I read Stars and Stripes daily. The only thing that surprises me is that Stars and Stripes published the [recent] "Doonesbury" comic strips.

In "Doonesbury," it shows a female soldier reassigned to operations because she was needed there (April 14). It then goes on to show the female is scared that she will be "preyed" upon because her last boss "pressured" her into having sex with him (April 15).

As a Marine officer, I find this extremely offensive and the comic strip is prejudicial to good order and discipline. If you had published a comic strip that had the sex of the characters reversed, I would still be upset, as it just instills a lack of confidence in a leader’s decision-making and creates mistrust every time a female gets assigned somewhere.

The comic strip does not show the previous scenario of "command rape" [referred to in the April 15 strip] and it doesn’t show any wrongdoing by the male officer in the comic strip. This looks like an attempt to generalize all male leaders as sexist and predators of enlisted females. Granted, freedom of speech and freedom of the press protect the paper’s right to publish what it wants, but all you have done is sow another seed that further separates the sexes.

Females in the military are a good thing, I have known several stellar performers and quite a few of them I would pick over any of their male counterparts strictly based on results.

That’s how I assign personnel, not based on whether I want to sleep with them.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Roy DuffeyCamp Arifjan, Kuwait