Posted on 04/11/2015 5:50:44 AM PDT by kingattax
If a woman can pass with the current standards. Women don’t belong in the infantry IMO. I doubt the loss of the platoon’s effectiveness to which she is assigned squares up with the fairness of letting her try. Many IOC grads get neither a platoon nor a company command. If a woman passed she would get one, so the PC would continue. Female PC failures in combat arms to date have only resulted in the death of the female and loss of aircraft. How high a price are you willing to sustain for ‘fairness’?
Incidentally, no one has ever denied the courage of many women; nor their tenacity.
“...How high a price are you willing to sustain for fairness?...”
None. That does not preclude a capable woman who can cut the mustard from leading. If she passes the course and subsequently earns the respect of the men she leads, I have no problem with it. Admittedly, the odds against finding a bunch of women who can do it are incredibly high in the Marines, but there might be the rare one or two who can and do lead from the front. I’d rather she lead my team than a male ROTC LT who squeaked by to graduate the course and leads from the rear.
Another example of women in the military would be Joan of Arc, eh?
Still, I don't support women broadly in the military other than in support roles. I think trying to integrate combat units on M/F participation just introduces a whole new complexity of problems that the mission simply does not need or want. Chivalry is not, repeat _not_ the critical issue. Combat proficiency is the issue that determines who wins and who loses, functionally and/or culturally. Chivalry has never applied to the common class. It is a fantasy of the elite, introduced in the feudal days, not prevalent through all natural history. IMHO.
You realize than the accommodations that will have to made for her to function in the fleet?
Id rather she lead my team than a male ROTC LT
We don't have ROTC direct commissions. Either OCS or Naval Academy. NROTC is the path, but it goes through Quantico just like the rest of them. As I noted many of the grads of IOC never see command of a platoon, let alone a company. A 'squeaker' is even less likely.
IMHO, a lot of people who don’t bother going into the military are wise, there are plenty of individuals, especially plenty of women, who are probably fit enough to take care of the fitness part, but IMHO, plenty of women are wise enough to consider the potential mental issues such as PTSD, as well as physical wear and tear on the body, to figure that there are wiser professions to apply your level of fitness to, other than going into the middle of a genuine war zone, especially if this isn’t a war of fighting off foreign invaders.
We’re also not looking at the fact that military service can do more than just kill. PTSD is a serious problem. Some people literally live with this problem chronically haunting them with issues such as the need to look over their shoulder. It’s a severe chronic compulsion of pain and fear. The post-war psychological issues are pretty serious. As sexist as I may sound, I wouldn’t want to imagine my mother having serious paranoia issues or flipping out and attacking the wrong thing. She was already irritable enough as it was, and as is.
Lay off the idea that veterans are some kind of brain damaged time bombs, they aren’t.
Not all of them get seriously wounded either, but getting killed is not the only problem. The veteran who has PTSD is not a bomb, but a human being suffering through a whole lot of problems.
Seriously, lay off the veterans are broken thing, the left has been pushing that for 40 years.
if you want someone who really thinks the vets are broken, and blames non liberals for it, that would be Ted Nugent at right wing watch.
Sorry to disappoint you, but no, vets are not broken losers, and your mother would not have become a nut if she had served.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.