The single most transformative change in the United States military over the past century—particularly the past generation—has been the massive expansion of the woman’s role.

Has this helped the effectiveness of America’s forces? The official line is yes—or, at least, that it certainly hasn’t hurt. Whether or not you believe that, the metamorphosis of America’s all-male warrior military into an almost completely sex-integrated force has only occurred because of a lot of buried facts, wishful thinking, duplicity, doublespeak and deliberate deceit.

Studies show that the majority of Americans believe that, while women serving in support functions is fine, they should not be placed in combat situations. That popular idea runs directly contrary to the doctrine of an aggressive minority of lobbyists and politicians, who have been trying to push women into combat for over 30 years. Whether or not the American public realizes it, that minority has essentially won its war.

One of the biggest lies foisted upon an American public is that the military is loaded with “non-combat” jobs. The irrefutable fact is, the military is a combat organization. Its mission is war.

The designation of a position as “non-combat” serves essentially one purpose: to open up more jobs to women. The line separating combat from non-combat is arbitrary and in flux: The harder the lobbying to expand opportunities for women, the narrower the definition of “combat” becomes.

Current law, passed by the Bush Pentagon, allows women to serve virtually anywhere—even directly alongside combat units, as long as combat is not occurring at that moment. The bizarre promise is, they will be evacuated if combat starts. Once the enemy telephones and announces that it is ready for hostilities, the battlefield will have a time-out until the necessary cavalcade of combat and transport helicopters, armored personnel carriers and tanks reaches the scene and escorts the battleground’s lady guests away—or so the thinking seems to go. This policy would devote pilots and drivers, combat equipment and vehicles—during combat, when they would be most fiercely needed—to the idiotic chore of moving women out of the way.

But even the idea of fielding a select group of strong, efficient, disciplined, maximally effective “combat” troops, supported by weak, gender-normed “non-combat” troops, is inherently flawed. A war front can shift in a flash: If a supply line is attacked, or a bomb goes off in the “rear,” suddenly that is a new “front.” The fact that American women in uniform are being killed and captured is all the proof one needs that the military is not honoring—nor can it honor—the law restricting women from serving in combat. “Women in combat is not really an issue,” says Lt. Dawn Halfaker, who lost an arm in Iraq last year. “It is happening.”

Though civilian leaders constantly speak of the “new warfare” being a tidy, push-button, technology-driven business, reality has never matched that fiction. War is brutal, physical, demanding and deadly. Politicians can easily overlook that fact in the midst of relative peace. But their eagerness to plunge women into the nightmare of warfare is, in fact, disregard for women masquerading as support for women.

Some female soldiers recognize this—too late—and are not impressed. As one of them said, “Those feminists back home who say we have a right to fight are not out here sitting in the heat, carrying an m16 and a gas mask, spending 16 hours on the road every day and sleeping in fear you’re gonna get gassed.”

The number of women accepting more-combat-related jobs is just a fraction of the number of such jobs that have been made available to them. By and large, they don’t want those jobs. Army surveys show that 85 to 90 percent of enlisted women strongly oppose policies aimed at thrusting women into combat. The drive to open those positions to women has come from a small group of hard-core careerist women and feminist civilian leaders.

In essence, the feminist dream is to see women viciously tortured and killed alongside men.

Sally Quinn wrote in the Washington Post, “If we can’t win a war without our mothers, what kind of a sorry fighting force are we? Even the evil Saddam Hussein doesn’t send his mothers to fight his war.” Some see women warriors as a sign of progressiveness. In truth, it is a sign of barbarity.

Women face greater danger than men in most combat situations. Physical limitations make them likelier to be injured, captured or killed. This reality also endangers the men who are forced to fight alongside them. (Elaine Donnelly says bluntly, “No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a 5’2”, 110-pound woman.”) And when women are captured, experience has shown that they are treated far worse—unimaginably worse—than male prisoners of war. Though feminists lobby hard against rape generally, they “bravely” insist that, since women are duty-bound to serve as combat soldiers, rape in war cannot be stopped. Jessica Lynch, a poster child for women in combat, was allegedly beaten, raped and sodomized in captivity.

Shame on those decision-makers who would purposefully subject women to such abuse—only to serve their own twisted ideology.

Consider soberly: The military agency that trains pilots in survival, evasion, resistance and escape as prisoners of war actually includes a component to desensitize male soldiers to the screams of their women cohorts.

Of course, these same men are then expected to treat women soldiers with utmost respect and dignity, in keeping with all of the “sensitivity training” they have had forced upon them in the new, feminized military.

In the “brutish,” non-politically correct world of yesteryear, the strong were obligated to serve the weak. A traditional-thinking male seeks to protect a woman. An honorable man shields a female from danger and hurt. This attitude, to the feminist, is contemptible. And in a gender-integrated theater of combat, it introduces a host of complications. A leader is expected to view that woman not as a woman, but simply as a soldier—a grunt whom he must be able to send into harm’s way. In the up-is-down moral climate of today’s military, his reluctance to pitch her into the lion’s den is considered backward.

The military is the most respected institution in America. It possesses some of the finest, most dedicated and self-sacrificing individuals the nation has produced. But woe be unto us if we fail to recognize how its effectiveness is being fatally undermined by a failure to beat back and restrain the virulent and invasive forces of feminization that enfeeble our modern society.