“I think the debate over women in the U.S. military is over... That debate is over.” —ABC Nightline, May 21, 2004[i]

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” Isaiah 3:12

Dear Friends:

June 6 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. More than 85,000 men rallied to assist in one massive assault against the enemy, a campaign which required unprecedented bravery and sacrifice. Some were cut in pieces. Others were literally sawn in half by enemy fire and mortars. Still others attempting to land on Omaha beach never made it alive out of their Higgins craft. Many who did were shot and drowned before reaching the beaches. As we consider the tremendous sacrifice of the brave boys who engaged in one of the most heartbreaking, yet glorious campaigns in military history, I want to ask a simple question:

Aren’t you glad that the soldiers who hit those beaches of Normandy did not include young girls, single mothers, and pregnant female Marines?

Hold that thought. Fast-forward to 2004.

Wednesday, The New York Times reported of a young girl serving as military police in a “non-combat” zone when she was hit by the missile from a homemade launcher:

A homemade missile launcher propped up in an apartment window let forth a volley, and an American soldier lay moaning and bleeding, grasping for her life. The scene repeats itself so often in the Iraqi capital these days that it hardly goes remarked upon, particularly when the soldier, like nearly 4,700 other soldiers since combat operations began, is only wounded.... The wounded soldier writhed in her own blood and shrieked, her voice climbing and ebbing suddenly as if she had run out of breath.... Later in the day, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division said the soldier had suffered shrapnel wounds to her leg and that she had lost her right arm from the forearm down. He did not give her name.[ii]

The strange thing is this: there is nothing particularly unusual about this report. Another day in Iraq — another report of a girl wounded, shot to bits, or raped as a prisoner while in the service of Uncle Sam. Earlier this week, Ted Koppel hosted an episode of Nightline in which he presented a vision of the new female military. Having surveyed the implications of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq on the American people, one guest boldly declared, “the debate over women in the U.S. military is over.”[iii] (A friend of mine put it this way: “It is the story of the Titanic turned upside down — women and children dying for stay-at-home men.”)

And with each day, with each fresh report, with each Presidential statement or directive pointing to women in the frontlines of fire, the collective consciousness of the American people becomes increasingly seared. Yes, America has a seared conscience — at least our leaders do. But the best which can be said of the American people is that we are suffering from a state of collective “denial” as we blindly follow leaders who have lost the ability to recognize the horror and the effeminacy of a nation which holds women in such low regard that it would abandon the most basic biblical principles of warfare, enshrined for millennia in the practices of Christendom, by sending girls and young mothers to their deaths on foreign battlefields.

Leading the charge in this state of mass denial is the Evangelical Church. The Church is so intent on bringing affirmation to their Christ-professing President that they are unwilling to face the fact that some of America’s greatest moral failures are taking place under his watch. In many cases, these failures are being furthered by his policies...