Posted on 01/16/2011 7:50:35 AM PST by KeyLargo
Reactions mixed on women in combat arms
By Nancy Montgomery Stars and Stripes Published: January 14, 2011
HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan — The notion that women in the armed forces might be allowed to serve alongside men in combat provoked sharp reactions Friday among a sampling of Marines on the front lines of the war in Afghanistan, suggesting a heated debate yet to come.
“It’s very tough, what we have to go through,” said Lance Cpl. John Rolfes of 2nd Battalion, Third Marines, deployed with a Marine infantry unit at Patrol Base Jaker in Nawa. “I personally don’t know any women that could fulfill that role.”
A military advisory panel on diversity in the armed forces signaled this week that it may recommend that female troops should be able to serve in combat units without any restrictions, calling the current prohibition an out-of-date idea that unnecessarily discriminates against women.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
Their unrelenting attacks on the natural order must be repelled and the lefts ability to make mischief neutralized.
That means congressional hearings, prosecutions, investigations, imprisonment, and not allowing them to hide, rest, or regroup.
A good place to start would be with the members of this "military advisory panel" and the red sons of bitches who put them there.
A sample of the com symp and leftist apparatchik dogcrap that serve on the "Military Leadersip Diversity Commision"
Ryan Callanan is the Budget Director and Senior Administrator for the Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC), procuring and managing a budget of $7.7 million. Before joining the MLDC, he worked in the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity (ODMEO) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During this time, he worked very closely with Colonel James Campbell who then brought him over to the MLDC in October 2009. Callanan’s professional experience also includes time on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as a field organizer in Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio. He organized volunteers, executed caucus trainings, and staffed Secretary Clinton at campaign rallies. He also completed internships with the State Department, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, and Senator Hillary Clinton. Callanan earned his BA from Syracuse University New York (SUNY) Geneseo in and a Masters Degree in Government, with a concentration in Security Studies, from the Johns Hopkins University.
Jennifer Conger is the technical writer for the MLDC and is charged with compiling the final report to be submitted to the President and Congress. She graduated from the University of West Florida in 1995 with an M.A. in Political Science. During her time at UWF she was involved in campus leadership and service and for this was recognized in the 1993 edition of “Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities.” After graduation she worked as an adjunct instructor at Trinity College, teaching American Government to foreign exchange students and courses on Civil Rights and First Amendment Freedoms in Trinity College’s Elderhostel Program. Prior to coming to the MLDC, she worked for seven years as a technical writer for the Army Information Management Support Center (IMCEN).
Patricia Grier currently serves as the Records Manager for the Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC) and is employed by Visionary Integration Professionals, LLC (VIP). Prior to joining VIP, Patricia worked five years under the U.S. Department of State; the Bureau of Administration as a Program Support Specialist; and the Washington, D.C. National Name Check Program as an Analyst for the Federal Bureau of Investigations Records Management Division. After three years with the Records Division, Ms. Grier re‐located to Winchester, VA to support the contract as an Analyst. She later returned to the D.C. metropolitan area and joined the NSPS National Security Program System Review Team Task Force headed by the Department of Defense (DoD) Boards and Commissions/Washington Headquarters providing Administrative Support. Prior to her contract service she began her career in the National Industrial Security Programs and Operations working thirteen years with the Central Intelligence Agency. She worked in the areas of Information & Database Management, Office Administration and Program Security. Patricia is a native of Washington, D.C., and enjoys aiding residents in home care services. She joined Volunteers of America and served as a Residential Counselor providing care for clients with rehabilitative service needs. She later obtained her license and certification in Treatment Foster Care with (AFYF) Alternatives for Youth & Families in Charles County, MD.
Gives a whole new meaning to “combat nap”.... I would have loved to find a woman in my tent :)
Do we really need to see crowds of women with limbs blow off from combat? Female double amputees?
It seemed like a really good idea, until the combat went hand-to-hand.
How far can women run carrying a crew-served weapon in MOPP IV? How fast can they dig a fighting position? Can they carry a wounded 210 lb. squad mate to safety? What about walking for 15 miles carrying an 80 lb. ruck, plus the machine gun tripod and 600 rounds of ammo? The sheer physicality of ground combat should be obvious to anyone, but liberals.
Not exactly an infantry role, is it?
I spent 25 years in the US Air Force. I’m proud of what we did, but the physical demands of ground combat go WAY beyond what you encounter in flying. At 49, on my final tour, I was easily fit to fly, but not up to wearing full combat gear and charging up the mountainsides in east Afghanistan!
It the liberals want to push this, then let their LIBERALL WOMEN BE THE FIRST ONES OUT ON THE FRONT LINES THEN! THis FOX BABE needs to go out there first hand and report how it is and THEN come back with a story line on what it would be like! I’m sick of these reporters blabbing on and yet they wouldn’t put themselves there for all the tea in China! Hypocrites and liars!
I’m not in favor of women serving in combat roles for the U. S. military. I have given it a lot of thought, and this is the best I can come up with.
When the rest of the world agrees that all future Olympics should be held as a unisex event, women competing right along-side the men, I’ll agree to women serving in combat roles for the U. S.
This would be the perfect situation for the women to prove they are just as capable as the men.
My son is an airborne MP. Since the Army, in its infinite wisdom, declines to classify the MP function as “combat” women are permitted in these units.
Interestingly MP units patrol the towns in Iraq and Afghanistan and are frequently engaging the enemy. The Army refuses to call it combat, but MP Male and female soldiers are being killed and are killing.
My son told me about a female machine gunner who was remorselessly effective at killing the bad guys. I actually met her. She’s about 5’7” tall, blond hair, blue eyes and has a squeaky little girl voice. My son and the other soldiers—male and female—have no problem serving with this woman.
On one of my son’s deployments to Afghanistan MP female soldiers from his company accompanied SF on their 2 to 3 week field missions. Necessary to have woman along in the event they encounter Afghani women. Our men cannot touch them. My son tells me they acquitted themselves well.
Obviously some women can make great soldiers.
But there are negatives:
1. The biggest problem is the enemy using (raping and torturing) them to extract info from the men. This is the problem the Israelis had with women serving as front line troops.
2. Field sanitation. Women are far more likely than men to come down with urinary tract infections then men. My son says it was never a problem in his unit.
3. Pregnancy. Obviously when a female soldier gets pregnant prior to or during deployment another solder must take her place. My son says two of his female soldiers took fertility drugs to get pregnant and avoid deployment. This was two women of some 150 serving in an MP battalion.
4. Vulnerability. Women tend to be a bit more vulnerable in combat because they must pull their pants down and squat to pee.
5. Strength. Most women are not and cannot be as strong as men. Most women cannot fireman’s carry another women in full battle rattle let alone a man. There is a high probability a soldier will be called upon for that task in combat. Most women would be at a disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat with a male as well.
6. Soldier spouses create child care problems. They are required to sign a document assigning care responsibilities in the event of mutual deployment. Too often, these arrangements are worth little more than the paper they’re written on. One soldier winds up staying behind meaning another soldier must take their place. Or the Army winds up having to make child care arrangements.
7. Distraction. Back in the day commanders didn’t have to worry much about soldiers on guard duty “getting it on”. Now commanders have to worry about Bob and Suzy, Suzy and Suzy and Bob and Bob in the foxhole. The Navy has a big problem with women getting pregnant during 6-month deployments. And it’s not just the single women. Married women, who’ve left their husbands behind, are getting pregnant, too. Obviously strains the family unit.
I’m a retired 05. Personally, I do not think it’s a good idea to mix women with men in combat units because of the potential for capture and abuse—or worse. I don’t think it is possible to “train out” the male’s instinct to protect women. The women can be used against them; and they’re more likely to take a risk for a woman that they would not take for a man. Finally, I think the potential for pregnancy should also rule out women from front line combat.
If women were allowed in the Infantry, for example, some small number of them might be physically, mentally, and socially up to the demands of ground combat. Such women could exist at the margins of the profession and might find themselves useful for certain specialized tasks.
But, our society would not tolerate such a natural condition. Politicians would insist that women in ground combat units succeed at the same rates as their male counterparts. In order to achieve such success rates, standards and demands would need to be reduced for the whole force. Out of view of the political minders, soldiers would have to pick up the slack for females that couldn’t keep up. The capabilities and abilities of the force would be reduced to some lower common denominator. When the going got tough, the tough would have to wait for the girls to catch up.
If any doubt such a scenario, they only need to look at those parts of the military where women currently serve. The standards have changed, capabilities have been lowered so that female soldiers are not at a disadvantage. For units that do not have operate at the margins of human physical limits, the bargain may have been a good one. The inclusion of women secured the viability of the volunteer force and provided some much needed skills. But, since the gender integrated force has yet to see the intensity of combat like Korea 1950-51 or the Battle of the Bulge, we really don’t know how great this compromise might be.
Social reengineering has run amok in this country for over 50 years. Inch by inch, the left has eroded a social construct that made this country great. If we do not draw a line here, where will we draw the line?
So we'll just "dumb down" our physical requirements so women AND gays can meet them.
Wonder what will happen then when our sub-par forces meet a fit and determined opponent...
IMHO the government is setting up the draft.... homosexuals and now women in combat roles. I do not support either. Women are not capable in combat roles period. It doesn’t make women less intelligent or less a human.. it simply makes them different. Different is not less. Although I do not want my son to go to battle, I wouldn’t want my daughters to go more. They are not physically as strong. Just a thought.
I wonder what the libs will say when women are required to register with selective service.
I propose a simple, safe, proof-of-concept demonstration: during the next Army / Navy football game, let the Navy team liberally sprinkle their offensive and defensive lines with female players. Football is tough; combat is 1000 times tougher.
For all the libs who think that ground combat is just a bunch of gaffes and gags (see reruns of M*A*S*H), I would recommend viewing the HBO mini-series “The Pacific”. The men in this mini-series are real. The horrors they endured are real. The men killed and wounded are real. The difference is the mini-series is a reenactment of realty and not the actual experience. The purpose of the mini-series is to come as close as possible to the real thing without anyone actually dying.
There are two countries that have put women in combat arms against real opponents — Israel and Russia (as the old Soviet Union) — and neither do it any more. The question that thinking people should ask is: “WHY?”
The answers are quite revealing:
1. Males in units with females attached have higher casualty rates because the males try to protect the females. (Sorry, that's hardwired into male DNA and cannot be changed, no matter what NOW says.)
2. All-female units (Russian frontal aviation, snipers) had consistently higher casualty rates than corresponding male units. (There was, undoubtedly greater risk taking by these units as they tried to prove themselves and suffered greater losses.)
3. Female casualties, whether in all-female or mixed gender units, are bad for overall morale. Human tradition has been that males do the fighting and dying, but females are not exposed to the same kinds of horrors. When they are put into harm's way like this, both males and females have psychological problems coping.
4. All-female and mixed gender units were unable to compete with all-male units where physical strength was concerned. In worst cases, this led to increased casualties because the combat tasks could not be completed with the members involved.
The results of Israeli and Russian employment of mixed gender and all-female combat units produced a similar reaction: the experiment was considered a failure. Women are still given combat training, but they are not assigned to front line combat units.
If the Israelis and Russians(!) get it, why does the United States think it can succeed where others have failed? Why should we even consider such a course of action? Obviously, those who champion such policy revisions are not going to engage in ground combat because it's, you know, like really icky and stuff.
Now that’s the kind of woman I would like to see in congress or in a higher office.
Pray for America.
Another thing would be love triangles and problems that could cause in combat, ie David, Bathsheba and Uriah.
“From the report of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces (report date November 15, 1992, published in book form by Brassey’s in 1993): “The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer [stress] fractures as men.”
Further: “The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:
“Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.
“In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.”
From the same report: “Lt Col. William Gregor, United States Army, testified before the Commission regarding a survey he conducted at an Army ROTC Advanced Summer Camp on 623 women and 3540 men. …Evidence Gregor presented to the Commission includes:
“(a) Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, he found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.
“(c) Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260.
“(d) On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it.
“(e) Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge….”
...
Also from the Commission’s report: “Non-deployability briefings before the Commission showed that women were three times more non-deployable than men, primarily due to pregnancy, during Operations Desert Shield and Storm. According to Navy Captain Martha Whitehead’s testimony before the Commission, ‘the primary reason for the women being unable to deploy was pregnancy, that representing 47 percent of the women who could not deploy.’”
Maybe we need armored strollers.
My friend Catherine Aspy graduated from Harvard in 1992 and (no, I’m not on drugs) enlisted in the Army in 1995. Her account was published in Reader’s Digest, February, 1999, and is online in the Digest’s archives.
She told me the following about her experiences: “I was stunned. The Army was a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home. I took training seriously and really tried to keep up with the men. I found I couldn’t. It wasn’t even close. I had no idea the difference in physical ability was so huge. There were always crowds of women sitting out exercises or on crutches from training injuries.
“They [the Army] were so scared of sexual harassment that women weren’t allowed to go anywhere without another woman along. They called them ‘Battle Buddies.’ It was crazy. I was twenty-six years old but I couldn’t go to the bathroom by myself.”
http://www.fredoneverything.net/MilMed.shtml
RE: ‘the primary reason for the women being unable to deploy was pregnancy, that representing 47 percent of the women who could not deploy.’
Me brudder was a Machine Repairman in Reagan’s Navy, USS Samuel Gompers, primarily . Saw his ship/shore rotation go from 3 years/3 years to 5/1 once his rating was opened to women, because so many of ‘em hated the work, and hated the watches, and hated the duty, and got as pregnant as possible as often as possible to retain shore billeting.
Between the two of us, I think we could clear this issue up in a matter of months. ;^)
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