Posted on 02/08/2013 9:37:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Martin Dempsey, the Army general who's now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a division commander when he got to Baghdad in 2003 and climbed into a Humvee for his first trip off base. "I asked the driver ... who he was (and) where he was from," the general remembers, "and I slapped the turret gunner around the leg and I said, 'Who are you?' And she leaned down and said, 'I'm Amanda.'
"And I said, 'Ah, OK.' So female turret gunner protecting division commander."
One of the things that makes a good commander is the speed with which he can adjust to changed conditions, and the general had just been introduced to another reality of the ever-new U.S. Army.
The general told that story the other day as he stood next to the country's secretary of defense to formally lift the Army's ban on women in combat units. No, not every woman -- or man -- may be fit for combat, but now every trooper has a chance to qualify for it. Which is as it should be -- at last.
Gen. Dempsey, it turns out, is a rich source of instructive stories. Not to mention comments that apply to more than their immediate subject. It was during this same news conference that he discussed the considerable problem of sexual harassment, not to mention outright abuse and rape, in the service. He traced it to treating women as less than equal. To quote from his remarks:
"When you have one part of the population that is designated as warriors and another part that's designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology that in some cases led to that environment. I have to believe the more we can treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally."
When you have one part of the population that serves in the military and another part that doesn't, a rift is likely to develop between those who have defended the country in uniform and those who have never had that privilege. And it is a privilege. As well as an education, not just an obligation. It's also a necessity in a democracy. For the divide between citizen and soldier may only grow greater as the years pass, and develop into mutual suspicion, even mutual contempt. And divided we fall.
Unlike generations of Americans, this one may be remarkably ignorant of both military life and the military virtues, not having been exposed to either. Which is why every citizen of a republic should serve in the military for at least a time. In order to understand that freedom does not come without obligation -- including a military obligation. And to realize anew that discipline, far from being the antithesis of freedom, is one of its requirements. They go together, like liberty and law.
The idea and ideal of the citizen-soldier has been at the core of democracy since the ancient Athenians invented it and entrusted the defense of their city-states to their hoplites, the first citizen-soldiers. Divide citizenship from military service and something essential to the preservation of democracy since the Greeks has been lost. Democracy and its defense will have been separated, and that is not a wholesome arrangement for either. To quote Thomas Jefferson, "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
A professional army is a great asset -- a necessity, as many a democracy has discovered when it neglected to train one. But a republic needs citizen-soldiers, too. Without them, democracy is divided at its very core: between those who defend it and those who are defended.
It is not a healthy division, for the result is a mutual ignorance that leads to mutual estrangement -- between those citizens who have known military service and those who haven't. It is a division no democracy can afford. For the military needs a connection with the citizenry, and the citizenry with its military. Both benefit, and the country benefits most of all.
Or as Gen. Dempsey noted: "When you have one part of the population that is designated as warriors and another part that is designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology...." And it is not a healthy psychology, for it divides rather than unites. And united we stand.
Fitness is only one small factor. :(
Spent 3 years in the military and never had this dedicated training. I doubt if most guys in the military had this training either. The real point is we don't want the fairer sex being involved in this type of activity. I know many combat veterans and not one has told me a story of his hand-to-hand fights or carrying a 200+ guy out of the firefight.
had stormed ashore at Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima, and newsreels showed them being blown apart
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Believe it was the landing at Pelileu that was held ‘secret’ till near the end or after the war before it was ‘officially’ acknowledged.
The casualty rate was enormous with the Marines losing almost 60% and the Army not faring much better...
The powers that be knew the American people would not have taken that news well.....
“Based on what this clown said most Air Force guys would feel like second class citizens as they are not “warriors”.”
Excellent point. Maybe his next step is to make all branches of service spend time in the Army infantry before moving on to their real assignments I mean, wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.
For good reason. The truth is they don't have the same ability as men do and this social experiment will lead to unnecessary defeat and death for us in the future.
I have the whole human history as an example while the idiot feminists, Obama, Panetta, and their parrot Dempsey are full of crap who have a hidden agenda.
Maybe you should read up on hand-to-hand combat when the Marines engaged the Vietnamese regulars at Khe Sanh, Vietnam or even recently in Fallujah, Iraq. I'd carry you away from danger. A 100 lb female is not going to do that.
He’s making up an excuse for when “Amanda” files discrimination charges for the general feeling her up.
Sorry but teaching my wife and daughter SHTF scenarios, I do not reach the same conclusions as you. Don't come around my household to learn the fallacy of your convictions.
I got separated from the Air Force 50 years ago. We are/ were all warriors. The minute that a recruit steps off that bus, he/she is unknowingly headed toward the sound of the gunfire. I knew guys who, once they finished basic, got assigned as the Wing Commander’s driver at an AFB in South Dakota, or a passenger agent at Travis, were still part of the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of arms. I knew guys from the Army, Navy and the Marine Corps who spent their entire enlistment in CONUS. That doesn’t make their service any less honorable.
Don't come around my household to learn the fallacy of your convictions
Never would think of it or would I care to.
“And I said, ‘Ah, OK.’ So female turret gunner protecting division commander.”
What the general should have concluded was that someone didn’t want him to survive! :-)
This notion of placing womanintocombat roles is just so easy to refute. Many of you may have heard of a little dustup called World War II. At the peak of United States involvement in that war there were 16 ½ million personnel in uniform, many of them women. We also had over 400,000 personnel killed in the line of duty, against the toughest battlefield enemies this country has ever had to face, ones that were capable of and often did inflict shattering BATTLEFIELD defeats upon our sea, land and air forces. Despite this no one saw any need to place women into combat roles that had the responsibility to directly close with, engage, and destroy the enemy..
Today with a much smaller and almost hand picked elite Armed Forces, and a population base that is more than twice as large as that during World War II, there is even less need for it now than then.
This entire idiocy is being propelled by the demand for selfish feminists to qualify for chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nothing more and nothing less than that.
This has absolutely nothing to do with enhancing the ability of the Armed Forces to fight, rather it will weaken it if for no other reason than the logistics strain that it will place on the Armed Forces for separate housing and the like. The evidence of the disparity in physical suitabilities for combat MOS’s as reinforced by study after study is simply overwhelming. The effort that will be necessary to obtain a relative few qualified women will not result in anything remotely resembling any accepted model of effeciency, but since that is NOT the object any way, why worry about that? This is merely another sop to the perverted Cultural Marxist notion of fairness and equality and another step on the road of “fundamental transformation” of the vital institutions of this nation.
The leftist force is strong in this one. The kenyan marxist whistles and Dempsey jumps. He is either an enemy of the Republic and or the communist administration has some dirt on him.
Top U.S. Military Officer Calls Pastor Over Film
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with Pastor Terry Jones by phone on Wednesday and asked him to withdraw his support for a film whose portrayal of the Prophet Mohammad has sparked violent protests - including one that ended with the death of America's envoy to Libya
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