Posted on 06/27/2005 5:24:07 AM PDT by robowombat
Women's Combat Role on Front Burner June 27, 2005
Washington - With more than 200,000 women serving in the U.S. military, Americans have long been accustomed to seeing them marching in combat boots right alongside men.
But none of that prepared the nation for the grim news that at least four female American troops were killed and 11 others wounded in Iraq late Thursday when a suicide bomber struck a Marine convoy near the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
The bloodiest attack against American women in more than two years of war in Iraq, the incident highlighted the debate over women in combat.
More than three decades after women began to be integrated into the mainstream Army, many Americans still believe that dying for the flag is men's work and that the institutionalized killing and maiming of women is a form of savagery.
"It's still a question as to whether this is the way we want to go as a nation," said Elaine Donnelly, a leading opponent of placing women in harm's way. "Is it OK to not only condone but to encourage deliberate violence against women, through combat? Is that a step forward for civilization or is it a step backward?"
The answer can depend on who is asked.
Karen Johnson, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women, regards military service as a cornerstone of NOW's fight for equal opportunity and women's rights.
"Serving in the military is a right of American citizenship, and when you limit women's role in the military, you're limiting the opportunity of women to play a full and responsible role as citizens," said Johnson, a retired lieutenant colonel who spent 20 years as an Air Force nurse. "Any position that a women is qualified to do, she should be able to do."
War, said Johnson, makes no gender distinctions.
"I don't know that women are any worse looking in body bags than men are," she said. "The issue really is whether we need to be in Iraq, as opposed to whether women need to be there." 1989 the turning point
From the birth of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II, when 150,000 women served in support functions ranging from clerical work to cryptography under the slogan "Release a Man for Combat", Americans have resisted efforts to use women as warriors.
For years after Vietnam, that wasn't hard to do. U.S. combat engagements were relatively few.
That slowly began to change in 1989, when 770 women participated in the invasion of Panama. While officially assigned to non-combat roles, some took fire as Black Hawk helicopter pilots, and at least one commanded a unit in what the Pentagon dubbed "combat-like" operations, according to the Women's Research and Education Institute, a Washington think tank.
Two years later, George Bush sent 41,000 women, 7 percent of the U.S. force, into what were officially non-combat roles in the first Persian Gulf War.
It wasn't until 1998, though, that women first formally engaged in combat, flying air missions in the "Desert Fox" strikes against Iraq, as they did the next year over Kosovo.
Officially, Pentagon rules still prohibit women from participating in ground combat missions such as infantry fighting or tank operations. Nor are they allowed in support roles, like vehicle maintenance or cooking, that take them to the front lines of war. That policy was relaxed, in effect, a decade ago, when the Pentagon did away with what was called the "risk rule," a provision that exempted women from missions in which they were likely to be taken prisoner or come under fire.
But today, those conditions apply to just about any assignment anywhere in Iraq, a country where there is no front line and entire regions are essentially combat zones with American troops, men and women alike, the targets of almost daily insurgent strikes. Affecting public opinion
Against that backdrop, there's been a blurring of the lines between what women can and can't do, resulting in increased risk. Of the roughly 1,730 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq so far, about 40 have been women, five times the number of women, all nurses, who were killed in Vietnam. The number includes those killed this past week.
"Like all of our soldiers, they perform magnificently every day," Gen. George Casey, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, shortly before the convoy attack. "We couldn't do what we're doing without them in the positions that they're in."
The American women killed this past week were assigned to Fallujah-area checkpoints, where they provided security searches of Iraqi women out of respect for the Islamic aversion to extramarital contact between men and women.
It wasn't immediately known whether the militants behind the killings meant to target women. Among military strategists, however, it's well understood that the gruesome spectacle of female troops being slaughtered has the potential to demoralize an American public already growing weary of the war and its grinding toll.
With recent polls showing six Americans in 10 already opposed to the war, and the Army falling short of its recruiting goals, the prospect of mounting female casualties adds just one more grisly element to the public opinion equation.
"This is going to affect the decisions that are made on the kitchen tables of Americans on the question of service to our country in the military," said Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a non-profit policy outfit in the Detroit suburb of Livonia. "We're all going to sigh and feel very sad." Risk of rape
If the question of women in uniform challenges societal precepts in this country, it's turned tradition on its head in the male-dominated Arabic and Islamic culture of Iraq.
The now-infamous photos of Army Pfc. Lynndie England holding a leash tethered to the neck of a naked Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison underscored the willingness of some American troops to exploit those differences in abusive and humiliating ways. The tale of one of the war's first prisoners of war, Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, showed the ugly flip side, amid evidence she was sexually assaulted by her Iraqi captors in the opening days of the war.
Lynch has said she was unconscious during much of her ordeal and has no memory of being raped.
"And I don't want people to look at me, in a shameful way, which I had no control over, if it did even, in fact, happen," Lynch told Diane Sawyer of ABC News in a 2003 interview. "But, you know, if it did happen, then people need to know that that's what kind of people that they are, and that's how they treat the female soldiers over there."
That wasn't the part of the Jessica Lynch story the Pentagon wanted aired. The Defense Department had gone out of its way to portray Lynch as a heroine who exemplified the capabilities of female soldiers in the field. Instead, medical evidence of rape pointed to a vulnerability often whispered about within the military but seldom publicly discussed.
Advocates of expanded roles for women in the military don't like to discuss it.
"Once you become a prisoner of war, they may decide to rape you rather than torture you in some other way," said Johnson. "But I'm at risk of rape in Washington, D.C., and not for a noble mission, just because I am female."
I suggest you go read up on WWII in the Eastern Front.
Women suck at combat period. If you want to convince me otherwise, give the sourve to the video, anecdotal evidence means nothibng to me.
sourve=source
Now you're changing the topic. My last post to you was recommending that you read about fighting on the Eastern Front before making statements such as They fought from their homes against an unprepared and languishing German Army.
That fighting was savage unlike anything experienced on the Western Front and I wouldn't call the German army "unprepared and languishing" as you did.
For a primer of Soviet female snipers, you may want to begin here: Lyudmyla Pavlichenko. Here's another female Soviet sniper Nina Lobkovskaya
The issue is about women in combat. That is what this thread is about. I'm not really concerned what female Russian snipers did in WWII. From my experience with serving with women in the military and in law enfrocement women should not be involved in combat. All the literature in the world about women snipers in WWII isn't going to make me change my mind about what I've seen first hand.
I generally agree with you but my desire is to see the best person occupy a position. A woman is certainly unqualified to be a member of a marine rifle squad or field artillery. However, what about other less traditional combat roles such as UAV operator?
I don't see anything wrong with women being UAV operators. Actually that seems to be a good idea.
Oh yes. There were about a half dozen women pirates and some women who have hidden the fact and gottent into the armed forces and fought. All completely irrelevant and no argument for integrated military combat operations. Exceptions to exceptions do not make sound policy and never have. As a general rule, men have always vanquished women and they always will. If this were not the case, women would have ruled the earth and done away with this tendency long ago.
This above statement merely helps my side of the agruement.
All completely irrelevant and no argument for integrated military combat operations.
So you willfully ignore evidense that proves you wrong, that's foolish on your part.
An aberration of 0.00000001% in all of history is nothing to build a case on. Your side will lose every time.
Pulling figures out of you butt does not help your side of the arguement.
My side of the argument is all of history, humand nature and the plain facts of life and physiology. Your side of the argument is a handful of exceptions and muddle brained hopes on which you would hang all of our security. You do the math. BTW, there is no argument - objective reality speaks for itself.
"All of history", please I doubt you know all 5000 years of writen human history, let alone 'all of history'.
No it isn't, it's all about sexism in that you are against the standard being set same. Because such a move would prove you wrong.
We have military women in Iraq right now that are kicking ass right now. But then you ignore such facts because they go against your dilusions.
If you cannot face the plain reality of M/F differences, I doubt you'd be able to make sense of anything current or past. The female soldiers in Iraq are in combat support. If they get into it, it is only by accident. Again, you seem unable to read facts correctly.
Please, if you wish to champion Sheena the Warrior Princess or dress up like an Amazon in the privacy of your own home - please do so! Just don't endanger the nation with your brand of utopian idiocy.
BTW, 5000 years of history is a figure you must have pulled out of your butt since records extend beyond that.
You ignore the reality that no one it same, some men are weaker than others, some men are stronger than others. This fact also applies to women.
The female soldiers in Iraq are in combat support. If they get into it, it is only by accident. Again, you seem unable to read facts correctly.
All of Iraq is a combat zone for the gorilla warfare the terrorists are taking over there, some anyone over there is on the frontlines, including the women.
And don't give me "all women are weak" BS, I know of women weightlefters that could easily snap you like a twig.
Facts are pernicious things. So are bell curves. You need to acquaint yourself with both.
The "bell curve" supports my side of the arguement because it proves my point that some women can handle combat.
No, genius, what it shows is that exceptions lie outside the norm. To use the exceptions as a basis for policy creation or reform in critical functions like national security, is beyond foolish. In fact, it borders on treason if the proponents are rational. In your case, I just write it off to willful ignorance.
I really believe there is no point to pursuing this further since you seem unable to grasp basic reality. You may have the last word - but please - at least try be creative and original in crafting your final insults.
You forgot to take into account that by you logical, no one, man or women, in the military is in your 'norm'.
EVERYONE seems to miss the boat on this issue. It boils down to this. The fundamental function of an Army is to fight and defeat the enemy. To the extent that women can enable this mission they should be utilized.
I believe that the present policy is, or has the potential to be; couterproductive to the army's fundamental mission. Every soldier needs to be fundamentally interchangeable in the combat mission, should it be necessary to "plug" them into it in an emergency. During the fighting in northwest Europe in WWII, The United States Army was forced to comb out personnel who had been assigned to the Army Specialized Training program has technical personnel (aircrew, radar operators, etc) and convert them to infantry to replace the staggering losses in the post Normandy breakout and the Huertgen Forest debacle. Since 14% of the Army is not deployable to such duty (women) this does not bode well for such an eventuality. While we can continue to pray that we will never again face an enemy that will be able to attrite us as the German and Japanese Armies did, we MUST not plan as though it will never again happen. The Iraq war as it is presently playing out IS NO TEST OF THIS PROPOSITION. Additionally, these women are only expected to meet a gender normed standard of physical readiness, and cannot be expected to perform generally as well as a simarly situated male soldier would.
Despite all radical femist attempts to decry the disheartning (to them) tendency to place a higher value (or at least to shield from harm) on women's lives for most of Western civillization's history, this predeliction will cause a greater demoralizing effect on the nation than an equivalent number of dead or wounded men. The potential effect on national policy must be considered as to it's political fallout and negative repercussions.
I believe having such large numbers of women in the military should be reserved for cases of full mobilization, where they are essential; but I realize that the present situation is largely impelled by PC and gender politics, and the defense establishment is yielding to that reality.
Under the current PC regime, physical standards will NEVER be equal because 40-60% of women now gender-normed into the service would be subsequently washed out. A political decision has been made to have a politically acceptable number of women, and dual physical standards was the means to allow it.
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