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Women In Combat: "Fairness" Vs. Biological Fact
Boston Herald ^ | January 25, 2013 | Michael Graham

Posted on 01/25/2013 4:49:30 AM PST by suspects

President Obama, in dogged pursuit of his liberal Nirvana, is free to lift the ban on women serving in combat positions.

He is, alas, unable to repeal the laws of nature, physics or gravity.

Ask a combat veteran you know how he would have felt knowing that, after being wounded in combat, the only person around to pick him up and carry him to safety was a 5-foot-3, 120-pound woman.

Ask any active duty serviceman how he’d feel knowing that, as he lay on the ground bleeding, the only thing between him and a cave-hardened Tali-ban killer was a 20-year-old woman from the wilds of Wellesley.

Don’t ask these men how they feel about women in positions of power, or about working side-by-side with the opposite sex. Every American male under the age of 50 grew up in a world with women in power: From the principals in our schools to the cops on our streets and the managers at our offices. The notion that America is a sexist nation, or that — as Obama repeatedly asserts — business owners have the desire or ability to pay women less for the same work, is a liberal fiction.

The stupidity and wrong-headedness of the Obama administration’s “women in combat” decision has nothing to do with the proper social position of women and everything to do with indisputable, biological fact.

Facts reported by professor Kingsley Browne of Wayne State University, author of the book “Co-ed Combat”:

“Inclusion of women in (combat) roles results in a segment of the force that is physically weaker, more prone to injury (both physical and psychological), less...

(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: combat; marines; military; women
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To: TexasFreeper2009
Israel is the only nation with real-world experience putting women in combat. Having gained that experience, Israel has banned women from combat units since 1950. Israel’s lessons were hard-won; the feminists in Congress have yet to learn them.

The first lesson is that men could be taught to kill strangers, but they would not stop caring for women. That is as it should be: civilized countries want to create soldiers, not savages. During the 1948 War of Liberation Israeli men would abandon their missions to come to the aid of women in distress, thereby endangering their missions, their units and themselves.

Lesson Two: The Israeli public was deeply distressed by maimed, disfigured and dead women soldiers. Israelis were horrified at the thought of their women in enemy captivity. In 1979, in testimony before the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Committee on Armed Services, Brigadier General Andrew J. Gatsis recalled that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had told him that during the War of Liberation “we had a constant fear of what the Arabs would do if they captured them [the women],” and that the men could not stand the psychological stress” of watching women being killed or captured. He recalled that Dayan felt that women in combat units “knocked down their effectiveness.”

Lesson Three: Women really are the weaker sex. It takes twice as many women to lift heavy equipment. That’s twice as many targets for the enemy, twice as many mouths to feed, twice as many women to transport. It takes women longer to accomplish physically challenging tasks such as digging a foxhole or a gun emplacement. Therefore, large numbers of women in combat would be a logistical nightmare.

Lesson Four: When the Muslim opposition discovered that they were fighting women, the Arabs spontaneously chose to fight to the death. The very thought of being defeated by a band of women was so shameful to them that it made them implacable. They would not surrender to women. Every encounter became bitter and protracted. For a small country surrounded by millions of hostile neighbors, these drawn-out struggles were a formula for national ruin.

21 posted on 01/25/2013 5:50:12 AM PST by jpsb
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To: suspects
Yes, Israel has women in combat roles.

Debunking the Israeli 'women in combat' myth.

22 posted on 01/25/2013 5:52:43 AM PST by Former Fetus (Saved by grace through faith)
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To: suspects

None of it matters anymore. This has been going on for 40 years or more and there are plenty of women in combat and who have died.

The problem has always been whether or not women were on the same plain as men. Men don’t have any choice in their assignment and women should not either. Draft registration for all. If you are assigned to a combat unit as a woman then you have no choice. If you are on a pending, or current deployment or assignment and you become pregnant then that is malingering. Whatever the conditions in the area of deployment, you get no special consideration. If you are assigned to combat arms and you cannot meet the physical requirements of the men then you are out or receive the same treatment as a man who cannot meet the requirements.

I don’t believe that any of this is truly practical, even currently. The women do receive special considerations that men do not and that does hurt unit cohesion and morale.

It all should be completely gender neutral, no exceptions, no diminishing of standards.


23 posted on 01/25/2013 5:53:06 AM PST by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: jpsb

wow, all good points


24 posted on 01/25/2013 5:54:01 AM PST by TexasFreeper2009 (Obama lied .. the economy died.)
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To: suspects

I experienced it when women entered the Fire Department.

Some of them try really hard, but -—————

Their injury rate is much higher. There are tools they cannot use for lack of physical strength, the jaws of life arent feathers.Starting gas powered tools is tough on them.Waking up stairs with 35 lbs of protective clothing and 50 lbs of Firefighting gear is not for the weaker set.
Then we have the pregnancy thing where they have to get placed on light duty, and then dissappear when the baby is born for a length of time.They come back out of shape and more useless than before.

The officers in charge of them are asked how the women are making out, and they all say, they are great. What else can they say if they ever want a promotion? They aren’t idiots, they know the system.


25 posted on 01/25/2013 5:57:51 AM PST by Venturer
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To: RJS1950

Not the same “plain”, the same “plane”


26 posted on 01/25/2013 5:58:26 AM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: FrogMom

Yep. If O gets his way, our military will be emasculated, and we would be out of our minds to deploy it anywhere without expecting to get our teeth kicked in.

Part of the European Welfare State model that he years for includes a hollowed out military where the army is a jobs program, and procurement is a graft machine.


27 posted on 01/25/2013 6:04:04 AM PST by drbuzzard (All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.)
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To: Timber Rattler

You meant to say “Band Of Mothers”, I am sure.


28 posted on 01/25/2013 6:07:41 AM PST by ABN 505
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To: suspects

Progressives see the military as the employer of last resort, and a nice social theory testing area. And that’s it.

They don’t care about the effect women will have on large scale ground combat because they don’t ever intend to get in one. Obama’s drone warfare with the occasional SOF raid is the most progressives are going to want out of the military, and the rest is merely a make-work program with a nominal function. A post-office-writ-large.

The idea is to raise the standards downward until everyone can meet it, and nobody’s feelings are hurt. The idea of the military as a whetstone for competition and victory is utterly abhorrent to them, but the idea of letting everyone get paid a nice government salary to wear a uniform and look busy is pretty much nirvana.


29 posted on 01/25/2013 6:10:14 AM PST by Steel Wolf ("Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master." - Gaius Sallustius Crispus)
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To: maine yankee
Same test to get into the military Same aptitude, education, and physical ability. Same training. Technical,emotional, and physical

Right. Just like police, fire, and sanitation.

Those lasted about five minutes.

30 posted on 01/25/2013 6:11:18 AM PST by Jim Noble (When strong, avoid them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.)
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To: Venturer

I remember an incident that happenedone day.

A man who wanted a transfer to a ore active company had put in for it a few times and been turned down because he was needed where he was.

he and this “woman”—sometimes it is hard to tell. Got in an argument. She claimed she could do anything he could. Well he had seen her in action and knew better, but the argument continued until he said lets go settle this in the alley. Let’s go, we will see how bad you are.
Of course she refused and went to the Capt.
The kid got transferred the next day.

He went to the Company he wanted to go to, and the Company he was at lost a good man.


31 posted on 01/25/2013 6:13:17 AM PST by Venturer
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To: suspects

One very critical, but neglected reason, to not put women in combat is that many males are biologically designed to protect women as a priority. When they see women at risk, even in a movie, they get a powerful instinctual and physiological response. For many men it is overwhelming. They cannot do other things until the female is in a more acceptable condition of safety. They will even sacrifice their own lives.

And not coincidentally, those men are often the very best combat soldiers. They cannot be disciplined or trained to not react this way, for the two things go together.

And just one of these men in combat is worth 50 ordinary men or women. While an ordinary man might have no problem at all in sending women out to draw fire, he would likewise be mediocre to poor as a combat soldier, no matter his training or level of physical fitness.

One of the great illusions of modern armies is that ordinary men can be made into capable warriors. But this is belied by combat support and combat service support outnumbering combat soldiers by 15 to 1 or more. That is, they work fine as combat “multipliers”, but actual combat is up to warriors.

The flip side to this is PTSD. Warrior type men have much higher resistance to it than do ordinary men. A few are even impervious to it. But ordinary men can be subdivided into blocs in which some will experience PTSD with minimal stress or even the threat of stress; some will take a typical amount of stress before they start experiencing it; some will be able to handle it somewhat longer, with longer or shorter recovery; and a minority will take a long time to get it, and recover on their own much faster.

So add this all up.

By putting women in combat, you will either render ineffective or kill your best and most capable soldiers, and those least likely to experience PTSD. And while leftists absolutely do not care about this, or are even in favor of a much less capable military, mission accomplishment will also become a thing of the past.

But leftists do not care. They do not care if casualties and killed among our military are ten times or more what they are today. They do not care. They want what they want, and reality and common sense and human suffering be damned.


32 posted on 01/25/2013 6:20:14 AM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: Venturer

I read this during the Tailhook scandal in 1991, can anyone comment?

“If the military evaluates 100 males and 100 females for physical fitness & strength, the findings tend to show that the ten strongest women have the same level of fitness as the ten weakest men in the total sample of 200.”


33 posted on 01/25/2013 6:38:27 AM PST by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam.")
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To: yldstrk

Sure, with a nod to the spelling nazis.


34 posted on 01/25/2013 6:47:40 AM PST by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: suspects

What’s incredible is that those who would prefer to keep women from being maimed on the front lines are portrayed as anti-woman by the left.


35 posted on 01/25/2013 6:55:17 AM PST by Yardstick
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To: suspects

This is what a combat soldier should look like and one of the reasons why.

(How many lives will be lost because of this policy? How many?)


36 posted on 01/25/2013 7:02:39 AM PST by 444Flyer (Obama killed the Twinkie, but not the terrorists in Benghazi. What's wrong with this picture?)
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To: 444Flyer

Male combat soldiers better get used to performing the “buddy carry” on their female counterparts when they fail to keep up.


37 posted on 01/25/2013 7:13:32 AM PST by TADSLOS ( "I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians."-George Mason)
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To: suspects

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kinder-Gentler-Military-Gender-Neutral/dp/0684852918


38 posted on 01/25/2013 7:18:00 AM PST by pabianice (washington, dc ..)
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To: RJS1950

Excellent post... I hope you don’t mind if I cut & Paste for use on some other boards... where liberals will be confronted with reality.

I’ve never been in the military... but, from what I’ve heard, the ACTUAL FIGHTING time is usually brief, and limited... MOST of the time is spent in preparation, or... WAITING.

I’ve assumed that women would likely perform OK in the actual fighting... but, having them everywhere during the “down time” adds a number of, um.... complications.

Debatable, I suppose.... but, your points are not.


39 posted on 01/25/2013 7:26:16 AM PST by SomeCallMeTim ( The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them)
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To: RJS1950

Excellent post... I hope you don’t mind if I cut & Paste for use on some other boards... where liberals will be confronted with reality.

I’ve never been in the military... but, from what I’ve heard, the ACTUAL FIGHTING time is usually brief, and limited... MOST of the time is spent in preparation, or... WAITING.

I’ve assumed that women would likely perform OK in the actual fighting... but, having them everywhere during the “down time” adds a number of, um.... complications.

Debatable, I suppose.... but, your points are not.


40 posted on 01/25/2013 7:26:40 AM PST by SomeCallMeTim ( The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them)
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