On January 24, America’s military lifted its ban against women serving in combat. The move could open more than 230,000 jobs in front-line combat and elite commando units to women.

Thus, the feminist dream to see women wounded, tortured and killed alongside men advances.

Why? Are hoards of women soldiers demanding that combat positions be opened to them? No. For years, the military has expanded the number of positions labeled “non-combat” in order to open up more jobs to women. But the number of positions that were more obviously combat-related far exceeded the number of women applying for and accepting them. Women don’t want those jobs. And Army surveys show that 85 to 90 percent of enlisted women strongly oppose policies aimed at thrusting women into combat.

So who pushed for this? It was basically an aggressive minority of lobbyists and highly placed feminist civilian leaders, along with a few hard-core careerist military women. These politically correct ideologues are driven to prove that women can do anything men can do—no matter the costs to the military, to America’s security, or to the women themselves.

These costs are exceedingly well documented—and consistently ignored, shouted down or buried. The average woman is almost 5 inches shorter, with nearly 40 fewer pounds of muscle and 6 more pounds of fat, than the average man. She has less than half of his upper-body strength, 20 percent less aerobic capacity, and lighter, brittler bones. She cannot run or jump as far; last as long; grip as well; push, pull, lift or carry as much. The military has dealt with this by implementing separate conditioning standards for women, by lowering standards generally and eliminating some altogether.

Though civilian leaders love to 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. They present their views as support for women, but how can their eagerness to plunge women into the nightmare of warfare be viewed as anything but disregard 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 m-16 and a gas mask, spending 16 hours on the road every day and sleeping in fear you’re gonna get gassed.”

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 said 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 the sensitivity training that the military has forced on the modern warrior.

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. To the feminist, this attitude is contemptible. And within 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 chauvinistic and sexist!

America’s leaders are trying to convince us that we cannot win our wars without our wives and mothers on the front lines. They see that as a sign of the nation’s progressiveness.

When we see Islamic extremists sending women out to be suicide bombers, we see it as a sign of barbarity and moral and spiritual depravity. And rightly so.

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 the virulent forces of feminization that enfeeble our modern society.

This is a terrible experiment. The Bible prophesies that it is going to fail cataclysmically. Leviticus 26:14-21 show that our nation will fall before its enemies. Not because we don’t have enough women on the front lines, but—in part—because we have any at all.