Panetta's Cowardly Decision

In a newsworthy act of political cowardice, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ran out the Pentagon's exit as he announced he is striking down the 1994 Combat Exclusion Law. His timing means his successor will inherit the task of defending the order to assign women to front-line military combat. Of course, Panetta doesn't want to be grilled about his order. It's lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability for all jobs and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists.

Panetta's order may be illegal or even unconstitutional because the authority to make such a radical change was specifically granted to Congress, according to former Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz. A constitutional expert, Schmitz held the position of the Defense Department's top investigator from 2002 to 2005 after 27 years of service in the U.S. Navy. Schmitz said the order will surely lead to a "degradation of good order and discipline." Here are some of the questions Panetta can now avoid being asked.

Will the new policy of women in combat be based on gender norming? That means giving women and men the same tests but scoring them differently; that means grading women "A" for the same performance that a man would get a "C," but clearing both as passing the test on the pretense that equal effort equals equal results. Will the new women-in-combat policy be impacted by the policy of "diversity metrics," which is a fancy name for quotas? In order to create the illusion that your new feminist policy is a success, will men be required to pretend that women are qualified and entitled to career promotions?

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