Posted on 01/19/2011 11:11:11 PM PST by neverdem
Heather Pfleuger -- an exuberant, all-American, girl-next-door -- was transformed when she arrived in Afghanistan. She'd shrug into her body armor, strap on her helmet, yank on gloves, goggles and scarf, and slide down behind her turret-mounted Mark-19, a 40mm grenade launcher. From there, she could kill an armored vehicle and everybody in it a mile away.
When she whooped with glee and led a convoy outside the wire, local Afghan fighters, hard men who'd faced down the Russians and the Taliban, fell respectfully silent.
"Specialist Pfleuger can hit anything," her squad leader. Sgt. Kevin Collins, told me proudly. "I feel sorry for anyone who gets in her sights."
That was nine years ago, when Pfleuger was deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the 511th Military Police Company. At the time, I wrote a story boldly asserting that with women like Pfleuger easily accepted in the ranks, doing well at war and liking it, the argument over women in combat "is over."
It wasn't over. In fact, it's about to heat up again. A study commission chartered by Congress is poised to send up to Capitol Hill a recommendation that the last remaining barriers to women – those that formally exclude them from infantry, armor and special forces -- be removed.
Those "close combat" troops -- roughly 14 percent of the military -- are the ones that most jealously guard the all-male cohesion and camaraderie they insist makes them effective in the chaos and stress of long-term exposure to combat.
Never mind that some 200,000 women like Pfleuger have served in wartime Iraq or Afghanistan, that 134 have been killed and 721 wounded in action. With women attacking insurgents with strike fighters and helicopter gunships, machine guns and mortars, riding shotgun on convoys through IED territory and walking combat patrols with the infantry, the Defense Department and the military services have labored mightily to define just what it is that women cannot volunteer to do.
That hasn't been easy, given that in today's wars there are no front lines and no safe rear areas, as the saga of Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch aptly demonstrated (a 19-year-old supply clerk, she was captured and hospitalized by Iraqis after her military convoy got lost in 2003 and her truck crashed during an ambush).
The Army has tried to block women from joining units that "engage an enemy . . . while being exposed to direct enemy fire, a high probability of direct physical contact with the enemy's personnel, and a substantial risk of capture."
That seems to precisely define the situation of Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, an MP, who won the coveted Silver Star for her actions in a firefight in Iraq in 2005. When the convoy she was escorting was caught in an ambush, she leapt out and attacked an enemy trench. Then, with her squad leader, she cleared two trenches, killing three insurgents with her rifle. At the time, she was 23 years old.
Getting the award for heroism "really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she told reporters. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."
A group of female Army cooks apparently felt the same way. They were deployed to Iraq where they discovered all the cooking was done by civilian contractors. Instead, they were pressed into service as infantry and came home proudly wearing the highly prized Combat Infantryman Badge, earned only by participating in a firefight with the enemy while a member of or assigned with infantry or special forces.
That's a piece of evidence cited by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, the group of retired senior military personnel, academics and other civilians whose recommendations on lifting the barriers will be published this winter.
Despite the boots-on-the-ground reality that women serve well and honorably and bravely in combat, what looms ahead are months of contentious congressional hearings and hot-tempered talk show shout-fests and angry op-eds, just like the season of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" of 2010. And this time, the pivotal House Armed Services Committee is led by GOP conservative Buck McKeon of California, who opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
As with the "Don't Ask" debate, the argument will come over whether the presence of women, in small units that must operate for extended periods under fire, would be disruptive.
Would women – if any actually volunteered for and could qualify for an infantry unit -- actually break its tight cohesion and cripple its fighting spirit?
"There's a growing number of women out there who have served 'outside the wire' on combat missions," said a woman who served on active duty in Iraq as an Army intelligence officer. "We carried a full basic load of ammunition and fired the SAW [squad automatic weapon, a light machine gun], .50-cals [heavy machine guns] and M-4 [rifles]) to protect our fellow man and to defeat the enemy," said this young officer, who asked not to be identified by name because of her current job. "We have endured the same harsh living conditions as men, where hygiene isn't exactly a priority," she said.
To insist that gender goes unnoticed in such small units would be "inane," she said; there is a "familial" relationship among the soldiers. "Those who serve for the sake of serving and take pride in their jobs do not feel threatened by sexual orientation, race or gender," she said.
In basic officer training, this young woman was offered the chance to take the physical exam for acceptance into Ranger school, the Army's legendarily tough commando course. She and two other women aced the test – even though they were barred from attending the male-only school or to join Ranger units.
"The truth is that very few women and few men can meet or exceed the desired standards of an Army Ranger," she said. "But some can, and they should be given the opportunity."
In its brief for lifting the barriers, the commission cited research that it said found no negative impact from allowing women to serve in close-combat units. It cited a RAND study which found that "gender differences alone did not appear to erode cohesion." The study was published in 1997, well before women began taking a larger role in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That and similar studies are "wrong!" said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a combat veteran, historian and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. "They simply don't understand the nature and character of close combat . . . the 'Band of Brothers' effect," he said recently on Fox TV news.
Scales, an expert on small combat units, said in fact there is no research that settles the question, and that allowing women into such units, in wartime and without knowing how it would affect combat effectiveness, would be risky.
"I've studied this for three decades," Scales said. "The bottom line is nobody knows -- the elements that make up cohesion in a firefight simply aren't known. And to rush into this, in my opinion, could damage cohesion."
And so the battle is joined. Stay tuned.
I remember reading years ago that the best neck for a fighter pilot was short and thick which allowed him to pull more g’s in a dogfight. Now they say that the best neck is long and slender which favors females.
So, did the nature of combat change or was it politics ?
Only allow divorced men into the unit...they're likely to have trained out their sense of protection of women,
Off, OFF damned sarcasm!!!
Just another bit of our now daily trek through our Orwellian world. Better watch your back -- "In a age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Men and women are very different from some very powerful reasons. Nature says so. People can rant and rave against reality all they want, but in the end... reality wins. Always.
“This country is too stupid to last much longer as a superpower.”
It’s a sad thing to say, but you are right, if they keep up this PC nonsense. It’s one thing to have a PC workforce, it’s quite another to have a PC military.
“Have we all forgotten Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, Chosin Resevoir, Hue City, Mogadishu, Fallujah?”
Many of us haven’t...at least those of us who are old enough to have been taught these lessons in school, or who have family members/friends who have fought in the last 5/6 conflicts. But, I bet you won’t find many of those in today’s DC area, except for the Pentagon. Those in the Pentagon who are for this nonsense are the ones who trouble me.
BTW, I’ve wondered about why there have been so many female sailors who were pregnant when they hit home port. “There’s an app for that”...i.e. birth control. I understand close quarters and “tensions”, but you’d think they would use birth control if they really wanted to make the Navy a career.
“So, did the nature of combat change or was it politics ?”
I don’t know...
However, I do know that my husband is 6’2”, has a long neck, and flew close air support in Viet Nam. ;o)
Pregnancy is a way to get out of sea duty. And out of the barracks ashore, and into “family” housing.
The USSR spent 75 years with all of the means available to a totalitarian state to try to “train out” normal human economic reflexes. It didn’t work and the USSR collapsed.
I would posit that it would be much harder to “train out” normal human sexual reflexes. Especially without the 100% control of a totalitarian state pushing the agenda. It won’t work and it will lead to societal collapse at the extreme, and military failure and defeat at the least if we are involved in a REAL war again. (Defined as Iwo Jima, Normandy, etc.)
See 107.
We will pay the price when we are forced to fight a REAL war again.
Not these brushfire skirmishes against half-armed peasants, where we own the sky.
“Pregnancy is a way to get out of sea duty. And out of the barracks ashore, and into “family” housing.”
That’s what I was thinking. Thank you for confirming it.
So...when the defense budget is cut, I don’t think this is one area that will be cut. Do you?
Beats me.
At the risk of being repetitious:
You know, they could throw the women killed in combat under the bus, like they did the quite likely homosexual ambassador named Chris Stevens.
You know, they could throw the women killed in combat under the bus, like they did the quite likely homosexual ambassador named Chris Stevens.
You know, they could throw the women killed in combat under the bus, like they did the quite likely homosexual ambassador named Chris Stevens.
Well, I think you are talking about Israel, who did have women in frontline combat until it came to figure that the Arab men warriors were raised in morale realizing they could kill an all the more unholy enemy, and also kill the more valuable factor in their enemy’s capacity to breed. Not only that, if you are the enemy, you will fight for your life, even if the attacker or the sniper is a woman, you simply won’t care. Fourth, the male soldiers lost their reasoning and tactical effectiveness because the Arabs did exactly as you suggested: demoralized the military and general combat by torturing in gruesome depraved ways and recording it. Nowadays, women do serve in the IDF in support positions such as security, vehicle or aircraft piloting or fixed sniper, where they can be supplied and backed up with support from others generally at all times. Going into the enemy territory is a vastly different matter.
I agree with the poster who said, use women in combat if that involves defending your own homeland from and enemy, and under the condition that you are incredibly depleted of able-bodied men to fight. Because it’s really a last leg in fighting a war, not a first. But honestly, the military coming to this seems like a consequence of invading other countries as opposed to fighting to really defend against our own, as well as the fact that we don’t seem to really be focused on winning, either.
No way.
I am certainly glad as a man that I have enough common sense in my head to respect a woman for her differences, and recognize that there’s even vulnerability for myself that is asymmetrical due to those differences.
Women are the limiting factor in population growth, men are not. A smaller load of female deaths would be more devastating to a population then an equivalent number of male deaths, I think I don’t have to explain why...
Regarding combat duty, I wouldn’t be fine unless everyone, man, woman, or whatever else had a universal standard to reach up to, to show that you are up to what it takes to handle real combat situations. Would that be an incredibly small fraction of women? Yes, it would, but I would rather have that than the current PT standards for women entering full, frontline combat.
Then there’s the issue that if it’s a few extremely elite few out of the woman population, does that really justify adding just a few who would qualify under fair testing? I honestly don’t think so.
If anything, however, I doubt my own wife will be volunteering anytime soon. And I guess I will have to teach any daughters and sons I have growing up potentially some pretty discouraging truths about serving in the military.
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