'Equality' on the Battlefield

American Thinker ^ | February 1, 2013 | Fay Voshell & Jacqueline Hamilton

[neverdem]

It is said that General Robert E. Lee, as he surveyed the carnage of the battle of Telegraph Hill, spoke the words, "It is well that war is so terrible -- we would grow too fond of it."

War is terrible.

Perhaps that is one reason why during relatively peaceful interludes, but sometimes even in wartime, palliative fantasies are concocted to make armed conflict seem less horrible and the stresses of war more equitably distributed. Civilians, often the...

--snip--

No, the core issues concern the innate limitations of and the unique dangers facing soldiers of the female sex as pertains to mixed gender battle units, the battlefield, and capture by the enemy. Even when women have met all the physical standards applying to male soldiers, they remain women and therefore automatically more vulnerable than men. That is why no armies, ancient or modern, ever incorporated women soldiers into their infantry ranks. In fact, the appearance of women on the battlefield would not only be welcomed by our enemies, it would be a fantastical exercise in political correctness that would not only to be uniquely dangerous to women, but might well prove fatal to the readiness and effectiveness of our military and our country.

Those who would conduct wars according to fantasies will lose. The French were on the verge of losing WWI no matter how firmly they believed a mystical endowment of heroism was bestowed on their soldiers by the elixir of "elan vital." It was when France faced reality and changed her politically-correct assumptions that she began to break her losing streak, with the help of American soldiers -- all of whom were men.

It is time to put the axe to the root of the fantasy of "equality" before it irrevocably damages the finest military in the world.

[neverdem]

Even when women have met all the physical standards applying to male soldiers...

Just how common is it that women can meet or exceed the minimal standards for men?

[pepsionice]

Over the last three decades...I’d say that there are some high school ladies who could meet the physical side of this (truthfully....maybe four out of one hundred), but then will the four want to be in the military (a question by itself) and even have the mental desire to be a Marine or Army?

I would add one other amusing part of this issue. Even if you find the four women who could tote the one hundred pound backpack and capable of hiking twelve miles...they probably would exceed the standard Army weigh/height expectations by twenty pounds. Considering the mentality of not allowing chunky guys or women into the military....they probably have little to worry about with this change of sudden attitude.

[ReformationFan]

Exactly. Waiting for the day the NFL requires female football players and the Olympics abolishes sex-segregated sports events and requires men and women participate in the same events....

Waiting....

Still waiting....

[blueunicorn6]

Too many women have been sitting on the sidelines on this issue thinking they don’t have to worry about it because they would never be in the Infantry. OK. Every female in this country needs to register for the draft. It’s only fair. Men have had to do it for some time. And then, when Obama screws our foreign policy up really bad, the women of America can proudly enter the Infantry to do his bidding. Not every war is going to be driving around in a hummer. Snakes, spiders, no showers for a month. You’re welcome to it, ladies.

[skeeter]

Pretty comprehensive look at the issue.

One other thing left out. I've never seen it written about or spoke of, and I'm not even sure why I would feel this way, but if I were an infantryman who had seen his fellow soldier slaughtered while assaulting a strong point, and when I got there found it manned by a female or females, I would have a different kind of rage.

Maybe mysogenistc and certainly not rational, but there it is.

[RebelBanker]

When I was in the Army, the issue was always raised by female commissioned officers. You see, the majority of the General Officer slots are combat arms, from which the females were barred. I doubt that very many enlisted women want to be in the Infantry or other combat arm, but the officers want their opportunity to wear stars on their hats.

The one possibility I can see is changing the Army Physical Fitness Test scoring from male/female with steps for age ranges to Combat Arms, Combat Support Arms and Combat Service Support Arms.

[Hardastarboard]

I read somewhere recently that Hitler didn’t wage WWII solely as a war of conquest, which the Germans could have conceivably won, but rather as a war of ideology, to prove that Nazis were superior to everyone else. Hence his destructive “no retreat” order at Stalingrad.

[Kenny Bunk]

Heterosexual Men must be withdrawn from frontline service immediately! Immediately, I say.

Combat troops must be exclusively female and/or homosexual. Women and homosexuals must be allowed to participate fully in the history and life of this great country of ours by shouldering the burdens of military service until the number of casualties inflicted upon them by our enemies equals the number of men who have given their lives since the Revolution.

It shouldn't take long for them to catch up. Fight fair, my darlings.

[Former Fetus]

The experience of the Israelis, a democratic nation that has deployed women to combat zones, is instructive.

In fact, women have been barred from combat in Israel since 1950, when a review of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War showed how harmful their presence could be. Read more here

[Chainmail]

While I was still on active duty, we would occasionally have to suffer through visits/inspections by a group of middle-aged ladies from the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). We dreaded those visits because their only interest seemed to be in "exposing" some awful thing male leaders were doing (such as allowing the Staff NCOs to sponsor gogo dancers at a unit party) and they would look for any opportunity to insist that women could fill positions that males were currently occupying. None of these ladies had ever been in the service, so their perspective was uninfluenced by any known reality but they had a great deal of political power (many of them were the wives of our political betters) and they were quite pleased to use it.

A battalion commander buddy of mine was chosen to host their latest fun visit and was worried sick about what to do. I told him to just let the ladies spend a full day on an artillery gun section (we had M-198 155mm howitzers) and work in the gun crew's positions. He did exactly that: they wore the helmets and flak jackets in 29 Palms' sweltering heat, they helped emplace and displace the howitzer (all 7 1/2 tons of it), helped unload section gear and spread the camo nets,and helped load and fire about 80 rounds of 96 pound M107 HE. Big day for them but the charm wore off within minutes and towards the middle of of the day were asking, nay pleading, to be taken out of the fun to go home.

Needless to say, their report agreed whole-heartedly that artillery firing sections were too intense for women.

Guess we have to learn those lessons all over again, don't we?

[TBP]

Women rarely, if ever, meet the same standards as men.

Can you just imagine the outcry when terrorists rape one of our female POWs? Not that liberals will care.

[ReformationFan]

Sounds only fair. Just think of it as a form of “affirmative action”.

[publius911]

It is impossible to eliminate the natural differences and natural attraction between the sexes. It is hallucinatory to believe there are not core differences between the way men and women think and act. It is also madness to deny the heightened testosterone levels characterizing men on the battlefield.

This in literally not rocket science, countless learned studies have examined the subject. My personal favorite accessible to everyone is Sex on the Brain, By Deborah Bloom. I am sure there are equivalents in every civilized country and language.

War should never be civilized, or constrained by 'Geneva Conventions,' which typically, one side or the other ignores totally, while the other chooses the "high ground" and disappears from the face of the earth. Logical? No. Rational? no. Eternal? Yes.

[Kenny Bunk]

Speaking of the Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signatory, I am not sure if women in combat is in compliance.

As any divorced man in the US knows by now, women are just too damn mean for civilized combat!

[supercat]

IMHO, the fundamental reason many of these issues come up is that the military has lost sight of its fundamental mission: to be an effective fighting force against the country's enemies. Offering things like college scholarships is an effective means of recruiting quality people, but that doesn't such scholarships should be regarded as part of the military's mission. Unfortunately, the fact that things like military scholarships can have desirable social effects in addition to providing quality recruits has caused many people to regard those effects as being part of the military's purpose.

Fundamentally, decisions regarding who should be allowed to serve, in what capacity, and under what conditions, should be made on the basis of what effect their service will have on military effectiveness. If allowing women or gay people to serve under certain conditions would make the military more effective, such people should be allowed to serve under such conditions. If allowing them to serve under other conditions would make the military less effective, they should not be allowed to serve under those other conditions. Discriminatory policies which needlessly prevent the military from using the most effective people in the most effective ways possible should be done away with--not because discrimination is morally wrong, but because they would needlessly impair military effectiveness. If removing a "discriminatory" policy would impair military effectiveness, the policy would not be "needless", and should likely be kept.