Posted on 09/20/2015 1:06:09 PM PDT by jazusamo
A battle is brewing in Washington over the military's push to open all combat units to women.
The Marine Corps is reportedly poised to ask that some positions remain available only to men, following a nine-month study that found units with all genders did not perform as well in combat.
The issue is stirring a passionate debate in the military community, pitting the Marine Corps against its own service secretary and creating a bitter divide on the House Armed Services Committee.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who is the service secretary for the Marine Corps, blasted the study of the Marine units as biased and said he plans to open all jobs to women.
Backed by members of Congress, Marines quickly fired back, with some who participated in the study telling the Washington Post that Mabus threw them "under the bus."
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a former Marine and member of the House Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter calling for Mabus’ resignation.
Hunter's chief of staff, Joe Kasper, said the congressman thinks the decision of women in combat roles should be up to the Marines, not Mabus.
“You don’t go and take a giant crap on the men and women in the Marine Corps and then expect them to continue giving you respect and admiration,” Kasper said.
A spokesman for Mabus said he was aware of the letter from Duncan and declined to comment.
Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), another member of the House Armed Services Committee, backed up Hunter in a letter sent Friday that asked the Pentagon to release the full study on the Marine units.
"I am concerned the Department of Defense is withholding information regarding the findings of this report," Kline wrote in the letter, which obtained by The Hill.
"As a 25-year Marine Corps Veteran, I am offended by the comments made by a senior leader in the Department of Defense," he said. "They were inappropriate given the hard work and dedication of the men and women that volunteered for this important study."
Meanwhile, female lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee are calling for greater scrutiny of the Marine Corps's study, questioning whether it was designed to “undermine” then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s 2012 directive integrating women into all combat positions.
"Secretary Mabus’s concern that the Marine Corps study was designed with a predisposed notion that women undermine combat effectiveness is of grave concern to all of us," Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said in a written statement Friday.
"We must know whether this is the case, because so many questions have been raised about the study’s scope and methodology. This isn’t information that would justify barring women from serving in any combat position — indeed we know from our allies’ experiences that all positions should be open to anyone who qualifies," she added.
Lawmakers are pressing the Marine Corps for more information about the study.
Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the panel's military personnel subcommittee, said she has requested and will soon receive a briefing from the Marine Corps on the findings.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said she has had "a number of briefings" with the Marine Corps, and has expressed to the service the same concerns as Mabus.
"I am disappointed that this report is essentially being used as a way to exclude women," she said in a statement to The Hill.
"We are not asking for standards to be lowered, all we are asking is for women to have the opportunity to pursue whichever roles in the military that they wish to pursue."
"Opening up all roles to women will ultimately strengthen the military and our nation, and this is something the U.S. Marine Corps needs to understand."
A summary of the report released last week stated that all-male Marine squads were faster in each tactical movement than integrated squads. The all-male rifle groups also scored better on accuracy.
In addition, the summary said the female Marines had more injuries, such as stress fractures, than the men.
The Marine Corps has been exploring whether to open the infantry and all other combat jobs and units to women, as the Pentagon moves to implement Panetta’s order by 2016 — a presidential election year where defense and national security issues will be at the forefront.
The Marine Corps has allowed women to volunteer for its Infantry Officer Course, but none passed. Enlisted female Marines had better results.
The Marine Corps also relieved a female commander of duty for what she said was pushing female recruits to perform better. Marine officials say the commander’s reassignment was due to a clash between her and her supervisors, as well as complaints from females in her unit.
Meanwhile, the Army has opened up the Ranger School, its elite leadership course for soldiers, to women after two completed it.
The four services are due to submit any requests for exceptions by the end of September to Carter, who will review those requests and make final decisions by January.
In a briefing Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters that while the recommendations may go through the service secretaries, Carter “will hear input from as many people as possible.”
This all goes away when the female body bags start piling up in large numbers
Ms sancho can get right up in front and show them how!
The gays and feminists are whatthis current govt is making policy for.
Let them now be drafted to fight for the bennies they’ve been handed. I prefer to see the current fedgov destroyed so that it can be rebuilt to a small constitutional fedgov.
The U.S. Marine Corps need to openly defy Mabus completely .
Just say NO !
It’s time for the push back against these cretins to begin in earnest . What can they do ? Let’s just see
It’s a shame, because they’re only pushing this crud so that sodomites and females have a chance to qualify for the JCOS, so they get the rewards of “equality”, but will get out of the most important responsibility which were the flip side of those rewards-risking their lives in combat. I call that completely unfair and if I were a young man in the military, seeing all these females, queers and trannies passing me by in promotions but knowing that if the worst happens ot will most likely be my azz getting shot at while they get their azzes covered literally and politically, I’d be extremely bitter, to say the least. I know the military teaches (used to teach) that “life is not fair”, but this isn’t the unfairness of life circumstances, this is systematic unfairness against the very people (young males) who will in the end have to pay the biggest price (while some bimbo or tranny, when it’s all over, gets a statue as the symbol of the “unknown soldier” or today’s equivalent).
Well, when whites are all genocided, at least I can look down from Heaven and laugh at all the non-whites who got their prayers answered for the demise of the white race, as they kowtow to their new Chinese overlords who never heard of racial guilt (already getting a taste of that in Africa with their new Chinses overlords).
“You don’t go and take a giant crap on the men and women in the Marine Corps and then expect them to continue giving you respect and admiration,”
I like that kinda talk.
Are you listening, Obunghole?
Navy guy I knew told me the same thing. Women who did not want to go back out to sea got themselves pregnant and got a nice cozy desk job on base for the rest of their career.
Also told me how there is much more STD’s now .
I think every woman and every man (legislators included) that want women integrated into combat roles should be put into a combat unit and cycled into the front lines or combat theaters - for one year. In that way, they will find all the facts that they need to make informed and responsible decisions.
Hopefully, not too many would succomb to their wounds. The remainder could then be put into the VA for another fact finding mission.
Democrat congressional females want this. They desperately want a 4-star Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the only way to get there is through females in combat units, since only combat arms commanders can rise to 4 stars.
“Note though that women already do have some of the dangerous posts in the military, especially helicopter pilots and crew.”
I haven’t been keeping track although I think I’d have heard about it; but have any female pilots yet been captured or even had to punch out due to battle damage?
I agree. The draft is dead. The mass resistance to it would be something to behold.
You’re assuming that white males won’t catch on. I suspect a lot of white males will figure out its a stacked deck and figure out a way to minimize their personal risk. Mostly by not joining in the first place.
As far as I can see there have been several dozen female helicopter crew KIA since 2000.
A large proportion of the 144 or so women killed or died in combat theaters, Afghanistan and Iraq.
But most casualties seem to have been in support units attacked with IEDs or car bombs.
There is a link for a list of women KIA but I can’t stick a link here using my Android.
...units with all genders....
***
Yeah, there are no longer just 2 sexes, huh?
I concur; this isn’t worth defending. It would be hard to justify in the eyes of God.
Whites won’t be genocided; they’ll contracept themselves into extinction. The preferred minorities here don’t want whites destroyed; they want them forced to pay for everything with no input as to how the freebies are distributed/used. Cities here in NJ are desperately trying to lure whites back to re-colonize them (and feed their unassimilated, unemployable populations) - but nobody’s buying it.
Nothing meaner than a lesbo on steroids.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez is a ditz for saying women in frontline combat will stengthen our military and nation.
...........
The same way homosexuality is an “honor and strength.” The CiC is “taking a big crap on the Armed Forces because he doesn’t respect them.
That is the problem for the leftist anarchists; they can’t cheer dissent when Bush II is in office then expect the rabble to toe the line when they seize power themselves. When the military revolted in Spain in 1936, the leftist government feared arming the anarchist mobs because they understood that even if they won the war, they could never govern those people again. In fact, it fell apart shortly afterwards, when in 1937 the socialist government killed many of the anarchists in their own “civil war within a civil war”. The war dragged on for two more years, with the government increasingly contained in a smaller and smaller area; because they had exposed themselves as iron-fisted totalitarians themselves, they could no longer rally people to their cause.
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