Female Casualties in Iraq - The Dog that Did Not Bark?

A reader writes:

I truly enjoy reading your columns on VDare. After I finish reading them, I often smack myself in the head and say, "Of course! Why didn't I see that before? He makes it seem so obvious!"

I'm writing because I was wondering if I am the only person to notice the LACK of media coverage on women casualties in Iraq. I remember reading somewhere that a sociologist did a study that showed murders of women got more airtime and more column inches of reporting than murders of men. You would think that the death and maiming of pretty young women in combat would be irresistible to the news media. Especially when the media is heavily anti-war.

Nevertheless, the only story I have seen recently about female soldiers concerned a brave combat helicopter pilot and the discrimination she faces from her male counterparts.

To me, this proves that American reporters are SO committed to promoting gender equity that they are willing to pass up juicy human interest stories AND the opportunity to stick it to Bush!

That's some commitment!

A reader writes:

Eh, maybe because there barely were any female casualties?

52 Americans, 2.15% of total. 17, that is one third died of
non-hostile causes.

Okay, but that's still 52 times more young American women have died in Iraq than have died while vacationing in Aruba, which, as I recall, got some publicity.

I suspect the media still feels burned by all the hoopla aroused by the Saving Private Lynch hoax of 2003, in which somebody in the Pentagon fed the Washington Post a tall tale about how the blonde beauty contestant had been a virtual Rambette, slaughtering Iraqis left and right until finally overcome by the dusky horde.

The War Nerd's new eXile column is timely: "Women at War & in Drag."

When I was a kid, girls didn't get to play soldier. War was a boy's game, played with dirtclods, with maybe a nice sharp rock stuck in the clod if you really hated the guys you were fighting. That was the Heroic Age, the Homeric era of Bakersfield. We had a code, damn it. One time Lisa Royster, this bucktoothed sister of a friend of mine, tried to join the wars and got herself dirtclodded back to her dollhouse by a rare united volley from both sides, which just shows you how chivalrous we were.

Now they tell us women have to get equal time, some Title IX deal where the feds have decreed girls not only have to get equal volleyball funding but a full and fair chance of getting blown up by an IED. Which is why we've already had 52 American women KIA in Iraq. Officially women aren't supposed to be in frontline combat units like infantry or armor, but nobody told the Iraqis about this frontline.

The fact is, any US soldier or vehicle, anywhere in Iraq, is a target, so banning women from certain kinds of service doesn't do a thing to keep them safe. It just means your Congressmember can send off a form letter saying he did his best to keep our daughters out of the Ramadi Inn where Jessica Lynch stayed before she got fake-rescued. In other words, it's all a crock...

What's really funny is how the liberals are running two totally opposite lies about women and war lately:

1. War is a mean, bad, sexist thing, and besides...

2. Women have always been brave soldiers who were right there on the battle front!

To prove #2, a bunch of professors have been collecting stories about girls who dressed up as guys and went to war. These so-called historians say all the big European armies of the 18th and 19th centuries were crammed with butchy girls passing as men...

This whole topic makes me kind of uncomfortable, so let's just move on to the Russian girls, who as far as I can tell are the only ones who were totally able to fight magnificently without turning into medical freaks who had to shave twice a day. I have to salute you Russian woman warriors for that. [More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer