The subtitle of Stephanie Gutmann’s first book should strike a chord with every person in the country: Can Today’s Gender Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars? It’s a good question that deserves a good answer. Her basic premise is that honestly, there are very few, if any, real threats to our national security in the sense of any nation doing the United States any real physical damage. But is that an excuse to damage the morale and capability of the forces we do need to defend our national interests around the world?
Gutmann is operating from a unique perspective; that of being a female journalist covering an overwhelmingly male profession. She does this without the pointed liberalism or outright hostility that so many women in her position seem to display. She has done first-hand research and extensive background reading and it shows in her arguments. Through a large amount of anecdotal evidence and a few well-chosen statistics, Gutmann exposes the hypocrisy and fear under which current military leadership is operating.
Her writing is simple, echoing the language (sometimes the bad language) of the typical soldier, sailor, airman and Marine. In this simple language she describes incidents such as Tailhook and Aberdeen which have caused the military to overcompensate for its past errors. The stories and opinions she relates come from wide-ranging sources, but all have basic similarities, regardless if it’s from a male drill sergeant or a female officer who are equally frustrated with the climate of double standards that currently pervades the military.
There are, however, some technical, editing and printing errors, such as combining of titles and double-printing that take away from the impact of the book. These mistakes should have been caught in the final galleys. A military member would call this a lack of attention to detail. It also demonstrates one point that Gutmann makes about fewer and fewer politicians having military experience. Apparently that applies to the literary world as well.
Overall, Gutmann makes an excellent case, not for exclusion of women from the military, but for inclusion the right way. Standards of physical readiness, of training readiness, of moral readiness should not be sacrificed for political correctness. Not only would true equality of standards and abilities solve "self-esteem" problems of female military members, it would answer Gutmann’s question with a loud and clear, "Yes, sir!”
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