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WOMEN IN COMBAT: A TERRIBLE IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?
Frontpagemag.com ^ | 2-26-2016 | Matthew Vadum

Posted on 02/29/2016 8:42:13 AM PST by servo1969

Forcing military women into dangerous combat roles traditionally assigned to men is so potentially disastrous that the next president should waste no time reversing this wrong-headed Obama administration edict, a military advocate recently told Congress.

Of course, parachuting women into combat roles is what happens when fevered left-wing utopianism takes over the Pentagon. Radicals on the Left are animated by a morbid obsession with equality, not by results or even by helping people. To them rigid adherence to politically correct fantasies trumps all other concerns. If soldiers die as a result of nutty policies, left-wingers rationalize that --damn the torpedoes!-- it's just the price that has to be paid for their perverse vision of social justice.

Our bilious, perpetually angry Marxist president despises the U.S. military and everything it represents. Like any good radical leftist, Obama believes the only good American soldier is one who plays the role of social worker, not war-fighter. Putting women into combat situations is another way of weakening America.

Obama hates the military's personnel, its traditions, its historical accomplishments, and its core mission. He has been gutting and gelding the military since taking office, allowing fleets, warplanes, and weapons to rust their way into irrelevance. He has been going on a human resources rampage by purging the military of ideologically hostile officers, and fundamentally transforming it into something other than a war-fighting force. Obama has been moving to reduce soldier pay and benefits and hollow out the military, reducing it to mid-century staff levels. He's barely concerned with the continuing neglect of veterans and their health care. The more who perish on waiting lists, the more money that Obama can waste on an ever-expanding array of worse-than-useless social programs designed to buy votes.

The testimony by Elaine Donnelly came after Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter unilaterally decided last Dec. 3 to rescind women's exemptions from direct ground combat. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and other left-wingers are demanding gender diversity quotas of at least 25 percent and that training standards be lowered for females.

"Current military leaders must follow orders, but the next president will have the power to change existing directives in the same way that the current president imposed them," Donnelly said in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which, earlier this month held its first hearing on women in combat in 25 years. "Leaders of the next administration should be prepared to restore sound priorities, putting the needs of the military first."

"Men and women in uniform, whose voices have been raised but not heard, are facing situations in which men in the combat arms will be less prepared for the violence of combat, and women will be targets of resentment they do not deserve," she said.

"The administration is planning to assign significant numbers of minimally-qualified young women to small fighting units, on an involuntary basis, and to send them to fight ISIS and other vicious enemies under conditions that involve higher risks for women than for men," she warned senators.

"This is being done even though officials are well aware that women's physical capabilities are far less than men's and their risks of injury are far greater," said Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that reports on and analyzes military/social issues.

"This is not a 'pro-woman' policy; it is a cruel deception, betraying the interests of uniformed women who deserve better," she said.

And women don't want combat duty, according to an official survey of Army women two years ago. It found that 92.5 percent of the respondents had no desire to serve in direct ground combat units.

"Women should not have to accept double-and-higher injury rates and other career disadvantages competing with stronger men, paying a higher price than men do for volunteering to serve their country," Donnelly said. "It is also unfair to men - tantamount to telling Navy SEALs that they should execute HALO (high altitude, low-opening) jumps with parachutes known to fail 30% of the time."

Women are physically ill-suited for combat. That's just the way it is.

Former Sen. Jim Webb's (D-Va.) classic essay, "Women Can't Fight," laid waste to the idea that putting women in combat was a good idea. The international community agrees: hardly any nations put females in combat roles.

By the way, not letting women fight isn't an example of workplace discrimination. After all, in what place of employment do people shoot at you? Compare the plight of office workers with submarine personnel. What employees stay in the same office building with the same people for six months at a time with no one leaving the building, while they sleep alongside co-workers stacked three persons high in casket-like bunks?

And if women are up to the task of war-fighting, why don't they participate in America's leading contact sport (which is mild compared to combat)? "Since there's no rule preventing 'people of either gender' from playing football in the NFL, why has no woman ever appeared in the Super Bowl?" Phyllis Schlafly wrote recently in a column opposing conscription for women.

But political correctness is more important to President Obama than military effectiveness. He is hellbent on forcing the women of the U.S. military into direct combat units at great risk both to themselves and their fellow soldiers. Military leaders have been cowed by radical feminism. They are promoting change for the sake of ideology, not because it is actually needed.

The same virulent strain of PC infects local fire departments across America, some of which routinely induct women as firefighters. Sure, it may be "equality," but if you need to be carried down the stairs of a burning building, would you prefer to be rescued by a big strong man or a woman who probably doesn't have the same muscle power or as much endurance? Some women may be drawn to the idea of fighting fires for a living but very few of them can meet the demanding physical requirements to become firefighters.

But when you're a left-winger, Mother Nature is your enemy. Science must be brought to heel and subordinated to politics.

Seven years into this catastrophic administration, no patriot needs to be reminded that under this president's kooky social engineering schemes, the military is becoming a social justice-dispensing expeditionary force, a vanguard leading the way towards the lunatic-left vision of what America and the rest of the world should look like.

Whether the collapse of the military is to be allowed to continue is up to American voters to decide in November.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: combat
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To: servo1969

The feminists want women in combat so as to “prove” that women and men are exactly equal. They don’t care if people are killed as a result of it.


21 posted on 02/29/2016 9:24:06 AM PST by I want the USA back (The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. Orwell.)
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To: rlmorel

A Navy Seal just got a MOH today for hand to hand combat and it impossible to imagine that he could have been replaced by a woman. Only in the movies and on tv do you see women perform such acts.


22 posted on 02/29/2016 9:26:06 AM PST by Oldexpat
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To: servo1969

The Russians and the Israelis both tried women in combat.
Both quickly determined it was impractical for a whole host of reasons and reversed course.

Of course now we’ve got the SMARTEST PEOPLE WHO EVER LIVED in charge..... /s


23 posted on 02/29/2016 9:27:04 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: servo1969

The feminist and homosexual ideology of neuterization takes another step.


24 posted on 02/29/2016 9:30:04 AM PST by Socon-Econ
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To: Retain Mike

Ask any Army infantry or Marine officer or NCO who has fought in combat at company, platoon, or in recon as opposed to staff types, and they will tell you women do not belong.


25 posted on 02/29/2016 9:31:20 AM PST by Lumper20 ( clown in Chief has own Gov employees Gestapo)
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To: redhead

20th century communism always made a special point of defeminizing women by placing them in combat. It was all part of destroying the family, making the relationship between atomized individual and the state the only relationship with any standing.


26 posted on 02/29/2016 9:34:58 AM PST by Romulus
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To: servo1969

Whole thing’s incredibly stupid. The one big subject nobody touches is the effect of “magic”.

Any idea how corrosive sexual/romantic connections are to a unit’s cohesion? PFC A is in love with PFC B who is in turn in love with sergeant C. Meanwhile, who gets assigned to the dangerous missions? Certainly not the sergeant’s main squeeze and everyone in the outfit knows it, particularly the guy that does pull point or night ambush instead.

Imagine how those who don’t have a girlfriend will feel when others are making out just fine in the same remote hellhole. Do you think there might be resentments? How safe will the lucky one feel with the unlucky ones on the hook to help them out in a tough patch?

Those interconnections will destroy units and make them useless in combat. There are very important reasons to keep units completely clear of those connections, the most important being that combat units need to trust that there is no favoritism when lives are on the line.


27 posted on 02/29/2016 9:43:00 AM PST by Chainmail (A simple rule of life: if you can be blamed, you're responsible.)
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To: servo1969

Ted Cruz said, “HELL NO”.


28 posted on 02/29/2016 9:49:43 AM PST by CyberAnt ("Peace Through Strength")
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To: Buckeye McFrog

The Russians probably more than anyone used women in their armed forces during WWII. The flew bombers, fighters, served on tank crews, served on artillery crews, commanded tanks, commanded tank battalions, served as snipers, served as combat medics. The one thing the Soviets did not do was issue a papasha to women and order them to fall in with an infantry company.
They also discontinued training women snipers in 1943 because the number of women snipers killed was considerably higher than their male counterparts.


29 posted on 02/29/2016 10:43:38 AM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: CaptainAmiigaf

I remember they had to do away with the fireman carry when the decision was made to allow women firefighters. Now they drag the victim. No one will ever bve able to explain to me how draging burned sailors up ship ladders and through hatches could ever work. I could not begin to count the ways a woman would fail during the first two minutes of the general quarter drills our ship went through in REFTRA.


30 posted on 02/29/2016 11:33:29 AM PST by Retain Mike
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To: servo1969
I remember reading that the Viet Cong ordered their women NOT to engage American troops in hand to hand combat. Can't remember where I read it but even those fanatics recognized the limitation of women in combat.

Anyone else know or heard of this?

31 posted on 02/29/2016 11:59:59 AM PST by protest1
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To: Retain Mike

Worse. How are they going to get that hurt/wounded/burnt guy DOWN a series of ladders. I served with a Chief who lived through another Kamikaze attack by, whenn trapped and unable to go UP or fore or aft, went down FOUR decks and crawled through the damage but UNDER the fire.
My shop was the rearmost on the main deck, 2 levels above.
When I reported aboard, thta chief told me to go below and search out every possible way to get the hell out of there.
I did, but never had to use the knowledge, thankfully.


32 posted on 02/29/2016 1:26:26 PM PST by CaptainAmiigaf (New York Times: "We print the news as it fits our views.")
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To: servo1969
If the lesbians and feminists want their sisters in combat duty, because we are all the same, then selective service registration for all women turning 18!!

That may make them reverse course, but better would be to bring the draft back for our children to help them grow up and learn about life in the world. Best thing that ever happened to my 19 year old son, not into drugs or crazy stuff just not motivated, lazy.

He said everyday the sergeant in charge of training would just rip into all of the recruits parents. How f**ked up they were for raising such pansies, that they have their work cut out for them reversing all the parental damage done to them. lol

33 posted on 02/29/2016 2:29:42 PM PST by thirst4truth (America, What difference does it make?)
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To: manc

On 20 November 1943, during the horrific fighting on Betio atoll during the battle of Tarawa, two Japanese tanks mounted a counterattack against the fragile Marine toehold on Red Beach 3. The Marines were huddled there at the base of a seawall in the face of withering fire from the rikusentai of Admiral Keiji Shibasaki fanatical Japanese Naval Landing Force defenders who were slaughtering hundreds of their 2nd Marine Division comrades in Betio Lagoon during 76 hours of some of the most savage fighting in the history not only of the Marines, but the US armed forces.

Marine anti-tank gun crews were trying to figure out how to get their 912 lb 37MM M3 antitank guns over the 7 foot plus seawall. The battery commander ordered his 5 man crews to LIFT them over. Being Marines who always obeyed even seemingly impossible orders, they did EXACTLY that and promptly knocked out the tanks. They then engaged several enemy bunkers whose dual purpose guns were repeatedly knocking out the approaching landing craft and put them out of action. Finally they routed a local counter attack of 200 or so Japanese against the south shore of Red Beach 3 with canister shot, all of this at a critical and precarious point in the landing.
Whats that about upper body strength being not as important
in modern warfare anymore and that women are just as likely to be able to do the job of combat infantry?

Familiarize your self with the case of Merrils Marauders in WWII in the China Burma India Theatre. From Feb-May of 1944, the men of Galahad Force were subjected to the most grueling long term commitment probably of ANY US combat unit in history. They were tasked with a long range deep penetration operation. At the end of it, almost every man was wracked by dysentery, malaria, scrub typhus, cholera, and any number of debilitating diseases that sapped their strength to far below whatever it was when they began the operation. Their mission had been extended and lengthened several times, and their debilitated condition was not deemed sufficient to allow them relief.

I fear we are losing the institutional memory of having faced enemies that are capable of defeating us on the battlefield. We have not faced such an enemy since the summer/winter of 1950 on the Korean Peninsula. The names of Task Force Smith, the 1st Battles of Taejon and Seoul, the Pusan perimeter the ambush of the 2nd Infantry Division at Kunu-Ri and the 80 mile withdrawal from the Chosen Resovoir seem but distant memories. The cultural marxists now in charge of the Obama administration are indulging in the sort of social experimentation SURE to result in defeat or serious setback against an enemy capable of projecting the sort of battle field power that would lead to the battlefield reverses that the US Armed Forces suffered at Kasserine Pass, the Hurtegen Forest, the Rapido River the US Strategic Bombing Campaign, the 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, (Savo Island) or the Rangers at Cisterna in Italy.

I mean no disrespect to the female personnel of the US Armed Forces who have served and ARE serving their nation honorably and well. I respect them as fellow vets and comrades in arms. Policy decisions are above their level for the most part.

But as a matter of POLICY, I think that women should be excluded from the armed forces for the most part, with a few exceptions and COMPLETELY from combat and most combat support roles, particularly when the armed forces are a small percentage of the total population, as is the case now. The use of significant numbers of women should be reserved for large scale mobilization as was the case in WWII. The population base is more than twice as large now as then and there would be no problem securing a sufficient number of qualified men with appropriate incentives for such a relatively small armed forces.

The advantages for the armed forces, particularly the Army would be greater flexibility as to how personnel can be deployed in combat emergencies and other contingincies and a lesser logistical strain as involves clothing, barracks and housing, and innumerable other considerations that are exclusive to the maintainance of large numbers of women. I think morale and discipline would also be improved as well.
The courts have repeatedly ruled that the armed forces are exempted from many of the equal opportunity requirements of the civillian world, and for the very good and sufficient requirements that are unique to the armed forces. This contretemps is being propelled largely by the cultural marxist wing of gender equity feminism who wish for the placement of a leftist Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The resultant detriment of the ability of the armed forces to fight plays no consideration in their calculus, other than as an peripheral side benefit.

I know that women have played a vital role during guerrilla, partisan warfare and sabotage/espionage activity. But to deliberately employ them in ground combat units whose primary task is to close with, engage and destroy similar enemy units is the height of lunacy and madness given the effort required to identify the relative few who could qualify even if we ignore the potential detriments to morale and discipline.

This is sheer and utter madness akin to allowing open homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. Oh has that happened too???


34 posted on 02/29/2016 6:29:10 PM PST by DMZFrank
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To: DMZFrank

Interesting read and a big thank you for that.

I totally agree this is lunacy.


35 posted on 02/29/2016 6:37:45 PM PST by manc (Marriage =1 man + 1 woman,when they say marriage equality then they should support polygamy)
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To: servo1969

An infantry solder is basically a pack mule with a rifle. This is not for women.


36 posted on 02/29/2016 6:40:44 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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