Drummer
May 3, 2003

(Reprint note from November 23, 2009: The U.S. military’s recent outbursts of diversity at Fort Hood and the U.S. Naval Academy reminded me of, and inspired me to reprint this 2003 article.)
 

A Few Good Persons

If you’re goin’ to fight for freedom,
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,
If you go to fight for freedom,
April time will be a love-in there.

Remember the song, “San Francisco”? As written by John Phillips and sung by Scott McKenzie, it was a big hit in 1967, a time when the city by the bay was famous for “flower children.”

“If you’re going to San Francisco,
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,
If you’re going to San Francisco,
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there,
For those who come to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.”

Well, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, his bosses, and folks at places like NOW apparently think we can now fight wars with flower children.

Meet Claire. As Kristof described her last Friday,

The only time I saw Iraqi men entirely intimidated by the American-British forces was in Basra, when a cluster of men gaped, awestruck, around an example of the most astoundingly modern weapon in the Western arsenal.

Her name was Claire, and she had a machine gun in her arms and a flower in her helmet.

“I’m a bit of a novelty here,” she said, laughing. The Iraqis flinched.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, because I wasn’t there and Kristof was, that’s a lot of Barbra Streisand, if you’ll pardon my French. The only Iraqi male who might have been intimidated by Claire, would have to have had eyes so bad he could just make out the gun, but not the sex of its bearer, and was probably wheelchair bound. Those men weren’t intimidated; they were shocked.

Kristof’s arguments for why we should have women at the front lines are:

1. They will cause the most bloodthirsty enemy troops to show compassion, and perhaps not bomb vehicles occupied by both women and men;
2. They can pat down women;
3. And hey, female journalists function fine at the front lines, so why not infantrypersons?

I kid you not. Kristof also quotes Lory Manning, who runs the Washington, D.C.-based Women in the Military project, as saying that—

“There’s this whole mommy-at-war feeling, which tells me that the critics have given up on the women-can’t-do-it argument. They’re backing off the old arguments and have come up with a new one.”

 

Oh, Captain, My Captain

The problem with the Lory Mannings of the world, is that they split their time between peeing on people’s legs and telling them it’s raining, and giving interviews to pc journalists and academics who themselves spend much of their time peeing on folks’ legs, and telling their victims that it’s raining. Critics of the feminized military haven’t given up on “the women-can’t-do-it-argument”; since when do you give up on the truth? Mainstream journalists and tenured academics, however, have largely succeeded at silencing that argument in their respective workplaces. And Manning knew she was talking to just such a newspaper, whose virulently pc publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., is as hostile to the military ethos as they come.

Give any indication that you believe in biological differences between men and women, and you will never get hired as a staffer at the New York Times, or as a humanities or social science professor at, say, Columbia University. Express such blasphemy after being hired there, and the feminists will see to it that you’re fired, if not sued for creating a “hostile work environment.” And the alleged males of the species will help them.

Lory Manning’s a liar, but who’s going to call her on it? No one at the Times, certainly. And not CBS “reporter” Jane Clayson, who used an 1 April, 48 Hours “investigation,” “Waiting on Women Warriors,” which was supposedly a report on POW Jessica Lynch, as a pretext to give Manning a soapbox.

[B]ut ex-Navy Captain Lory Manning says much of the American public is still struggling to accept women as warriors, especially after hearing the news of MIAs Jessi Lynch and Pvt. Lori Piestewa and seeing the video of POW Shoshana Johnson.

“We have this idea that women stay at home and men go to war,” says Manning.

Her initial reaction to seeing Shoshana’s pictures as a POW, “Was oh my gosh, you know, let’s start praying for her right now. I could feel the fear.”

She hopes it won’t change the way America thinks about the role of women in the military.

“We have women POWS now, women missing. But we also have hundreds and thousands of women over there doing extraordinary heroic work,” says Manning.

Thus did Manning equivocate on the difference between a woman serving, say, as a clerk at headquarters, and serving in the infantry. And Clayson helped her, by retiring from journalism, to serve as a cheerleader for feminist gender politics, national defense be damned.

Jessica Lynch, Lori Piestewa, and Shoshana Johnson were not warriors. Period. That we have had women POWs and women missing, is due to mischief by Clinton Administration officials who eliminated rules prohibiting women from serving in all manner of risky capacities in war zones. Now they may serve in any unit but the infantry, artillery, armored divisions and special forces, a move that anyone familiar with combat knew would result in women becoming involved in battle. As my colleague Paul Scates has observed, in places like Afghanistan — and, with tragic results, Iraq — often there are no clear front lines or “rear areas.”
 
 
The Media Declare War on the Truth

In William McGowan’s excellent book, Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism, McGowan tells of the Pentagon’s corruption of military standards during the 1990s, in order to meet quotas for female officers and fliers, and of the corruption of journalistic standards that not only permitted the military corruption to occur, but celebrated it.

If you relied on the New York Times for information, you would never have heard of Coloring the News. The Times refused to review it, and a search I did of their archives for this article, showed that the alleged newspaper of record has never so much as mentioned the most important book on media bias in recent years. That might have something to do with McGowan’s having taken the Times out to the woodshed, for its relentless propagandizing and dishonesty.

McGowan beat up on many other big-name, “legitimate” news organizations, as well, for systematically misrepresenting as “sexism” problems integrating women into the armed forces. In particular, he cited the incompetent, politically compromised reporting of the Washington Post’s Tamara Jones and Dana Priest, respectively, 60 Minutes’ Morley Safer, NBC Dateline’s Gary Matsumoto, Martha Raddatz (then of NPR, now with ABC News) and ABC News’ John McWethy.

None of the above “reporters” or outlets will tell you, that according to a 1992 Pentagon study, men have 81.8% more upper-body strength than women, that women are much slower than men, get winded more easily, and can’t carry a wounded comrade to safety. And so, instead of real basic training, women get a sex-normed Mommy-track, with a fraction of the rigorous exercises the men do, lighter packs, and only having to practice hand-to-hand combat against other women. That training regimen ought to come in handy, for when America fights an army of women.

Last year, my colleague Fred Reed, a Vietnam veteran (USMC) who has covered the military, among other beats, discussed sex differences as they relate to the military in graphic detail, in the sort of article – published by Toogood Reports – that you’ll never see in the New York Times, or if Lory Manning had anything to say about it, anywhere. In Reed’s article, which is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality of a sexually-integrated military, he quoted from the 1992 Pentagon report:

“Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.

“In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man....

“Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, [Lt. Col. William Gregor, U.S. Army] found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.

“Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260.

“On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it.

“Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge.”

Reed quoted from a conversation with his friend, Catherine Asby, a Harvard graduate who enlisted in the Army in 1995.

“The Army was a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home. I took training seriously and really tried to keep up with the men. I found I couldn’t. It wasn’t even close. I had no idea the difference in physical ability was so huge. There were always crowds of women sitting out exercises or on crutches from training injuries.

“They [the Army] were so scared of sexual harassment that women weren’t allowed to go anywhere without another woman along. They called them ‘Battle Buddies.’ It was crazy. I was twenty-six years old but I couldn’t go to the bathroom by myself.”

With rare exceptions, the mainstream media have steadfastly suppressed such stories. Instead, they quote silly coeds, er, G.I.s, who insist, as did Marine recruit Vanessa Jenkins, in getting the last word of a 1997 Dateline propaganda piece cited by William McGowan in Coloring the News, “A woman can do anything a man can do, and lots of times a whole lot better.”

Many women also end up sleeping with their fellow soldiers, their superiors, their subordinates, and in the case of Lt. Kelly Flinn, soldiers’ husbands. You can blame women for that, you can blame men, or like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, you can blame the biggest offender of all—“human nature.” The mixing of the sexes within units has destroyed military discipline. (At any given moment, ten percent of military women are out on “disability,” due to pregnancy.) Sending women into battle would result not only in dead women, but in many men dying, trying to protect the weaker sex.

Cases like that of Kelly Flinn, an officer and B-52 bomber pilot who flaunted her superior rank in the face of the enlisted woman whose husband she stole, and who lied to her superiors, are examples of human malevolence that were encouraged by sexual integration which served no military purpose.

The insistence on promoting, for political reasons, incompetent females to highly technical, dangerous positions such as fighter and bomber pilot, has not only unnecessarily endangered soldiers (Lt. Carey Lohrenz), caused deaths (Lt. Kara Hultgreen), and destroyed precious military hardware, but has “empowered” female personnel, aware of the support they enjoy from politicians and the media, to shower military rules with contempt, as in the cases of pilots Carey Lohrenz and Kelly Flinn.

In feminizing their coverage, the media have also misrepresented the role that physical strength can play in piloting a plane. We are told that in today’s high-tech military, the need for brute strength has been neutralized. But on April 1, 2001, when a Chinese pilot deliberately collided with a EP-3E U.S. spy plane, Navy pilot Lt. Shane Osborn, a bull of a man who appeared to weigh over 220 pounds, had to use every ounce of his strength to pull back on the aircraft’s yoke, in order to help get the plane “nose up” (in fact, the plane had lost its nose), in order to land without losing any of his crew. Had a woman been at the controls, there can be no doubt that all 24 crewmen would have been lost.

Nicholas Kristof instructs us that “wars these days are less for territory than for hearts and minds, and coed military units appear less menacing.”

You know what you call an army that fails to appear menacing? 1. The vanquished; 2. the Dutch.
 
 
The New Matriarchy

The Pentagon surrendered to the matriarchy even before Bill Clinton became commander-in-chief. During the past twenty-odd years, a number of females have undermined the services, using those weapons of mass destruction, the lawsuit and the sexual harassment claim. Militarily incompetent females have worked their way up the officer corps, by playing politically correct media and politicians like fiddles. Pols like former Rep. Patricia Schroeder and Sen. Olympia Snowe, seek to turn military men into gender slaves. Women who couldn’t fly have been certified as fighter pilots, and women who couldn’t lead, have been promoted all the way to general officer.

Years ago, a feminist ex-girlfriend of mine had a name for men like the sort of generals you increasingly find in this woman’s army: “pussy-whipped.”

Shortly after 911, CNN interviewed gender warrior, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, ret., the highest-ranking woman in Army history.

CNN: How has the military environment changed for women in the last ten years?

KENNEDY: I think the military environment is a more open one for women. Two things have happened. One is the number and diversity of jobs increasing. And, I think that we have all grown more confident of the ability of women to perform not only the traditional women’s jobs, but those that are new and unusual for women to fill. The reason more jobs have been opened to women is that women have done so well in each field as it opens up to them.

Among civilians, Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy’s claim to fame is for having destroyed the career of Maj. Gen. Larry Smith. In 1999, when Smith was about to be promoted to lieutenant general, and to Deputy Inspector General of the Army, an office which, among other things, investigates sexual harassment claims, Kennedy claimed that Smith had groped and tried to kiss her three years earlier. The official charge was that Smith had “kissed [Kennedy] against her will in her office.”

The Army concluded that the charge was “substantiated.” What that really meant was, that in such “he said, she said” situations, the Pentagon always takes the word of the female officer.

I’ll have more to say on Claudia Kennedy at another time, but for now, all you need to know is that: 1. Her statement on women in the services is manifestly untrue; and 2. Her goal has long been to emasculate the military, and install a matriarchy, rather than to prepare soldiers, sailors, and airmen to defend America against her enemies.

Reading the likes of Nicholas Kristof and Claudia Kennedy, you wonder how the military functioned for thousands of years without women.

The military has one job: To win wars. Winning wars means killing the enemy, and seizing real estate. And you don’t do that while protecting coeds with flowers in their helmets.

* * *Feminists Smell Final Victory in Their War on the American Military
By Nicholas Stix
June 13, 2012
WEJB/NSU

According to the Pentagon’s own research, the average man has 81.8 percent more upper-body strength than the average female, more speed, more stamina, more agility, more everything. And women can’t carry a wounded comrade to safety. As I wrote nine years ago,

And so, instead of real basic training, women get a sex-normed Mommy-track, with a fraction of the rigorous exercises the men do, lighter packs, and only having to practice hand-to-hand combat against other women. That training regimen ought to come in handy, for when America fights an army of women.

As Fred Reed wrote in 2002, citing Pentagon research,

“In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man....

“Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, [Lt. Col. William Gregor, U.S. Army] found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.

“Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260.

“On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it.

“Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge.”

Women do not belong in combat on the ground, the sea, or in the air. Feminists have turned the American military into the world’s most expensive welfare program, and have already turned it into an organization that cannot beat any major foe.

Stephen Kilcullen writes,

Army women are not currently allowed to serve in frontline squads, platoons or rifle companies. But they can serve on battalion staffs: groups of 10 to 15 headquarters personnel who coordinate the actions of the smaller units in the organization. These roles do not involve small-unit combat leadership, tactics or direct combat—core aspects of the infantry mission. Ranger School develops those men best suited for precisely this infantry mission.

Those battalion staffs are where the takeover and installation of the matriarchy will take place. Can you say “sexual harassment lawsuits”? Before you know it, you will have incompetent feminists suing their way up the ladder, pushing competent men out of the service altogether, with the help of their political supporters, and the only men left in the general officer corps will be pathetic, feminized weenies, who will support the he-women. Strike that—that’s already the reality.

* * *Women Don't Belong in Ranger School
By Stephen Kilcullen
Updated June 12, 2012, 7:19 p.m. ET
Wall Street Journal
Comments (229)

Do individuals serve the military or does the military serve them?

The United States Army is debating whether to admit women to Ranger School, its elite training program for young combat leaders. Proponents argue this is to remove a final impediment to the careers of Army women. But the move would erode the unique Ranger ethos and culture—not to mention the program's rigorous physical requirements—harming its core mission of cultivating leaders willing to sacrifice everything for our nation.

The Army's 75th Ranger Regiment traces its roots back to World War II, when it won acclaim for penetrating deep behind Japanese lines. Founded in 1950, Ranger School teaches combat soldiers small-unit tactics and leadership under extreme duress. It pushes men harder than any other program in the Army's curriculum.

Competition to attend the course is fierce, with about 4,000 men eligible to attend each year. Only about half graduate. Of those, only 20% make it through without having to retake various phases. For decades, completion of Ranger School has been the best indicator for determining which young men can handle the enormous responsibility of combat leadership.

The Ranger School debate is upon us because the Army is considering whether to overturn regulations excluding women from infantry battalions. This is part of a broader trend in the U.S. military. The Air Force allowed women to serve as combat pilots at the start of the first Gulf War in 1991. Following suit, the Navy in 2010 embarked on a taxpayer-funded retrofit of its submarines to accommodate 10-20 women in its submarine force each year. Now the Navy finds itself embroiled in controversy surrounding its process for determining their suitability.

Army women are not currently allowed to serve in frontline squads, platoons or rifle companies. But they can serve on battalion staffs: groups of 10 to 15 headquarters personnel who coordinate the actions of the smaller units in the organization. These roles do not involve small-unit combat leadership, tactics or direct combat—core aspects of the infantry mission. Ranger School develops those men best suited for precisely this infantry mission.

"Ninety-percent of our senior [infantry] officers are Ranger qualified," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno recently said. "If we determine that we're going to allow women to go into infantry and be successful, they're probably at some time going to have to go to Ranger School."

But does changing the fabric of the military culture to improve the odds of individual achievement make sense for the military? Do individuals serve the military or does the military serve them? Remember, this is an all-volunteer force.

Ranger School isn't about improving the career prospects of individual candidates. Our motto is "Rangers lead the way." Many a Ranger has lived these words before being killed in action—certain that if a Ranger couldn't accomplish the mission, nobody could. This unique culture lures the kind of young, smart soldiers needed to get the toughest jobs done. The promise of something bigger than oneself—bigger than any career track—is what motivates these men.

It is this culture of excellence and selflessness that attracts young men to the Ranger brotherhood. The Ranger ethos is designed to be deadly serious yet self-deprecating, focused entirely on teamwork and mission accomplishment. Rangers put the mission first, their unit and fellow soldiers next, and themselves last. The selfishness so rampant elsewhere in our society has never existed in the Ranger brotherhood.

And that is the secret of the brotherhood's success. Some call it "unit cohesiveness" but what they are really describing is a transition from self-interest to selfless service. The notion of allowing women into Ranger School because denying them the experience would harm their careers makes Ranger graduates cringe. Such politically correct thinking is the ultimate expression of the "me" culture, and it jeopardizes core Ranger ideals.

The military has changed many policies in recent years, based on individual self-interest masquerading as fairness and antidiscrimination. As we debate new policies, decision makers need to ask two simple questions: Is a proposed move good for the majority of service members? And does it improve or hinder our ability to execute our mission?

After all, the military does not exist to provide careers. It is a responsibility, a way of life and a higher calling that only 1% of our citizens choose to follow. A top-notch fighting force composed of dedicated and strong men who are the very best at what they do is what defines our armed forces—and the Rangers as among their best. Let's not destroy this small but incredibly important culture under the banner of "me."

Mr. Kilcullen was commissioned in 1993 from Vanderbilt ROTC and is a Ranger School graduate. He served as an officer in light, mechanized and mountain infantry before leaving the Army in 2004.

A version of this article appeared June 13, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Women Don't Belong in Ranger School.