The above is the headline on an article in today’s Washington Times concerning the maiming, killing and destruction of young women sent by the President to Iraq to fight and die — often leaving husbands and children to tend the heart at home.

A New Generation of Maimed Women

Her body had been maimed by war. Dawn Halfaker lay unconscious at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, her parents at her bedside and her future suddenly unsure. A rocket-propelled grenade had exploded in her Humvee, ravaging her arm and shoulder.In June 2004, she became the newest soldier to start down a path almost unknown in the United States: woman as combat amputee. She was part of a new generation of women who have lost pieces of themselves in war, experiencing the same physical trauma and psychological anguish as their malecounterparts.

My Response: I have great compassion for this dear woman, but less for those leaders who sold the manhood of this nation cheap for military expediency, and who have exchanged the flower of American femininity for the politically correct vision of G.I. Jane. Such behavior is unmanly.

A Historic First

The Iraq war is the first in which so many women have had so much exposure to combat — working in a wide array of jobs, with long deployments, in a place where hostile fire has no bounds. In all, more than 370 women have been wounded in action and 34 have been killed by hostile fire.

My Response: All this under our watch. The Church is asleep.

The First Female Combat Amputees in American History

The war has created what experts believe is the nation’s first group of female combat amputees. “We’re unaware of any female amputees from previous wars,” said historian Judy Bellafaire of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, which researches such issues.

My Response: Until we repent and turn from our sin, it will get worse.

Conservatives Afraid to Appear Critical of President’s Policies

Surprising many political observers, the fact of female casualties has produced little public reaction. Before Iraq, many assumed that the sight of women in body bags or with missing limbs would provoke a wave of public revulsion. “On the whole, the country has not been concerned about female casualties,” said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist. Politically, Moskos said, it is a no-win issue. Conservatives fear they will undermine support for the war if they speak out about wounded women, and liberals worry they will jeopardize support for women serving in combat roles by raising the subject, he said.

My Response: Shame on every pastor in America who has not taught from the pulpit the sin of sending women to war! Dear pastors, fear God more than man. May the Lord open the eyes of every Christian commentator and activist more concerned about partisan politics than the righteousness of God.

The Tragic Tale of One Mother Amputee

Two months after Dawn Halfaker was wounded, Juanita Wilson arrived on a stretcher at Walter Reed, her left arm in bandages, her hand gone. It was August 25, 2004, just days after a roadside bomb went off under Wilson’s Humvee. She came to the hospital as the Iraq war’s fourth female combat amputee — the first who was a mother.

From the beginning, Wilson decided she did not want her only child to see her so wounded. She talked to the 6-year-old by phone. “Mommy’s okay,” she assured the girl. “What are you doing at school now?”

It was only after four weeks that Wilson allowed her husband and child to travel from Hawaii, where the family had been stationed, for a visit. By then, Wilson was more mobile. She asked a nurse put makeup on her face, stowed her IV medications into a backpack she could wear and planned an outing to Chuck E. Cheese’s.

“Mommy, I’m sorry you got hurt,” her daughter, Kenyah, said when she arrived, hugging her. And then: “Mommy, I thought you died.”

The sort of mother who mailed her daughter penmanship exercises and math problems from the war zone, Wilson wanted Kenyah to stay focused on school and the ordinary concerns of being 6. “I wanted it to be like I was going to be okay when she saw me,” said Wilson, 32

To read the entire article, click here.