Scarlet A Stands for Absurd

I’m here to rally support for the Air Force’s war on female adultery. Admittedly, no one wants 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn, the first woman B-52 pilot, to be court martialed and serve felony prison time for adultery as a rarely enforced Revolutionary War era military code demands. But it’s high time we returned to the symbols of Puritanism that made this country great.

Flinn should be compelled to wear a scarlet A. It could be pinned to her chest by President Bill Clinton, a commander in chief ever alert to the dangers of adultery. Let that scarlet A serve as a promise to the world that this nation will not jeopardize the peace by allowing unchaste women to handle weapons of mass destruction.

We taxpayers need to get something back for the $1 million spent on this pilot’s education. As a human billboard of shame, Flinn would be a constant reminder that women who fall in love with the wrong men will not be permitted to drop bombs, conventional or nuclear.

Civilization must have its restraints, and it’s essential, in the name of all that is decent, to certify that a pilot who may be ordered to carpet-bomb civilians be sexually innocent.

However, national security considerations dictate that this moral code be applied judiciously. How many of our commanders in chief could have passed such a test? Certainly not John F. Kennedy, who dallied while taking this nation through the most severe military test of all time-- the Cuban missile crisis. Recall those dark days in October 1962, when the fate of humanity was hanging by a thread of rational decision making, missiles were primed for flight and explosion, the end of the world was at hand and an adulterer had his finger on the retaliatory nuclear button.

Apparently, as President Kennedy demonstrated, men can handle adultery much better than women. That’s why a male lieutenant colonel who was charged with having an adulterous affair with his secretary last year at the same base as Flinn had his wrist slapped with a $4,600 fine and a mere reprimand. Men have needs that the military has long recognized.

Even the Revolutionary Army, which authored the current code banning adultery, didn’t expect it to be enforced. Prostitutes were among the most loyal supporters of our first fighting men. And was there ever a sign posted that the services of camp-followers were off limits to married men? Have single male soldiers ever been warned that they, too, would face nine years in prison if an off-base hooker turned out to be married?

We’ve all heard Flinn’s sad tale about there not being a proper social life on the base. Hey, she’s not the first lonely soldier. I’ll bet if she had just quietly gone off base and purchased some quick meaningless commercial sex, her commander would have looked the other way. Instead, she had to go fall in love with that soccer coach who lied to her about his marital status and promised a meaningful relationship. That’s the problem with women as soldiers; they are always seeking meaningful relationships. Unfettered impulses like that could wreak havoc with morale.

Now, Flinn has left the military with a huge problem. Women libbers will be all over the top brass insisting that they punish male adulterers. That could become a full-time preoccupation of the military, even surpassing the hunt for gays. If this keeps up, there won’t be any resources left for fighting foreign enemies.

Wait a second. What a great idea. The military had to be wondering about where those foreign enemies would come from. After all, the bipartisan budget deal keeps military spending at Cold War levels--a whopping $273 billion in the year 2002, money that’s to be spent on sophisticated weaponry to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn’t exist. At some point, the public will get wise to the fact the Soviet threat is over.

What this country desperately needs is a reliable enemy, and when you can’t find one abroad you have to look internally--the tried and tested “enemy within” gambit. The military could recast itself as a domestic morals police enforcing strict sexual standards and in general combating the depravity that threatens this nation with ruin. The war on drugs could be combined with a war on extramarital sex and even expanded to rounding up those responsible for second-hand smoke and selling red meat. Put sin under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Only the military has the moral probity and puritanical vision required to make war on the Hester Prynnes of this world.