The government is its own worst enemy in the matter of first discovering the answer to a problem and, secondly, doing anything about it. This is not to mention that the government is front and center in making the problem, in the first place.

Defense Secretary Panetta was all over television the other day decrying the sad fact that there are so many rapes in the military, presumably reported by women, such fact being the key to solving the problem. The media is full of the subject and has remarked about the problem at the service academies. There were 3,191 and 3,158 sexual assaults reported, respectively, in 2011 and 2010. This seems to be sort of in line with previous years, even more reported for instance in 2009 (3,230). Panetta said “officials” claim that the current number of sexual assaults is about 19,000 (52 per day) since most go unreported. This is about one rape per 84 service-members, a bit hard to believe but so be it. One wonders, though, how anything that’s unreported is so categorically defined.

The genesis of the problem lies in the fact that political correctness insists that there’s no difference between males and females. This amazing philosophy is and has been carried out everywhere in government, from the halls of Congress through all agencies and into the White House. Since there’s no difference between the sexes, there has to be “equal opportunity” at everything and at every level in the military.

Common sense dictates that this philosophy is a bunch of baloney, but common sense and political correctness are mutually exclusive. Go into any city and take the biggest, strongest, meanest women in the local university, teach them to play football and schedule a game for them with an average high-school football team in the city. The boys would kill the ladies. There’s a difference.

That’s just a difference in physical strength and the “killer mentality.” Gender-wise, the difference between men and women is much greater and far more serious. The natural attraction – and often, exploitation – regarding the sexes is obvious to even a middle-schooler. Put the guys and gals together and expect to have problems, and not just problems perpetrated by the guys.

The government created the rape problem when the screwball Congress-people decided that men and women should be thrown together even in boot camps. The fact that this had to be changed (the Marines never even obeyed the edict), lest the fighting force be reduced to absolute minimums in the ability to wage war, has not registered yet with the elitists who clamor for some sort of “equality,” when in some areas “equality” does not exist, never has and never will.

The obvious solution to the current problem is the segregation to the nth-degree possible of men and women in the military. This is not to say women should not serve, merely to say that they should not serve alongside men in close quarters, including but not confined to combat.

Common sense dictates that the fact that they (women) have to report rapes means that they’re out of their depth physically (unable to defend themselves) and therefore are unfit for rigorous duty. This is a terribly politically incorrect statement but it’s true. If they can’t defend themselves physically, how can they be expected to defend not only their country but, more especially, their colleagues?

One-hundred-percent separation is not likely possible but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that something like 95% separation is possible. For instance, no women should serve on a naval vessel unless the entire crew is female. All-male crews have successfully defended the country for centuries, so why not try all-female crews, where, at least hopefully, there would be no natural rapes? The same is true for other military teams, though women should never be in combat for the obvious physical reasons, including on any ship.

Then, of course, there’s the “he said, she said” factor. A woman knows that all she has to do is say she’s been raped and, ipso facto, she’s been raped. In the civilian world, whether she’s told the truth or not, the name of her alleged rapist is spread all over the media, even though he hasn’t even been tried. There’s nothing fair about this but that’s the way it is. Her name, of course, is not divulged. The policy in the military is to transfer out of her unit any woman who claims she’s been raped. The possibilities connected to this allowance are obvious, ergo, reports of rape.