Posted on 06/03/2005 4:29:05 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Why are our generals trying to push women into ground combat in Iraq despite Pentagon regulations and congressional law against it? What is it about civilian control of the military that the generals don't understand?
Current Department of Defense regulations exclude women from ground combat, as well as from assignment to forward support units that "collocate [i.e., are embedded side by side] with units assigned a direct ground combat mission." Federal law requires that Congress be given 30 legislative days' advance notice of any change to this policy.
Army Secretary Francis Harvey has been skirting (pardon the word) this policy by unilaterally rewording it to assign women to forward- support units except when "CONDUCTING an assigned direct ground combat mission." (emphasis added) When a ground-combat unit actually engages the enemy, the women (who are slated to be roughly 10 percent of the forward-support companies) will have to be evacuated from the battlefield.
How many ground and air vehicles, and how many extra men, will this ridiculous plan require? Will the enemy hold his fire until the evacuation is complete?
Frustrated by the Army's devious behavior, Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and John McHugh (R-NY) tried to add an amendment to the military appropriations bill to codify the current DoD regulations which the Army seems to have difficulty understanding. The feminists are lining up their media allies to demand that women be forced into land combat situations, while falsely asserting that Hunter-McHugh is "changing" the rule.
Much of the demand for women in combat comes from female officers who are eager for medals and promotions. Enlisted women are acutely aware of the heavy lifting that must be done by the combat infantry.
The Army's own opinion surveys prior to 2001 consistently reported that 85 to 90 percent of enlisted women oppose "being assigned to combat units on the same basis as men." Women enlistees have a right to expect the Army to obey current policy and law.
The advocates of women in combat say the front line is everywhere in Iraq. They continually try to fuzzy over the difference between being subject to risk (such as being ambushed by a car bomb) versus the task of aggressively seeking out and killing the enemy.
Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker tried to laugh off the difference by saying that "maybe since we're killing 40,000 people a year on the highways, they [women] shouldn't drive. That's very dangerous, too." Comparing the risk of highway driving with engaging the enemy in combat is insulting to our intelligence and common sense.
Putting women in military combat is the cutting edge of the feminist goal to force us into an androgynous society. Feminists are determined to impose what Gloria Steinem called "liberation biology" that pretends all male-female differences are culturally imposed by a discriminatory patriarchy.
History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security.
Women, on the average, have only 60 percent of the physical strength of men, are about six inches shorter, and survive basic training only by the subterfuge of being graded on effort rather than on performance. These facts, self-evident to anyone who watches professional or Olympic sports competitions, are only some of the many sex differences confirmed by scholarly studies.
Denial of physical differences is an illusion that kills. That's the lesson of the Atlanta courtroom massacre where a 5-foot-one, 51-year-old grandmother police guard was overpowered by a 6-foot-tall, 210-pound former football linebacker criminal; so now three people are dead.
Every country that has experimented with women in actual combat has abandoned the idea, and the notion that Israel uses women in combat is a feminist myth. The armies and navies of every potential enemy are exclusively male; their combat readiness is not diminished by coed complications or social experimentation.
The 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces voted to maintain the exemption of women from assignment to combat in ground troops, combat aviation, amphibious ships and submarines. But already 33 servicewomen including mothers have been killed and 270 wounded in the war in Iraq.
The Army is wondering why it can't meet its recruitment goals. It could be that the current 15 percent female quota is a turn-off to men who don't want to fight alongside of women who can't carry a man off the battlefield if he is wounded. Forcing women in or near land combat will hurt recruiting, not help.
No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war. We hope this won't be the legacy of the Bush Administration.
Huh, I wonder if the Navy brass would agree with you regarding shipboard service. You are entitled to your opinion, but I believe in this particular case of women in combat, you are on principle wrong.
IMHO women should not even be in the same units as men, and nowhere near combat or combat support. This may sound ancient, unelightened, archaic, ignorant, unpc, just color me traditional.
I was in the service at the time these new policies came into being. Most felt it was not in the best interest of the service or the country, to allow it, but the services bowed to their civilian controllers, and eased right into the present situation.
A few vain attemps to stop the train were made, but it soon became obvieous that this was the new order of things. I still don't like it or agree in principle, however, until the people have had enough, it will continue.
"...and I don't want someone compromising our military because it makes the feminist happy."
First of all, better find out how your CongressCritters feel about this issue and vote accordingly.
I joined in 1978 when I was 17. I had never really heard of "feminists" in my little part of the world. I was just looking for travel and opportunity, a chance to experience more than was available to me in Small Town USA, learn some life skills and to do some good for my country.
I hate being lumped in with FemiNazis, because that is so NOT me. I was held to the same standards as the men. I was in the first co-ed Basic Training Platoon. Many of the women did better than the men. More men washed out than did the women, and it wasn't just a percentage thing; we were equal in numbers.
If someone has clear-cut examples of women causing death to their fellow soldiers in a military setting, by all means, please post them. Are they now in prison? How was justice served in that area? Are there examples out there of women firefighters and cops causing the deaths of their partners or team members just because they were women? I've not read of any cases that hit the news, but again, please post examples if they're out there. I'm willing to read them and consider the cases on the facts of the situation. And then blame the person responsible, not their sex.
Why can't women judge other women on their merits? Does a woman serving her country somehow diminish the women that CHOOSE not to serve? It's not mandatory that women serve in the United States Military.
Free Republic has rules ...
Although I agree with you that women should not be in combat...
...you do a disservice to yourself and the person you hope to edify if you can't argue it on its merits.
Schlafly....Elaine Donnelly...have long held strong beliefs...(& facts to back them) against women in combat.
Draw from their information without resorting to hurting someone by name calling!!
I can tell you this much from my experience: being in a combat zone is the anti-Viagra.
"I respectfully disagree. I believe men (especially American men) will put themselves or their unit in extraordinary danger in order to save a female."
They'll do it to save a man, too. (At least, they did when I was in 'Nam.)
That is your choice so help yourself to it if that is what you choose.
... as I support women both being in the military and, provided the policy of gender norming physical assesments is rescinded for combat roles, women in combat roles.
Sort of like, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
Your statement asserts that I wish to weaken my nation and its military.
Whether you wish it or not, that is the outcome.
In short you have called me a traitor. Would you like to repeat that assertion, or would you like to use less sweeping statements next time?
No, I am content with my observation. If you choose to be upset there is little I can do about that.
Please add Kate O'Byrne to that list!
I would further stipulate that any parent male or female, who is raising children by themselves for whatever reason, should not be sent into combat or it's proximity.
The failure of women in the Israeli army has been almost common knowledge for years, and I am sick of Liberals and others lying about it.
EVERY woman ever taken prisoner has been raped.
That might of some influence in this conversation.
So now we through the baby out with the bathwater? Women in the military always come with quotas which lead to reduced standards on physical fitness for equivalent roles? That wouldn't be because we have denied women a part in our armed forces for as long as possible and allowed the loony left to push it in their own uniquely misguided way perhaps?
Of cause, since they championed the idea, it must be a cunning plot to weaken the military and bring the US to its knees. I think Patton said it best "You shouldn't underestimate an enemy, but it is just as fatal to overestimate him". It is worse than stupidity to let paranoia defeat you. In a time of war, to retreat behind comfortable assumptions is a dereliction of duty.
But you would turn down, in these thin recruiting times, a group of willing, able and courageous potential recruits? Especially when a better military mind then you or I concluded "Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior" (Von Clausewitz). You are either a fool willing to weaken his country to satisfy his personal prejudices or a traitor, not just willing, but desiring to weaken the military. (I would not, in the normal course of thought, conclude that a seeming fool is possibly a traitor, but you have opened my eyes so that I too may now see traitors plotting everywhere)
One last quote seems apt here, as a wakeup to anyone who cannot adapt to a changing nature of war and the forces involved "There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change; it is, To use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time"
Why is this an either/or choice? Being both seems a natural. I guess A is just a minor form of B.
I can see I am over matched in this discussion so I bow to your superior intelligence. You spell and choose words well, too. So now we through the baby out with the bathwater? Wouldn't you prefer "threw"? Of cause, since they championed the idea... How about "Of course"?
"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change; it is, To use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time"
Had I known you were talking about jilted women and ex-wives I would have agreed. They can be killers.
As much as I would like to do my strutting victory dance at this admission of the obvious superiority of my argument, I cannot. I do not have the heart for it. I am too disappointed by a fellow conservative backing away from a discussion because he was outmatched by his opponents intellect. Abandoning the discussion because your opponent is far smarter than you is like a soldier fleeing from a superior force. Given your tactics, no one would have stepped across Colonel Travis's line in the sand. Men have overcome far worse handicaps than a substandard IQ before, you owe it to them to try and overcome your little mental handicap and help your country be the best it can be.
Is there a fifteen percent quota for females?
Is that your personal guarantee? This thinking is the reason our aircraft carriers have become floating whore houses...
Check out the rate of out-of-wedlock births to female enlisted personnel. The day care centers and time lost to pregnancy are the reality.
Yes, that "something" is the complacency of fighting against a half assed enemy while fooling ourselves into thinking they are just as tough as the Germans, Koreans or Vietnamese...
We'll turn down any recruits who cannot make it using the male height, weight and physical fitness standards. How's that sound?
In todays modern combat the front lines are everywhere, from the chow hall, to the medical clinics, the libaries, to the convoys going out with supplies for the troops in the field & civilians. Are they in combat, from the time that they put the uniform of our country on not only they are but ALL members are!
The question being unsaid should women be in the miltary? They have proven to be a very valuable reasource to be utlized just like any other tool in our arsenal of freedom!
Response: True enough, but try and stop it.
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