Greg Sheridan, war, madness, lunacy, feminists and barbarians at the gates

Lordy, the women of the world are just so grateful to Greg Sheridan this morning. The sweet possum has heard the alarum of dangerous feminism and come on down to peel a grape and serve a mint julep to sweet helpless souls in sudden mortal danger by all this reckless talk of equality. Especially in the military and on the battlefield.

Which is just as well because I suddenly came all over faint at the thought of having to serve in the military, and was lulled and reassured and rested by Sheridan's dulcet tones. He sounds so strong, and yet so sweet and caring.

As with so many issues, normal people are smarter here than intellectuals. Is there a home in Australia in which, if attacked by a burglar, the husband would not respond first?

It was at that moment I realized I was living in the wrong home, and that I needed to rest in Sheridan's comforting bosom. Yep, you guessed it, but let's not go there, because that might get my partner upset, as well as lead to charges of abnormality.

The wilder shores of feminism, which seek to eradicate all differences between men and women, have never been inhabited by normal people.

And what world do normal people inhabit? Why the world of rugby league, where a depressed fracture of the cheekbone, a titanium plate held by six bolts, and a reckless desire to inflict physical damage are all part of a day's work.

I do not want to see women playing in the National Rugby League. No doubt you could find some single Amazonian woman, out of 11 million Australian women, who could do it with no greater risk of injury than the blokes. But why would you? What purpose would it serve? It would be madness.

Madness, I tells ya. Utter madness. A single Amazonian woman you might find, just like you might find a single homosexual, but why would you want to? What would it mean? Why the physical world might dissolve before our nature following, god fearing eyes. Why, it'd be just like getting a dog to walk on its hind legs, or a woman to preach a sermon. A novelty item mebbe but beyond that? Dear lord, it's a stranger notion than bestiality.

Of course I feel much the same way about women who want to be priestesses. How on earth do they think they have some sort of direct connection with an imaginary almighty, when this has always been the business of schizophrenic power crazed men.

I blame the feminists. They're ruined everything, and being women, they're just so wilful and contradictory. You just can't get any sense out of them:

Our society is awash with violence. Just walk through the centre of Melbourne about 1am any Saturday night if you don't believe me. Much of that violence is directed at women. To remove any notion that women are special, that men have an absolute obligation to protect women, is to coarsen and infantilise our society. It seems only five minutes ago that the feminist movement was telling us that women were superior because they were inherently less violent. I'm inclined to agree with that proposition. Now it seems feminists are quite happy about violence so long as women get an equal chance to do it.

Bloody women, bloody feminists, so bloody illogical. Say one thing, do another, talk tough and then on with the bloody tears, the bloody floodgates open so wide, and what can you do? Hate violence, then say they want to be violent. How can men ever understand them.

"What's that dear?" "Nothing dear, I'm just going into the den to smash a few things, and then have a port and a cigar and a good harumph." "As you wish dear."

Sssh, while Greg's gone, you might like to sneak a read of his column, Equality for women in war is lunacy.

We hope it will shortly be followed by his column Equality for female civilians dying in war is a practical expression of the lunatic demands of feminism, followed by his treatise on why Equality for women in Afghanistan while a war is being fought for their liberation is impractical lunacy.

Of course if you read Sheridan, you will have read all the sentiments at some place at some point in past time where the rhetoric was then deployed to explain why you couldn't have homosexuals employed in the front line.

I'll leave you to follow the standard academy line as peddled by a near apoplectic Sheridan, who has a mystical understanding of the practical requirements of the military as well as its spiritual bonding, without - from what I can see - ever actually having spent any time in military service. Perhaps he's been a reservist, because I was profoundly moved by his talk of male bonding (without any sordid physical side effects) and the desire to save women, perhaps even putting down a cape in a foxhole:

Many practical considerations arise from the special nature of military culture and the extreme demands of battle. In close combat male soldiers will try to protect female soldiers. This is a law of human nature. The unit's effectiveness will suffer.

In much the same way as homosexuals are a real problem, I guess.

"Who's the only superpower military out there?" argued Maj. Brian Maue, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, in a debate in June at the McCormick Freedom Museum in Chicago. "This is hardly convincing to say, 'Ah, the others are doing it. We should too."'

Maue — who says he's been speaking out on his own, not as a military spokesman — suggests that repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" would prompt straight service members to complain of privacy violations and "dignity infractions."

"An openly gay military would be the heterosexual equivalent to forcing women to constantly share bathrooms, locker rooms and bedrooms with men," he wrote in a New York Times online forum.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, another supporter of the ban, contends that some field commanders in nations that allow gays to serve openly have resorted to "tacit discrimination" — excluding them from front-line units for fear that problems would surface in rugged, close-quarters living conditions.

Maginnis also cited America's multiple overseas missions.

"You have a large part of the world with no tolerance for open homosexuality, and if we were to deploy there, it would be a serious problem," he said. (here).

But we've strayed off topic, just like a bunch of girlies. Back to Sheridan:

A military unit is bound by common identity, by deep traditions of comradely bonding. The romantic liaisons that inevitably develop in mixed gender units militate against the absolute teamwork, group identity and lack of favouritism that characterise military units in combat. A lack of knowledge of military culture leads to a lack of respect for it and then to policies that compromise effectiveness.

Yep, long gone are the days when Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh were the queens of the Sydney underworld. These days there are important questions of principle to consider:

The best recent Australian writing on military matters comes from retired major general Jim Molan in his book on the Iraq war and his newspaper columns. One of Molan's central themes is that the laws of war, the moral conduct of war, not only permit but require ferocious, sustained, terrible violence.

Wow. That sounds like it's barbaric, so you have to have barbarians to fight that sort of war. Which must mean men.

Mainstream Western ethics have always recognised that occasionally a war is just and must be waged. For a war to be just it must be in a just cause, it must be a last resort with reasonable alternatives exhausted, it must not allow greater evil than it combats, and there must be a reasonable chance of success. But once you are involved in a war, you must do everything, within the laws of war, to win and win as quickly as possible. You can be absolutely sure that your enemy will not resile from extreme violence.

Yep, extreme barbaric violence is what is required, much worse than a game of rugby league. With bodies and blood and bleeding and limbs and entrails and squishy bits and thingies. So surely we need barbarians at the gate?

All societies have recognised that they therefore need warriors. The warriors are not barbarians. They are brave, skilled, disciplined individuals who risk their lives for something bigger than themselves. The overwhelming majority of people who have lived, and the overwhelming majority of people and societies today, recognise that the warriors are men. This is something that most people know, even if they deny it.

Oh so they're not barbarians? They're just brave, skilled, disciplined individuals, capable of pushing a button that two hundred miles away will blow up a wedding party? Yep, that's surely a job for men. Or women who've had their plastic brains ruined by video games?

Never mind. When it comes to the military or the church or rugby league, I'm in the Groucho club. Why would you want to be in the barbaric business of killing people or thinking you can talk to an imaginary god.

But I do so wonder why Sheridan gets his knickers in such a knot, as if the world might collapse and the natural order disintegrate under the wicked influence of the baleful influence of feminists. He sounds almost unmanned, de-personned, defrocked by the idea of Amazonian women.

As usual, the movies are ahead of their time, and I'm afraid as war becomes more remote and alienated, and more like playing video games, women will find that killing comes easy. After all, it isn't the men in Aliens that win the day. While the macho strutting tough talking hispanic Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) gets punished, it takes that tough singlet-wearing bitch from hell Ripley to knock out the mother of all alien mfs. And if James Cameron has foreseen it, so one day it will come to pass.

Yep, Amazons rule. Get used to it Greg Sheridan.

By the way, if you want some fluff about the legend, go here to read up on Amazons.

Meantime, since we're really on a hot cultural trot this morning, we've dedicated this song to Greg Sheridan:

Professor Higgins:

Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that?
Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do everything their mothers do?
Why don't they grow up, well, like their father instead?

Why can't a woman take after a man?
Men are so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you're with them, you're always at ease.

Would you be slighted if I didn't speak for hours?

Colonel Pickering:
Of course not.

Professor Higgins:
Would you be livid if I had a drink or two?

Colonel Pickering:
Nonsense.

Professor Higgins:
Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers?

Colonel Pickering:
Never.

Professor Higgins:
Well, why can't a woman be like you?

One man in a million may shout a bit.
Now and then, there's one with slight defects.
One perhaps whose truthfulness you doubt a bit,
But by and large we are a marvelous sex!

Why can't a woman take after a man?
'Cause men are so friendly, good-natured and kind.
A better companion you never will find.

If I were hours late for dinner would you bellow?

Colonel Pickering:
Of course not.

Professor Higgins:
If I forgot your silly birthday, would you fuss?

Colonel Pickering:
Nonsense.

Professor Higgins:
Would you complain if I took out another fellow?

Pickering:
Never.

Professor Higgins:
Why can't a woman be like us?

Professor Higgins:
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so decent, such regular chaps;
Ready to help you through any mishaps;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum?

Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?

Why can't a woman behave like a man?
If I was a woman who'd been to a ball,
Been hailed as a princess by one and by all;
Would I start weeping like a bathtub overflowing,
Or carry on as if my home were in a tree?
Would I run off and never tell me where I'm going?
Why can't a woman be like me?

Oh dear, but then they'd want to go off and fight in a war. Yep, Greg Sheridan is right after all. Who'd want to be a confused, tortured man?

(Below: first an arty view of the battle of the Amazons, by Peter Paul Rubens, and then a bizarre tchotchke - supplied by Google images - for the boys, so they can get excited about women on the battlefield. It's by someone called Kanai, part of the strange undergrowth of Japanese culture, but proving that as an intertubes warrior, this barbaric site will go anywhere in search of visuals).