Should Moms go to war?

No! this writer emphatically answered in his last column, writing about a 3-year-old’s mother now serving in the Army in Afghanistan. The column prompted Internet correspondents to ask two most compelling questions.

“What about fathers?” a writer asked. “Many of the men who serve in the military that may be called to fight are indeed fathers to young children who they miss seeing for months at a time.”

The second question involves the nature of the military itself. “The woman volunteered for duty,” one writer observed. “The choice to leave her son was her own. Not one that was forced upon her.”

As to the first question, men are expected to serve and fight. Women aren’t … and shouldn’t be.

But of course, these men aren’t just any men. They are fathers. Should they be sent into combat? In many cases, the answer is the same for women: No.

A man should not have to choose between fighting for his country and supporting his family. New fathers, or those with young children, should not be used in combat or sent to lengthy assignments abroad. Senior officers or enlisted men with older teenagers or grown children are one thing. Young enlisted men and junior officers are another.

Family is more important than country. More precisely, the requisites of family supersede those of the state.

The contrary argument is that the military could not deploy enough soldiers to fight, or perhaps even to fulfill its peacetime duties. We’d have to revamp the Defense Department.

That’s doubtful, but if true, good. Maybe the shortage would keep this country out of war, and we’d be forced to bring some troops home. As it is, when foreign invaders land on American soil, fathers will serve, and they will serve because they must. They will be fighting for home and hearth.

At a minimum, fathers with small children should be deployed last.

The second point, that women voluntarily enlist and get what they deserve if they get pregnant, is irrelevant.

Mothers should not be deployed overseas. The armed services must deploy mothers because they recruit too many women, which creates the need for deployment and leaving children behind.

Solution? Stop recruiting mothers, and recruit women only for safe assignments that do not require deployment away from family. And stop recruiting anyone looking a free ride to college or paycheck with benefits. The military is for war, not a jobs agency.

But again, what about manpower? Who would do the jobs these women do? Men would, hopefully bachelors. As aforementioned, if the military did not exceed the legitimate size required for a peaceful republic, neither the women nor the men would be needed.

The military needs “downsizing,” to use the bureaucratic euphemism.

The military deploys fathers and mothers not only because of ill-conceived personnel policy, but also because America sallies forth on too many foreign adventures.

Even in peacetime, troops are garrisoned across the planet. That’s why we “need” them.

Barring an invasion, the military should neither ask nor permit parents of small children to risk their lives. Those who already serve should be kept close to home. So yeah, we’d have to revamp.

Parents have a more important job than killing. It is raising good American citizens.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: [email protected].