Posted on 02/18/2012 8:23:24 AM PST by darrellmaurina
Thank you for your note. I didn't remember the percentage but I did know there was a percentage long ago.
This woman is a paralegal. I do not see a problem with her wearing the uniform, and being trained to handle what could happen if her Army Reserve unit gets called up. We don't have front lines today and anything can happen to anyone during a deployment, whether they're officially in a combat role or not.
You may want to add Army intelligence and logistics to that list of things women could do long ago — some of the early female generals came up through those routes, which probably means they started their careers in the 1950s in the same fields. I'm not sure exactly what MOSes were authorized for women and I'm guessing the rules changed over time based on the needs of the Army, with more women being allowed to do more things during wartime based on the “free a man to fight” principle, and fewer women being recruited for fewer roles during peacetime.
The article details just one cog in the machine being used to destory our military.
The link I provided in another post shows just how succesful that machine has been. More destruction is obviously on the way.
Soon even people like you won’t be able to turn away from it.
Actually the most funny things I ever saw in the Army came from when a mixed sex MI unit spent some time living around and supplying security for my small element, the females were an embarrassment, they could not even put up the heavy 30 man tent, their guys had to go over and do it. The female weakness kept showing up during the outdoor living period that I could observe them, in other words, it was just like regular life.
Females in logistics are a problem because they are weak, things that were done simply, quickly, and without a second thought in the old army become major challenges with females, even the little 155 round weighs 93 pounds, females have a problem loading a lot of those by hand, if they can do any of them, or lifting a 100 pound industrial size pot of soup off a stove, or mounting heavy munitions under the wing of a plane, or holding up operations while they try to lift a heavy truck tire to replace it.
Replacing your second layer of warriors, and rear guard with replacements who are smaller, shorter, lighter, weaker, more prone to injuries, less physically aggressive, unable to match the men they are replacing, is the ultimate leftist success story. One has to ask, Why? Why move backwards into a downward spiral.
If you have ever watched video of the logistics people trying to slog through the snow and mud of winter warfare, with trucks breaking down, being sunk to their axles, ice braking, tires blowing out, loads having to be off loaded, reloaded, transferred to other vehicles, while being ambushed and strafed, then you will see that it is all about muscles, raw tough guy, manpower.
Women, as women, don't really add much to the readiness of the US military to perform its mission, and detract from readiness in a number of ways.
Women make up about 14 percent of the active duty military. Subtract out nurses and administrative personnel serving primarily in the US (and whose duties could be taken up by civilians) and the actual impact of removing all women from all deployable units would be very small, and quickly replaceable by increased recruiting of men.
Meanwhile, the PC atmosphere that women in the military create, and the cost of accommodating them, decrease readiness.
True, the Army training is the same for all, the only difference is that after all the schools, or between some of them, the person is a part of a Reserve or Guard unit.
Some are softer than the regular military, some are tougher, some are better than their active duty counterparts.
Reserve and Guard SEAL units, Special Forces, Rangers and such, are good units, I don’t know what it is like now, but the Guard used to have better pilots and tank operators, and medical people in the Reserves. Take two tanks, one driven by a team that have been active for 3 years, the other who were also active for three years, but for the last dozen years they have all been on the same tank in their Guard unit, they get hard to beat.
Women make up about 14 percent of the active duty military. Subtract out nurses and administrative personnel serving primarily in the US (and whose duties could be taken up by civilians) and the actual impact of removing all women from all deployable units would be very small, and quickly replaceable by increased recruiting of men.
Meanwhile, the PC atmosphere that women in the military create, and the cost of accommodating them, decrease readiness.
I agree to some extent but disagree in others. Patriotic women volunteering their service in non-combat but none the less very important roles in areas like the medical corps, procurement, engineering, IT, data analysis, administration and the like, means that physically able bodied men don’t have to fill all those roles, roles that in some cases women are very good at, if not better than some men at doing.
And I disagree about delegating all those roles to “civilians”. Outsourcing too many military jobs to civilian contractors has been a disaster in some cases IMO.
Women serving in the US military or otherwise supporting our men in combat zones, have a long and proud history of service to our country and that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
I do agree with your point about the PC BS. And many of the women I know who have served in the military would agree.
I will defer to the comments by women who wrote on the other thread about how those things can't teach men about pregnancy because they don't simulate morning sickness and bladder issues. Makes sense to me.
I'm aware of a Fort Leonard Wood water aerobics PT program for pregnant soldiers; there are probably other things going on I don't know about. The issue of pregnant soldiers is not something to which I've paid much attention in a garrison environment, though I am certainly aware of the problems of women deliberately getting pregnant to get sent back from a deployment. Those women get blasted by their fellow female soldiers for being shirkers at best, and often immoral tramps and marriage-wreckers as well. I've also heard female soldiers who themselves keep fit during pregnancy grouse about how some of their female colleagues use pregnancy as an excuse to get out of PT.
Here's the other side of that coin when pregnancy **DOESN'T** get used as an excuse.
I remember a female Marine who received the joint servicemember award several years ago for having the best performance of any permanent party junior enlisted non-Army servicemember ranked E-4 or below in the thousand-member FLW Marine Corps detachment, the Navy Seabee detachment of several hundred sailors, or the Air Force construction detachment of about four hundred airmen. She's married to another Marine, and from the ages and dates of marriage, there was no reason to believe anything other than two young servicemembers getting married and deciding to have a baby.
This female Marine showed up to receive her award, in dress uniform if I remember right, a couple of days after giving birth and was clearly in pain at times when she moved the wrong way. The woman presiding over that ceremony, who herself had been an Air Force officer many years ago, said she couldn't believe the Marine actually showed up in person to receive her award. Her answer was some version of “Ma'am, I'm a Marine. I got out of bed to get here, but I got here.”
My recollection is this female Marine was a truck driver for the Marine Corps who had become an instructor at an earlier-than-usual rank due to exceptionally good skills. I don't know what her Marine husband did. It seems to me that she proved not only to her Marine colonel but also to the LTC who headed the Air Force detachment and the Navy LT who headed the Navy detachment, as well as the senior cadre serving in those three detachments, that she was the very best junior enlisted person on the entire post despite being pregnant for nine months of the year during which she was evaluated.
We can say what we want about women in uniform, but it seems clear that at least some of them can not only do the job but excel in doing the job.
Those who want to use pregnancy to get out of their duties need to either get out of the military entirely (a legitimate option, in my view, if a soldier wants to be a full-time mom) or get the ****-chewing they deserve for collecting the benefits without doing the duties.
As for those who get pregnant while deployed: unless the dad is their husband, they deserve to have the wives of their FRG decide their punishment — but that kind of verdict would probably get ruled cruel and unusual punishment.
We're in somewhat agreement. As far as the non-combat slots, the military women filling them get expensive training, yet are not really deployable into combat.
In WW2, the men holding administrative posts were deployable to combat, being replaced behind the desk by women. This made a lot of sense. But a woman army clerk would NOT be similarly deployable to combat if needed. This reduces reserve combat capability.
Sorry for missing your earlier note, Rev. Henrickson.
I don't know the answer. I know nothing about Coast Guard requirements, but I'm guessing her age was the issue, plus maybe location.
Historically the Army has been more willing to waive age requirements than any of the other services since the Army has a greater need for more people, and also because the Navy and Air Force have been reducing their personnel for some time, including periods when the Army was expanding. For a while the Army had a formal program to process people through AIT who had left the Navy and Air Force but wanted to re-enlist in the Army. I don't know why this woman had to go through basic and couldn't do that AIT program — maybe the program doesn't exist anymore, or perhaps she had been out of uniform long enough that the powers-which-be decided she had to go through basic to make sure she could do the job.
In WW2, the men holding administrative posts were deployable to combat, being replaced behind the desk by women. This made a lot of sense. But a woman army clerk would NOT be similarly deployable to combat if needed. This reduces reserve combat capability.
True but even during WWII, men who were not necessarily deployable in combat zones were still drafted and served in support roles. In an all volunteer military, those same men are not as likely to voluntarily enlist if they have other opportunities available to them.
But for some women, the military offers an opportunity to train and advance in nontraditional and non combat careers such as in civil engineering.
I had the privilege of being friends with a woman who served in the US Air Force as a Civil Engineer who after 30 years in the military and obtaining the rank of Colonel, “retired” and then went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers as a civilian employee. And she was absolutely brilliant and very well known and respected in that field of work.
She told me that if it wasn’t for the military, she’d probably never have had the opportunity to develop her skills or get that type of real world and cutting edge technology in the civilian world that she did during her military service. While her male and female peers from college were rubber stamping building permits and road lane expansions, she was designing complex air strips, dams, bridges, some of them in war zones and in very tight time frames and budgets that would make her civilian counterparts heads spin.
She was very conservative, wickedly funny, very proud of her country and as a brilliant engineer, she served her country well and with great distinction. Her talent in engineering in many ways helped our soldiers in the battle field even if she never took up arms in combat.
Sadly a few years after going to work for the Army Corps of Engineers, overseeing damn building and safety, she succumbed to breast cancer. I was very privileged to know her in the short time I did.
Female Sergeant wins Silver Star - Terrorists Humiliated By Woman Warrior From Hell
Thank you, Sarajevo!
Today's reaction to what I thought was a good news story from the Fort Leonard Wood on-post newspaper was not at all what I expected.
I respect people's right to their opinion, but what I've seen today on this thread on Free Republic simply does not track with anything I've seen in the last ten years covering the Army or the Air Force, either from the active duty or recently retired community.
The comments on the link to the article about Sgt. Hester are a fair reflection of what I usually hear from the military community about women in the military.
I didn't know that. In many sports (gymnastics or tennis for example) women are often washed up at 20-22 years old.
No prob. I just think she's a little looney for doing it at the ripe age of 51 though. She's in my present age category.
I retired at the age of 41. The Team Sergeant was the next oldest on the team, and he was 36. It was a bear trying to keep up with those young'uns, especially on the runs.
In long-distance running or swimming, women don’t tend to peak until their 30s.
What's a virtual unit.
she did better on her PT than most of the people her son's age in her basic training company.
You guys realize that this never happened don't you? That this is fake?
The woman did not meet the standard of the young male soldiers, she was not " treated just like every other Soldier-in-training" as any real soldiers know about.
The army PFT as I understand it—running, pushups and situps in 2 minutes each—is very easy, even with the standards for 21yo males. Yes, a fit middle-aged woman could meet the requirements imposed on young men in the test, but doesn’t at all measure the strength needed for lots of real-world combat soldier situations.
If the woman is going to be a reservist paralegal, there’s no reason that she needs the upper-body strength of a young man. But even 99% of fit young women don’t have the upper-body strength of an average, fit young man.
I would of course be against such being women put in situations where they don’t have the strength they need for the safety of themselves or their fellow soldiers. (As I would for firemen, police, etc..) I hope that the army later sufficiently filters out those without the physical capabilities needed for each each role into which their recruits are assigned, but I suspect that it doesn’t.
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