Posted on 12/07/2012 3:29:54 PM PST by neverdem
Recently The Post reported that four women serving in the Army, two with Purple Hearts, had filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the military’s combat exclusion policy. “Combat exclusion” is code for being kept from serving in the close-combat arms of the Army, Marines and special forces. These units are made up of soldiers whose purpose is to kill the enemy directly. They also do virtually all of the military’s dying: Since the end of World War II, four out of five combat deaths suffered by men and women serving in the U.S. military have been in the infantry, which includes more than 6 percent of the active-duty military.
--snip--
I’ve been studying the band of brothers effect for almost 40 years and have written extensively on the subject. We know that time together allows effective pairings — or “battle buddies,” to use the common Army term. We know that four solid buddy pairings led by a sergeant compose a nine-man, battle-ready squad. The Marine squad is slightly larger. We know from watching Ranger and special forces training that buddy groups form often spontaneously. But the human formula that ensures successful buddy pairings is still a mystery, and that’s the key stumbling block in the debate. Veteran SEALs, special forces, Rangers, tankers and line infantrymen will swear that the deliberate, premeditated and brutal act of intimate killing is a male-only occupation. But no one can prove it with data from empirical tests because no such data exist from the United States. They just know intuitively from battlefield experience that it’s true.
To be sure, women soldiers may be fit, they may be skilled and they may be able to “hang.” Many have proved with their lives that they are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. But our senior ground-force leaders,...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Dropping your pants to relieve yourselves will be problematic in the field, especially in a combat zone. If you're not assigned to a mechanized or motorized unit, grunts are routinely expected to haul plus or minus 100 pound loads across all kinds of terrain.
It's not the same, but I don't recall ever seeing any female furniture movers.
Oh heck, give them steroids and lots of raw meat they
can do it, course they won’t be women as we know them.
No, women will never be able to “hang”. Ever. Unless they are genetically modified. I have never found a women who could throw 120 lbs on their bak and go road march and keep up; a lot of men can’t! That is just 1 small reason why it’s stupid to even think they could serve in the infantry or combat arms.
The time for women to be in the infantry will be when they turn into men (and I don’t mean Janet Napolitano).
The way things are going, however, the only people being sent into battle will be robots.
Despite 225 years of witnessing the horror of wars fought by male American soldiers, there are still a number of idiots – mostly feminists who themselves will never have to face an armed enemy soldier – pushing lawmakers to drop a ban against allowing women in combat.
It’s time to debunk the myth, once and for all, that Israel’s experience with allowing women in combat was successful and, therefore, should be duplicated by the Pentagon. It wasn’t successful. It was a disaster by Israel’s own admission.
“History shows that the presence of women has had a devastating impact on the effectiveness of men in battle,” wrote John Luddy in July 27, 1994, for the Heritage Foundation backgrounder.
“For example, it is a common misperception that Israel allows women in combat units. 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. The study revealed that men tried to protect and assist women rather than continue their attack. As a result, they not only put their own lives in greater danger, but also jeopardized the survival of the entire unit. The study further revealed that unit morale was damaged when men saw women killed and maimed on the battlefield,” Luddy said.
Writes Edward Norton, a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces: “Women have always played an important role in the Israeli military, but they rarely see combat; if they do, it is usually by accident. No one in Israel, including feminists, has any objection to this situation. The fact that the Persian Gulf War has produced calls to allow women on the front lines proves only how atypical that war was and how little Americans really understand combat.”
“Few serious armies use women in combat roles. Israel, which drafts most of its young women and uses them in all kinds of military work, has learned from experience to take them out of combat zones. Tests show that few women have the upper-body strength required for combat tasks. Keeping combat forces all male would not be discriminatory, as were earlier racial segregation schemes in the military, because men and women are different both physically and psychologically,” said the Feb. 5, 1990, National Review.
Furthermore, Israeli historian Martin Van Creveld has written extensively about the failure of the IDF to successfully integrate and use women in combat.
Finally, even Israeli citizens don’t relish the thought of allowing their women into combat roles. In 1998, a survey conducted by the Jerusalem Post newspaper found that 56 percent of Israelis don’t want women in combat.
There are now and always will be idiots who say the Pentagon should put women in any combat unit they wish to serve. Most of these people will speak with the ignorance of never having had to experience the horror of combat, as well as the luxury of never having to worry about engaging in armed conflict themselves.
But to use the “Israeli experience” as an allegedly successful model for the U.S. to follow is not only absurd, it’s disingenuous. It is a lie propagated by radical feminists like ex-Democratic Rep. Patricia Schroeder who have falsely claimed that such a goal is merely an extension of “the will of the people.”
Perhaps if more lawmakers – and Americans in general – were exposed to military service, the idiots who seem to be dominating this debate wouldn’t have many sympathetic e
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2001/08/10269/#s5cacFgDyKVEQY80.99
Talking to young vets of Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m amazed at the loads these guys have to carry regularly - day in, day out.
Their armor is over 35 pound alone - before they pick up their weapons, munitions, etc.
By the time they’re up to a full combat load for a “light patrol,” they’re each humping 100 pounds - or more.
The guys in Afghanistan then have to hump this load up and down terrain at altitude.
Never mind the issues of taking a break. Just keeping up with the members of one’s squad or platoon is the central point here. Put 100 pounds of load on the average female... and they’re going to fall behind and cause the entire unit to have to slow down.
That tells me all *I* need to know about womens' suitability for combat.
Having served for 2.5 years in an Infantry unit in the US Army that deployed to Iraq for 15 months, for many reasons I am seriously against including females in these units.
Smarten up & stay home with your children.
“I don’t ever think it will ever be a time for women in the infantry.”
Yes, sir. The image of Molly Pitcher loading grapeshot in a cannon is romanticism. Combat is not romantic except in paintings on museum walls. It’s dirty, difficult and deadly. I do not want to see women in combat.
The one thing I take away from talking to veterans of infantry is that aside from what the movies like to portray combat as (sheer terror), the day in and day out life of an infantry grunt is just plain hard labor.
Haul this load from point A to point B... and then back again, because some officer thought that this was a productive use of time and effort. Haul this load of stuff up a hill... and back down again. Oh, and while humping stuff to and fro, dig trenches, foxholes, gun emplacements, fill and stack sandbags, repair heavy equipment... there’s nothing terribly romantic about it at all. It seems like a non-stop job of heavy labor, with brief periods of mechanized death and destruction, followed by yet more heavy labor.
Women add the extra dimension of sexual attraction, less physical endurance, usually less ferocity, and definitely a different emotional makeup. If you are serving in combat compensating for these differences will often be fatal.
The clowns who are pushing this agenda need to be immediately transferred to a rifle company and they will see the light of day very quickly.
Last week they had all the female NFL players interviewed at halftime of the Monday Night game.
To a woman, they declined the offer!
Thanks for the post & link.
THE DIFFERENCE IN HORMONES ALONE would disqualify women...Uh, duh...Can you say “Testosterone?”
We spend all this research on studying the ‘difference” in the sexes..and now we are to just ignore it? Not too long ago the so called femminists were complaining that drug trials and medical assessements and intervention research were mostly done on men and so the “differences’ for female physiology were not counted in. ..which was a good point about medicine for women. But suddenly it doesn’t make a difference in assessing for differences in combat?
I hear they make good snipers.
That might create enough chaos to allow the real combat troops to come in and finish the job.
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