Don't even get me started on the successful assault by cultural Marxists on womanhood  -- and manhood -- and thus our civilization through the long march of women through the military. The issue at hand, in that picture above worth at least 1,000 words, is the institutional degradation of US Marines under orders to submit to Islamic law in the line of duty. Forcing free American women-warriors into Islam's symbolic shackles of the female sex -- the hijab -- goes beyond Pentagon social engineers' pathetic efforts to make them like us. It is cultural humilation. And far from winning Afghan "hearts and minds," it will only make them despise our own.

From the AP:

KHWAJA JAMAL, Afghanistan - Put on body armor, check weapons, cover head and shoulders with a scarf.
That was the drill for female American Marines who set out on patrol recently with a mission to make friends with Afghan women in a war zone by showing respect for Muslim standards of modesty.

It is not modesty we are talking about; it is control. That aside, one can certainly show "respect" for many things without undergoing personal transformation. The more important question is, what manner of self-respect do these Marines show by so easily abandoning their country's uniform and their own standards of decorum for Islam's? The AP continues:

The all-female unit of 46 Marines is the military's latest innovation in its rivalry with the Taliban for the populace's loyalty.

What is this, a love triangle?

Afghan women are viewed as good intelligence sources, and more open to the basics of the military's hearts-and-minds effort - hygiene, education, and an end to the violence.

"It's part of the effort to show we're sensitive to local culture," said Capt. Jennifer Gregoire, of East Strasburg, Pa. She leads the Female Engagement Team in the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency....

Women are technically barred from combat units in the Marines, and some infantrymen have been surprised to see them in brightly colored head scarves under their helmets, deployed in the most intense combat zones in the country....

While heavily armed Marines fanned out, the four [Marine] women started by trying to strike up conversations with the few old men and young children who ventured outdoors.

The several hundred villagers grow wheat and opium poppies in the crossfire between Marines and Taliban fighters who are in the woods less than a mile away.

"They look at us through binoculars. They'll kill anybody who talks to the Americans," said Abdul Gayom, to explain why the villagers were so wary of meeting the patrol.

First Lt. Victoria Sherwood was undaunted, talking to him through her Afghan translator. She gave him painkillers for his back, and small presents for the children timidly clustering around. Some of them begged to try on her sunglasses, and promptly made off with them.

Sherwood, from Woodbury, Conn., got Gayom to promise he might let her into his compound to meet his wife, who he said with a shrug is "so old, the Taliban probably won't care."

But there was a snag: The translator was male. Could he be in the wife's presence? "No way," said Gayom, then asked the Marines for more goods....