The Kinder, Gentler Military is a devastating critique of how and why the military -- the most tradition-bound, masculine institution in the United States -- spent the 1990s in a tortured attempt to reform its time-proven warrior culture in favor of a new, politically correct value system, a system that is decimating morale in our armed forces.
"Our armed forces are deeply mired in an expensive, resource-draining, time-consuming, morale-flattening project, one that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with politically correct politics," charges Stephanie Gutmann. "That project...has used quotas, double standards, and coercive policies to recruit greater numbers of women, promote them faster, and put them closer to combat with little thought to the fact that this is, in effect, an attempt to meld two dissimilar populations -- men and women -- in an institution that requires sameness, interchangeability, standard issues, known quantities."
In The Kinder, Gentler Military, Gutmann scouts the field -- the bases, the boot camps, the ships, and the flight lines -- to observe what is often called the "New Military." She then shows why the complete integration of women into the military is physically and sociologically impossible and how the pursuit of this unrealistic ideal is profoundly demoralizing to soldiers of both sexes and a sure setup for battlefield disaster. While the politically correct stance on this hot topic is pro-integration, Gutmann's fresh and informative take on the practical and political inner workings of the nation's military will command national attention.
Unflinching, compassionate, and balanced, The Kinder, Gentler Military is a persuasive argument in a compelling public debate.
