Feminist Agenda Setters Take Aim at Truth Teller

American politics has lots of bad habits. Among them: Nothing (or is defined as) a scandal or a crisis. Two others: Politicize the nonpolitical; criminalize the noncriminal. Yet another: Regard accusations as proof of guilt. And yet another: Whenever possible, sue.

And now this ugliness has reached the military, a supposedly apolitical institution being torn apart by cumulative crises and scandals, pseudocrises and pseudoscandals, increasing criminalization of improper but noncriminal activities, and — more than anything else — lawsuits. The issue is gender or, more specifically, the imposition of civilian social and cultural agendas upon the military in the name of women and their “rights.” What contracting scandals were to the 1980s, accusations of sexual harassment — Tailhook, West Point and Aberdeen Proving Ground, to name a few — are to the 1990s. The only difference is wasted billions did not destroy the military. Feral feminism, which uses scandal to advance its own agenda, can and is.

The pattern was established with Tailhook. Never forgive. Never forget. Demand that the military atone for its real and alleged sins by sacrificing anyone accused of anything, and by demonstrating its “commitment to equality” in a very specific way: Open all combat jobs to women.

Take the case of Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, or CMR, in Livonia, Mich. Donnelly reported (among many other things) that the Navy’s first two female F-14 pilots had been shown remarkable leniency during flight training and may not have been qualified for carrier duty. One of those pilots is one of the other, removed from flight status in 1995, is suing Donnelly, the Washington Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune (the papers that printed Donnelly’s information) and 100 John Does (to be named later [presumably naval officers]). In the ugly parlance of the times, this is known as a SLAPP — strategic lawsuit against public participation. Its purpose is to shut down Donnelly, to shut up the media and to intimidate those who would question or oppose the notion that gender equality must mean absolute sameness in all things, regardless of real-world consequences of that notion.

Donnelly’s involvement in military personnel and assignment issues began in 1984, when then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger appointed her to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service, or DACOWITS. In 1992, President Bush named her to the Presidential Commission on Women in the Armed Forces. Although generally supportive of women in the military, Donnelly became convinced that putting women into combat jobs was an invitation to catastrophe. She founded CMR (occasionally derided by the Pentagon as a “one-woman band”) to keep track of what actually was happening and to make the information publicly available.

For years, Donnelly drew both feminist and Pentagon ire, not least because of her penchant for thorough research. Then, in 1996, the feminists found a way to attack. Donnelly had recorded and studied the flight-training records of Navy Lt. Kara Hultgreen and Carey Dunai Lohrenz. These documents indicated that standards had been lowered to get these women into F-14s and the carrier fleet. Hultgreen died in a crash that the Navy blamed on mechanical failure, then admitted primarily was pilot error; Lohrenz is trying to regain flight status with the aid of officers was to go public, she identified Lohrenz only as “Pilot B,” not wishing to cause this woman public humiliation.

But last April, “Pilot B” identified herself when she filed a lawsuit alleging that Donnelly had ruined her career and that Donnelly had acted in reckless disregard of her “rights and feelings.” Two newspapers and 100 unnamed males apparently showed similar insensitivity. Lohrenz’s lead attorney is Susan Barnes, founder of a Denver-based group called Women Active in Our Nation’s Defense. Their advocates and supporters, or WAN-DAS. In the past, WANDAS has sued a number of senior officers deemed insufficiently supportive of their agenda.

Two points must be kept in mind. First, women have served honorably, competently and bravely in uniform in all this country’s 20th-century wars. I had the privilege of commanding and serving with women while in the Marines. The vast majority of military women I’ve encountered have been first-rate and also decidedly unimpressed with their putative defenders in the Sisterhood. Women are in the military to stay, and properly so. Second, real crimes, such as rape and sexual harassment, must be dealt with as particularly abhorrent in an institution that gives the owe each other. “Zero tolerance” is proper policy.

What is not proper policy is the manipulation of standards to accommodate women (or any other group) and the designation of certain persons or groups as “can’t fail” because of civilian agendas. In matters as important as the national defense and the rightful equality of women, we can do better, and more rationally, than this.

Nor should we allow feral feminism to destroy a woman whose only crime appears to be telling the truth about what’s really happening in the military. Lohrenz vs. Donnelly et al. is symbolic of what American politics has become and how destructive the crisis/scandal accuse-and-sue mentality can be.