Posted on 01/23/2013 5:09:15 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
America has been creeping closer and closer to allowing women in combat, so Wednesday's news that the decision has now been made is not a surprise. It appears that female soldiers will be allowed on the battlefield but not in the infantry. Yet it is a distinction without much difference: Infantry units serve side-by-side in combat with artillery, engineers, drivers, medics and others who will likely now include women. The Pentagon would do well to consider realities of life in combat as it pushes to mix men and women on the battlefield.
Many articles have been written regarding the relative strength of women and the possible effects on morale of introducing women into all-male units. Less attention has been paid to another aspect: the absolutely dreadful conditions under which grunts live during war.
Most people seem to believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have merely involved driving out of a forward operating base, patrolling the streets, maybe getting in a quick firefight, and then returning to the forward operating base and its separate shower facilities and chow hall. The reality of modern infantry combat, at least the portion I saw, bore little resemblance to this sanitized view.
I served in the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a Marine infantry squad leader. We rode into war crammed in the back of amphibious assault vehicles. They are designed to hold roughly 15 Marines snugly; due to maintenance issues, by the end of the invasion we had as many as 25 men stuffed into the back. Marines were forced to sit, in full gear, on each other's laps and in contorted positions for hours on end. That was the least of our problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“The day will come when we need a return to the draft”
I assure you with 100% confidence that such a day will never come; when the next president pardoned those who dodged the draft in Vietnam, a hippie who legally evaded the draft beat 2 WWII veterans for president, and our former enemy (North Vietnam) is our “friend” within 2 decades of the fall of Saigon, nobody would show up.
As our country goes to war with traditional societies that are slowly inheriting the Earth, I don’t know why anyone with any sense of morality would even enlist at this point. If it’s about a job, call them what they are: mercenaries. I watch US troops try to spread “women’s rights” (legalized abortion) and gay rights, and have to think that these are not missions for which America should be throwing away its young.
“I will sternly advise my sons and future grandsons not to join the military, because it has become a bastardized joke.”
The country became the joke. I wouldn’t allow my sons to join because they can’t be the vehicle by which evil is spread; this country has no shortage of worthless pieces of dung that have been housed, fed, clothed, and schooled by my taxes for decades; they can go die for whatever we’re pretending our young people are dying for (because it sure isn’t the country I grew up in) - gay rights, abortion, whatever.
The majority of MEN are unsuitable for service in front-line infantry units. It takes intense and dedicated training to get even those men physically and psychologically suitable for the role to function at the most basic level of proficiency.
It takes a hell of a lot more to turn a collection of random infantrymen into a capable fighting unit. As a matter of fact, it’s rarely accomplished. A major issue in even our professional, highly trained armed forces is low unit cohesiveness and the hemorrhaging of qualified personnel to other units or out of the service entirely. Our up-or-out policies don’t particularly facilitate the retention qualified and respected leaders within a given unit, for example.
Unit cohesiveness is the difference between fielding an army and fielding a mob. Without a level of trust, reliance, brotherhood and identity that is frankly alien to American life a fighting unit breaks down and ceases to function as a whole. The result is increased casualties and decreased effectiveness.
Quite frankly, the sense of community, duty, and the intense conflict resolution skills necessary for a combat unit to function as a distinct entity are outright alien to American sensibilities - our society does NOT prepare us to spend months or years effectively locked in the same bathroom with a couple of people that we could barely tolerate under the best of circumstances. Our society does not prepare us for the experience of being an integral part of a small, largely dysfunctional community operating in an environment where failure means death.
In America, if you don’t like your neighbors you move. If you don’t like your job, you get a different one. If you don’t like your family, you leave. If you feel like shit and don’t want to go to work, you call in sick. We can’t even conceive of what it was like for our ancestors to live in small communities dependent on each other for survival, let alone conceive of what it is like to operate in an environment where everyone around you can be killed if you don’t do your job precisely, if you fall asleep when you shouldn’t after being awake for 3 days, if you can’t carry 100+ pounds of your gear as well as carrying a 200 pound teammate. Nor can we conceive of living and working in an environment where WE can die if someone else fails at being super-human for just a moment.
Frankly, if women in combat units were effective you would have seen about every nation on Earth using them. Why, precisely WHY would a nation sacrifice half of its potential military strength? If a nation could double its effective combat strength by putting women on the line, then why wouldn’t it? Instead we see nations locked in desperate battles for their very survival TRYING to put women into combat and then quickly pulling them out again when it becomes apparent that it just doesn’t work.
Don’t worry though, no nation exists in a vacuum. Failure isn’t tolerated for long in this world - when a nation ignores reality and ceases to pursue success for long enough, said nation falls. You can’t pursue fanciful little egalitarian myths for long, you can’t ignore natural law for long either.
Rome fell when army units were staffed by foreign barbarians with no concept of “Rome”; we’re sending imported Hispanics to fill our ranks, and will probably get the same result. They won’t do anything to cause it; the concept of “The United States of America” will simply cease to exist. In fact, that has already happened. Obama’s initial election showed that the United States had fallen; his re-election showed it won’t get back up. When Rome fell, it wasn’t like everything collapsed at once; people just started living in their own little worlds because the larger “Roman” world was gone. That is where we are now.
Of course, I don’t blame the military at large for what’s going on. I just wish some generals would stand up to hacks like Panetta and all the other feminized, scumbag excuses for men who infest the Pentagon like roaches. I won’t even mention the occupant of the White House, his spokesmoron, or that twisted commie hag, Valerie Jarrett. They go without saying.
I didn’t think you were blaming the military; I just think you are forgetting that in the end, they are government employees and will do as they’re told by whoever signs their checks. Knowing people that are in the military, I don’t think it has been the bastion of conservatism that it once was for some time. There are a lot of welfare types (of all colors), complete with babies out of wedlock and such; to many from poorer parts of this country it is just a job. Like the private sector, there is probably more conservatism in the officer corps; Obama had no shortage of enlisted ranks to photo-op with.
“they are government employees and will do as they’re told by whoever signs their checks”
That’s true... but then again, the check signers in Chile probably thought that too, until they woke up one morning to aerial bombardment and tanks in the streets of Santiago.
There was a time when military service meant a little more than just being a government employee. It was about serving your country. It’s a real shame if we’ve lost that.
-— the simple thoughtlessness of the typical American is literally breathtaking... ——
School and TV. You have to be educated to lose your common sense.
Thanks, that was certainly a tough read....
I can’t speak for the Military as a whole, but from my experience....well, I’d say that concept has been on it’s way out since at least the mid-90s. Based on how many of my senior NCOs were only in it “For retirement” or the common re-enlistment line “It’s a guaranteed Paycheck, and it’s a tough economy out there” To me they viewed military service as a form of welfare.
Combat operations are tougher and more stressful than your protected bubble world can imagine. You want to understand what combat is like? Read Eugene B. Sledge's “With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa” or Robert Leckie’s “Helmet For My pillow” or his “Strong Men Armed.”
Both of these men fought in the Pacific War and suffered from PTSD from the time they got home until they died. Sledge had recurring nightmares nearly all his life. His wife said that the only way to wake him without Eugene becoming violent was to whisper his name in his ear. He would be instantly awake and be coherent. If you shook him to wake him, Sledge would awake fighting. Sledge died from cancer in 2001.
Bob Leckie died of Alzheimer's in 2001. A writer of 40 books and articles and a military historian, he served at Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu. Wounded at Peleliu, he was evacuated back to the US and discharged in 1946. As his Alzheimer's progressed, he forgot his wife and children, but he never forgot the Marines (living and dead) he served with. Leckie had a pond on his property dedicated to his best friends in the Corps. On several occasions he was convinced that the Japanese were attacking him across the pond, such was the power of the things he'd experienced.
People who live a protected civilian existence can no more understand the sights, sounds, smells, and sheer trauma of combat operations than the other side of the moon. In combat, real people, your friends, die in the most degrading and horrible of ways imaginable. No . . . hell no . . . would I ever wish some young woman do the things I have done or see the things I have seen. Hell no.
“the check signers in Chile probably thought that too”
Like the check signers in Spain they meant to de-fang the military; in both cases the military acted in its own interests and installed one of its own to sign the checks (and keep them coming).
“There was a time when military service meant a little more than just being a government employee. It was about serving your country. It’s a real shame if we’ve lost that.”
It was a country worth serving, not just a divisive post-Christianity agenda posing as a country.
“Both of these men fought in the Pacific War and suffered from PTSD from the time they got home until they died.”
I’ve read that Isreali troops couldn’t deal with the sight of female casualties in combat; what kind of man could?
Women, on average, have less upper body strengh.
Thats just a matter of nature.
Two terms of a totally unqualified president, elected then re-elected, solely on the basis of his race is proof of your statement.
Men in combat who see their buddies get hit are affected by that. It will be 5 times worse accepting a woman in the unit getting hit.
I turned to my wife and said, "the whole world has gone insane."
She said. "I don't know. As long as they can do what men can do."
"Well what do you think's going to happen when there are three men and one woman out in the woods?"
"People aren't all animals!"
Yes, the whole world has gone insane.
Yeah, sure. Tell yourself that all you want to but you’re as responsible for this atrocity as much as Obama’s most passionate followers.
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