Senate Crones Pecking at Hegseth Ignore Devastating Study on Women in Combat from the Marine Corp

It’s difficult to understate how badly the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearings went for the Democrats.

Appalling? Cataclysmic? Inauspicious? Which synonym of “disastrous” do you want to go with when it came to the grilling of President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon? The Democrats promised us from the beginning that they’d reveal Hegseth as an alcohol-sodden creep with antediluvian opinions on women.

Not only did the Tuesday hearing produce nothing we hadn’t heard before, they produced less than that — providing an object lesson in the smear tactics of the media without doing any real reputational damage to the man.

But what about that sexism charge? As you doubtlessly saw if you saw one clip from the hearings, Hegseth once upon a time believed what we all believed until about six minutes ago: that women were less effective than men on the combat lines.

Hegseth has backtracked a bit on allowing women in combat roles, saying he would let them provided that they meet the same standards as male troops and those standards aren’t compromised. That didn’t stop a flock of crones (what is the collective noun for a group of them? A murder of crones? A wrinkle? A cackle?) from berating Hegseth to produce donor clips to prod Democrats ill disposed to give the party any more of their money to misuse to donate.

Allow me to catch you up on the Hegseth confirmation pic.twitter.com/id2fUg2mQ8

— IndySpanglish (@IndySpanglish) January 14, 2025

While there was no shortage of cronishness among Democrats on the committee, the hands-down winner was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

“We have hundreds — hundreds — of women who are currently in the infantry,” Gillibrand said. “Lethal members of our military serving in the infantry.

“You degrade them. You say, ‘We need moms but not in the military, especially in combat units.’”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand yells at Hegseth for statements about not wanting to have women serve in combat roles: “We have hundreds – HUNDREDS of women who are currently in the infantry…You degrade them. You say, we need moms but not in the military, especially in combat units. pic.twitter.com/LhNKrD4FoV

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 14, 2025

“Everything you’ve said in these public statements is politics. ‘I don’t want women.’ ‘I don’t want moms,’” she went on to say. “What’s wrong with a mom, by the way? Once you have babies, you, therefore, are no longer able to be lethal?

“I mean, you’re basically saying, women after they have children can’t ever serve in the military in a combat role. It’s a silly thing to say.”

Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is now arguing that moms should serve in combat roles.

“What’s wrong with a mom, by the way? Once you have babies, you, therefore, are no longer able to be lethal?”

Pete Hegseth’s composure needs to be studied. I would’ve burst out laughing.… pic.twitter.com/SehH9A6EoN

— George (@BehizyTweets) January 14, 2025

Well, it turns out that Gillibrand and her ilk aren’t only a gaggle of malicious scolds, they’re also quite predictably wrong!

According to a 2015 NPR report, a year-long study by the Marine Corps found that “all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in 69 percent of the tasks evaluated.”

“The Marines created a battalion of 100 female and 300 male volunteers. During the past year, they trained in North Carolina and California, taking part in realistic combat exercises,” NPR’s Tom Bowman reported.

“All-male squads, the study found, performed better than mixed gender units across the board. The males were more accurate hitting targets, faster at climbing over obstacles, better at avoiding injuries.”

Other findings from the study itself:

• “All male squads … were faster than the gender-integrated squads in each tactical movement. The differences were more pronounced in infantry crew-served weapons specialties that carried the assault load plus the additional weight of crew-served weapons and ammunition.”
• “All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating
  obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top.”
• “Anaerobic Power: Females possessed 15% less power than males; the female top 25th percentile overlaps with the bottom 25th percentile for males.
• “Aerobic Capacity: Females had 10% lower capacity; the female top 10th percentile overlaps with the bottom 50th percentile of males.”

Huh! Who would have reckoned that moms aren’t as lethal as men by the very fact of nature. I mean, aside from everybody with a whit of common sense. Also: In case you were wondering, it’s a “cackle of crones.” (“The more you know…“)

It’s too easy to pawn off these attacks as Capitol Hill politics, an attempt to establish a new #Resistance after a demoralizing four years for the Democrats. However, that overlooks the bedrock immorality of this line of questioning.

The people who put their lives on the line in the armed services deserve to have a Senate Armed Services Committee which considers their lives before they engage in donor-clipbait. The Democrats on the committee, however, are more concerned with inclusion than with facts, and demand everyone else is, too.

The one good thing to take away from Hegseth’s hearings is that he refused to buckle on women in combat meeting the same standard as men. It would have been more heartening if we heard him say that the evidence was in and all-male units clearly performed better, but at least we have that.

The second problem we have is the lack of evidence the Democrats brought to the hearing. It’s almost as if it didn’t matter whether or not the women were effective in combat. They deserve the same chance to bog down their infantry unit as any other unfit troop does! In fact, more of a chance, because women have too long been denied roles reserved for men. For good reason? Well, yes, but … equity!

Some conservatives are fond of rearranging the letters in DEI around to spell DIE, a formulation I find a bit too on the nose. This time, instead of it eliciting a groan from me, I find it apt: The cackle on the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn’t care if good men die so long as military DEI hires are protected. Who cares if the women can survive 15 seconds in combat? Who cares if they can, for that matter? #AdmitAllWomen.

It’d be funny, if it weren’t so serious.

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