Defeminizing the Military

The U.S. Army is quietly removing female soldiers from ground reconnaissance units that are part of certain combat brigades.

The new policy reverses the Clinton administration policy that put women in units that conduct the kind of ground sweeps now being conducted in the mountains of Afghanistan.

For years, the feminization of the military has been a controversial issue. Standards have been abandoned to allow women to advance when they could not pass the same physical tests as men. Conservatives have feared that putting men and women too close together in combat situations, including training, would hamper the primary objective of the military: to fight and win wars.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness deserves a lot of credit for reversing this policy on women in reconnaissance units. She has been lobbying the administration since it took office on this and other feminist attempts to weaken the military. I'm Cal Thomas in Washington.