Horowitz: From Gen. Patton to ‘feminist’ generals wearing masks and promoting motherhood as warfare

"Be all that you can be!" Where men can be women and women can be men; where soldiers must wear masks all day on American bases but can't carry firearms; where the entire purpose of the military is to fight other countries' battles but not the one at our border; where getting women to act like men is the only religion allowed in the military, except when they invariably can't meet the standards and the military lowers them to make them "fair" for all.

That is sadly the state of play in what was once the pride of the nation, after decades of the left rotting out our armed forces with left-wing politicians serving as generals.

For many years, conservatives have known that military leadership has become politicized. The focus shifted from combat readiness to social experimentation, and the left finally conquered the one institution that was considered a bastion of traditional American values. But Tucker Carlson has now exposed that it's worse than even we realized.

Last Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson commented on Biden's celebration of the military becoming more feminine: "While China's military becomes more masculine, as it's assembled the world's largest navy," America focuses on making our military "become more feminine — whatever feminine means any more, since men and women no longer exist."

Tucker was commentating on Biden's celebration of the military making apparel for women, including "designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles."

Carlson prefaced his critique of the president with his now famous line, "So we've got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits."

"Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It's a mockery of the U.S. military," Carlson added on his show Tuesday. Carlson drove home the point by noting how "the Pentagon is going along with it" and that this entire feminine focus "is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission, which is winning wars."

For most Americans with common sense, Tucker was expressing their anger and sorrow at what has happened to our military over the years. What none of us expected was the response of the military leaders from all service branches sending out memes about Amazonian women and outright celebrating the concept of pregnant women in combat. Reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh's parody "we're fierce, we're feminists, and we're in your face," many active-duty feminist generals sent out social media memes basically suggesting that women are the strongest and most effective part of combat readiness, taking the absurdity of gender-bending to the next level and exemplifying Tucker's point better than he could have on his show.

Putting aside the absurd values and strategy behind this gender-bending agenda, it's quite shocking how active-duty generals are able to spar with a civilian media figure to this extent. It's one thing for the secretary of defense to engage in political battles, but we have never seen active-duty military allowed to become so political. It's as if they are trying to compensate for 20 years of egregious rules of engagement and lack of mission clarity by training their fire on a civilian with no holds barred. Now we know why we've been in Afghanistan for 20 years.

As for the substance of the gender-bending argument, how many of you actually believe that a military leadership so dedicated to promoting women in combat really remains neutral when it comes to passing women through the combat training tests? Well, just one month ago, before Tucker prompted the generals to tout women as stronger than men, the Army Times reported that the military is considering halting its gender-neutral Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) test, as female soldiers were failing at a rate of 65%, in order to make it fair to both genders.

So, much like having both sexes compete together in sports, women are exactly like men, until they are not. Which is perhaps why Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is now promoting "mindfulness and yoga" as part of combat readiness – of course, while wearing masks.

A Pentagon study has found up to 65% of women were failing the ACFT, compared to just 10% for men, according to the Telegraph. Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry of TRADOC told the Army Times last month that the Army "is looking at means to apply those scores based on gender to account for biological differences."

Oh, so you mean there are actually biological differences that make life-and-death differences in combat readiness? Who knew?

The reality is that the Marines already studied this issue very carefully in 2015, but their findings were ignored. When Obama began integrating women into infantry and other combat units, the Marine Corps, under General Joseph Dunford, was the only service branch to question this absurdity. The service conducted a study of 400 Marines (300 male and 100 female) over many months at a cost of $36 million, in which all-male teams and integrated teams were studied performing numerous tasks similar to those they would carry out in real-life combat. In infantry testing, in nearly every category, mixed teams came up short compared to the all-male teams.

Here are some key points, according to a summary of the report:

• Overall, the all-male teams outperformed teams with integrated female members 69% of the time, in 94 out of 134 tasks.
• All-male teams were faster than integrated teams in every tactical movement, and this was especially evident when heavy crew-served weapons were being moved. This held true across all Military Operational Specialties (MOSs).
• The all-male teams were more accurate shots than the integrated teams across all weapons systems. This included male Marines trained as infantrymen and those in a different MOS who were part of the testing.
• The all-male teams performed much better on routine combat tasks. When climbing an eight-foot wall, male Marines would toss their packs to the top, whereas female Marines "required regular assistance getting their packs to the top." When carrying out mock evacuations of casualties, all-male teams were much faster except in cases where the evacuee was carried in a fireman's carry, and then it was usually a male Marine doing the carrying.
• The top 25% of females overlapped with the bottom 25% of male Marines in the study for anaerobic power, and the top 10% of females corresponded with the bottom 50% of males for anaerobic capacity.
• Most importantly, the female participants sustained significantly higher injury rates and levels of fatigue than their male counterparts. In the Infantry Training Battalion, females were injured at six times the rate of male Marines.

It's important to keep in mind that these were some of the strongest and most talented female Marines, drawn from graduates of the Infantry Training Battalion. Yet at the end of the day, combat is a job only for the strongest and most resilient of men, not just average men, which is why it makes no sense to promote an agenda of women in infantry units.

Overall, the results showed that while some exceptional and unusual women might be capable of serving in the infantry in a vacuum, even they would lag far behind their male counterparts and end up slowing down their units or placing themselves or others in unnecessary danger.

The study and the recent admission from the Pentagon about women failing the ACFT – despite five years of moving heaven and earth to get as many women through it as possible – prove the simple yet blunt conclusion of a 1992 report from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces correct:

Unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.

So much for "following the science." Women in combat was the original "wear your mask to stop the spread." In both cases, politics trumps science. It's just a matter of time before they begin celebrating pregnant female Navy SEALs.

Now the same Marine Corps is attacking Tucker on Twitter for essentially opining on what its own study showed. The military is also abusing the soldiers with endless mask-wearing while performing exhausting physical exercises, while the science has shown that it has failed to stop the spread among these predominantly young recruits who are not even in danger from the virus.

The same generals promoting gender-bending are the same ones proposing masks, endless nation-building follies, and more Saudi military recruits – while opposing using troops at our own border and arming soldiers on their own bases. Donald Trump was right when he said in 2016 that our generals have been "reduced to rubble."

Meanwhile, all civilians should be asking themselves the following question: Does China actually fear a military wearing masks and run by feminist generals?