Posted on 01/07/2005 8:59:28 AM PST by xsysmgr
I recently heard from a female soldier who feels betrayed by the Army. Calm but justifiably angry, the soldier said she is being assigned to a forward-support company that will "collocate" with the Army's new, modular infantry/armor land combat battalions. This is a serious change in policy, unfair to men and women soldiers alike.
Under current regulations, women cannot be forced to serve in smaller direct ground-combat units such as infantry or armor battalions, or in companies that collocate with them. If the Defense Department wants to change these rules, law requires that the secretary must notify Congress no less than 30 legislative days in advance, when both houses are in session. Despite the "collocation rule" and the congressional notification law, the Army is unilaterally assigning women to previously all-male forward-support companies in its new "unit of action" land combat teams, which are key to the Army's "transformation" to a lighter, faster force.
In letters signed by underlings, the Army claims compliance because the units in question will belong to gender-mixed brigade-support units operating elsewhere. This is only an administrative sleight of hand, which a May 10 Army briefing admitted could be seen as "subterfuge." Pentagon planners rearranged blocks on organizational charts, but in practice the forward-support companies in question will still be collocated with and organic to the Army's new combined infantry/armor maneuver battalions 100 percent of the time.
What's worse, Army officials have tried to mislead Congress about their intent. During a November 3, 2004, briefing for congressional staffers, Pentagon officials denied any violation or change in rules exempting female soldiers from assignments in land-combat-collocated units. A different briefing conducted inside the Pentagon on November 29 stated that the preferred "way ahead" is to "rewrite/eliminate the Army collocation policy."
When the Washington Times reported the duplicity on December 13, Army Staff Director Lt. Gen. James Campbell immediately issued a widely distributed memo warning about "Information Security" and the loss of "positive control of pre-decisional briefing materials, decision memorandums, and otherwise generally sensitive information." President Bush and the Congress should ask, Why is this matter so sensitive?
Some military decisions must remain confidential, but this is not one of them. The 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., has been quietly training women for the new land-combat forward-support companies, while arrogantly claiming that the notification law does not apply. "Lessons learned" from the division's impending redeployment to Iraq will be declared a "success," but if (when) anything goes wrong, officials will blame the collocation rule that they intend to eliminate. Either scenario will betray the trust of soldiers and undermine the Army's own best interests.
Some officials have made the unsupported claim that female soldiers will have to make up for shortages in male combat soldiers for the Army's new land-combat teams. To the extent the problem exists, gender-based recruiting quotas are to blame.
Instead of dropping the gender quotas, the same officials are pursuing an illicit course of action that will erode the effectiveness of all land-combat troops, and eventually apply to special-operations forces and the Marine Corps. The Army has also defied logic in retaining co-ed basic training, acknowledged in 2002 to be "not efficient" in transforming civilians into disciplined soldiers. Revised "warrior training" programs sound impressive, but gender-normed standards emasculate the concept by assuring "success" for average female trainees. Soldiers know that there is no gender-norming on the battlefield.
The nation is proud of our women in uniform, but that is no excuse for forcing unprepared female soldiers, many of whom are mothers, to face the physical demands of violent close combat and a higher risk of capture than exists today. In the Army's own surveys over a decade, 85 to 90 percent of enlisted women said they strongly oppose such policies. Their opinions matter no more than those of male soldiers, who will have to bear new "female force protection" burdens that could complicate dangerous missions.
Combat commanders will have to cope with significant personnel losses, distractions, and social turmoil that will be more intense in the heat of war. Predictable problems include far higher rates of medical leave and evacuations, primarily due to pregnancy, which Army officials refuse to reveal or discuss. Making the mix even more volatile will be sexual attractions, personal misconduct, and accusations of same.
Forget feminist legends about Amazon warriors and push-button wars. The modern land-combat soldier carries weapons and high-tech equipment weighing 50 to 100 pounds, with body armor alone weighing 25 pounds. Such burdens would be disproportionately heavy for average female soldiers, who are certainly brave but shorter and lighter, with smaller hearts and bones, 25 to30 percent less aerobic capacity for endurance, and 40 to 50 percent less upper-body strength.
Politically correct group-thinkers and Clinton-promoted generals in the Pentagon apparently have forgotten certain realities affirmed by overwhelming evidence: In direct ground combat, women do not have an "equal opportunity" to survive, or to help fellow soldiers survive. No one's injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman.
The concerned soldier who contacted me recognized that the Army is about to conduct an unannounced, extremely dangerous live-fire social experiment under wartime conditions. With deployments imminent, what can be done?
President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must intervene to enforce the notification law and encourage the recruitment of young men. In long-overdue congressional hearings, members should require Pentagon officials to document alleged shortages of males, and explain why female soldiers should have to pay the price for the Army's bureaucratic errors. Congressmen worried about the sexual abuse of military women should be consistent in expressing concern about the elevated risk of combat violence at the hands of the enemy.
Today's changing battlefield makes it even more important to retain personnel policies that recognize combat realities that have not changed. The collocation rule should be strengthened, not weakened, and applied consistently in all units that collocate with direct ground-combat forces. At times we have no choice but to send young men into land combat, but we do have a choice when it comes to sending our women there.
— Elaine Donnelly is president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that specializes in military personnel issues.
ping
bring back the WACs....they had it right and then broke it.
I guarantee you that all the heavy lifting missions are being pulled by males even in those forward support companies.
In fact, reading between the lines in THIS ARTICLE, one realizes that under the CURRENT system ONLY males must be allowed to go on the resupply missions to forward rearm/refuel/resupply points.
The sexes will get the same job specialty identifier (MOS), the same pay, the same promotion opportunity...but they won't do the same battlefield job and experience the same danger/risk.
Real equity at work
when people wonder about the discipline in the US Army, especially in the reserve units (NOT as a rule) - begin looking at the generals making public statement aiding the enemy through moral encouragement, look at the generals who are promoted strictly by sex, look at the field commanders also there because of their sex, look at the .....
ahhh forget it! those who say they are conservatives now think and act more liberal than the most liberal democrat ever thought of doing in the early 1960's.
The success story of the incrementalist propaganda techniques --- see Antonio Gramsci for some of their main methods.
I saw a picture in the paper today of an NJ National Guard unit getting ready to ship out to Iraq, to Tikrit. The women lined up looked small, soft, no two of them holding their guns the same way. Some of them were crying for little children left behind.
Saddam's female guard parades looked better. And guess what? They're not the ones doing the fighting now - the Muslims have intelligently left that to the men.
Sure, take some women along to search women or their quarters, or for support positions well behind the lines (in Iraq, ha, where are the lines.)
But the military, like the clergy, does not exist for women to advance their careers on an equal basis for men.
And I'm a feminist of sorts, having grown up in the "old days", but you have to know where to stop.
Mrs VS
Doctrine has been for the combat battalion trains to set up in the brigade trains area, where forward support companies from the support battalions also locate, such as the forward maintenance companies from the ordnance battalion. Women can serve in these forward support companies. All the new structure is doing is making what was an ad hoc attachment when units took the field a permanent integration. Women will be no closer to the front lines than they already are.
Am I missing something?
Look for lots of problems, not the least of which are impending morale and combat effectiveness breakdowns of our Army in Iraq - and elsewhere. This is going to be ugly. In the long run, it will be used to good effect by our enemies to turn the American public against this war.
We can't evade forever the chickens coming home to roost because of our deeply held desire to remake human nature and physiology by making it military policy to ignore the obvious.
Heck yes. The vast majority of women are too weak for this sort of thing.
*bump*
Women are not integrated in the sense that they go out on combat patrols.
They are integrated in the sense that they are Brigade/Battalion assets instead of Division assets.
Aviation units are a different matter.
The insurgency meanwhile does not care about the rules. In fact it is likely that women are in even greater jeopardy over there because of the mores and attitudes here concerning women in hostile zones and combat units. The radicals use terrorist tactics because it impacts morale. How much more would they want to undermine the will for us to continue this war than by targeting women Troops? The Islamic scum certainly do read the news and are aware of American dispositions. One more reason why I so despise the old media, but I digress.
The reorganization of the structure of the units is probably meaningless. It is all on paper it seems to me. Likely some field grade officer was looking for a career boost, (and probably got it.) The terminology and the command structure may seem to be different, but it is all newspeak. Nothing of substance has changed.
Perhaps you know more than I do concerning these matters. I certainly do not think it is worth arguing about. I see no valid reason to allow our Troops to be targets over there. We have the means to take out those who would destroy us. They'll never takes us seriously until we prove that we mean business. When you go to war, you use what assets that you have in order to win. Truman seemed to grasp that truth. The leaders of today are too involved in nuance.
It seems that it will take another 9-11 before we get serious.
The reorganization of the structure of the units is probably meaningless. It is all on paper it seems to me.
That's the point I was trying to make.
If it were up to me, I would not allow women in forward support companies or the new brigade formations at all. I would not allow women forward of the division trains area. For lots of reasons. But I lost that debate 30 years ago.
You might want to take a look at "Breaking the Phalanx," which seems to be the blueprint for this new reorganization. The main idea seems to be that we are less in need of division deployments and more in need of brigade or regimental size formations and we can deploy them faster if the support units are already organic to them rather than go through the cross-attachment drill every deployment. They are also tweaking the mix of units to be more in tune with modern warfare, such as reducing FA and ADA and adding more military police, civil affairs, signal, etc. I'm interested to see if this reorganization produces results.
Bottom line for me right now is all this talk of reorganization is beside the point. The biggest reform the Army needs right now is to add more troops and units - we are stretched too thin.
As a former "feminazi" and soldier, I agree, women do not belong in forward groups regardless of orginizational structure. Every grunt I have ever asked just looked at me hopelessly and said "Well I hafta protect you, just like my sister, wife, mother... etc.
No amount of running or weightlifting I did ever changed that thinking.
Now, women do have a place in long range recon as they are able to obtain information easily from the enemy... That would be a highly trained op though. Women are fierce when they are in control of a dangerous situation via mind manipulation, or other means. IMHO
Sez who? Gloria Steinem? The NOW gang? Surely you jest...
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