Posted on 11/01/2001 5:18:39 PM PST by Pokey78
THE former president Bill Clinton's policies of allowing women soldiers into combat zones are being halted as part of a fundamental rethink by the Bush administration about the culture and purposes of the armed forces.
Opponents of boosting the role of women in the front line have been appointed to influential positions in the Pentagon and a move to open up a reconnaissance unit linked to special forces is likely to be reversed.
But the primary factor influencing the Pentagon is the need to fight a war against terrorism in response to September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks.
Peacetime considerations such as the desirability of gender balance and the avoidance of casualties have been subordinated to the more pressing concern of defending America against a deadly and determined foe.
The Defence Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (Dacowits) is already being marginalised at the Pentagon as senior planners seek to maximise the killing potential of the armed forces. "That's all changing," one Pentagon official told the magazine US News and World Report when asked about women going into combat zones. Another said front-line units "won't involve women".
Traditional fighting skills, rather than the values stressed by the US military's notorious Consideration of Others (Coo) programme, are back in vogue as America engages in probably its biggest conflict since the Second World War.
American women serve in front-line ships and as jet pilots but not in submarines or with combat ground units.
Anita Blair, the new deputy assistant secretary of the US Navy, is an opponent of allowing women to serve in submarines, a key Dacowits aim, and is an advocate of separating the sexes during training.
She is on record as saying: "Defence funding should first be spent on training, equipment, better pay - things that will improve the nation's defence and not just the job opportunities of a tiny number of women."
Sarah White, a former master sergeant in the US air force reserve, has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of the army for force management, manpower and resources.
An opponent of women in combat, she once described the move, introduced by Mr Clinton in 1993, as "a radical departure from where mainstream America believes that good men protect women and that women enjoy being protected by men".
She is against women flying combat aircraft.
"We have to remember that even if you are at a high altitude in an airplane at a distance from the enemy, if you crash, then you automatically become an infantry or special forces-type of person," she said.
"It is your mission then to survive, to escape and to evade, and you have to have all of the skills and the capabilities as the men throughout history have had. And clearly women don't have those as a rule."
Some Pentagon officials are fearful of the American public reaction if a female pilot were shot down over Afghanistan. The only female pilot publicised so far is "Mumbles", a British-educated 26-year-old with an F14 Tomcat squadron based on the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.
Fighting for your freedom is.
I would rather say that the Marine Corps has handled it the best.
They didnt change the way they operate.
Women still train separately and the line units remain all male combat billets.
The women who really want to fight for freedom do not need permission, the definition of special human right and the support from Equal Opportunity government. In Poland there were many such women for example in the Warsaw upprising when the Polish Home Army fought uneven battle against German army for 2 months of the 1944 summer. The same women would consider modern feminist crap as crap.
Well, but... women like that don't generally join the Army. Those who were steaming mad and lunging for the nearest red button (like someone in my life--ahem) are the ones who join. It's true that most women aren't cut out for it. But the few who are, I want them to be able to help out in some way. And shoot, I'd LOVE to see Bin Laden executed by Ann Coulter, in her shortest skirt, with lots of hair-tossing first. (-:
Reality.
Just so it's explained what an all male enemy can do to her if she is captured, that would include all forms of rape, mutilations, slavery and becoming pregnant with the enemies child.
There will be no special treatment beyond normal operations to recover her or bargain her back, as far as the military is concerned she is just another soldier. She must be able to meet all the requirements expected by males in the same job. No special rules or regulations will be put in place. She will eat, bathe and sleep where ever the soldier in the field does those things.
She must know that she may be called on to sneak up behind an enemy, grab him by the head pull out her knife and cut his throat, she will have to be able to shoot the enemy point blank without thought or hesitation, she will have blood and guts all over her when a mortar shell possibly kills the soldier next to her. She must be told that she can die.
She must also be told of the very important role women played on the homefront during past wars and that she may be more valuable at home than abroad. She must also be told that there are very important non-combat positions in the military for women which are just as important or even more important than a single soldier.
With these realizations and the many more horrors of war in mind, if she still thinks she wants to be a frontline soldier then more power to her.
It's also wrong to shoot a burst of of automatic fire into another person. Our infantrymen do that in cases where it is the least evil of all posssible options. That's what the military is about - not making thing fair, or making things nice. It's about making things dead.
If one woman of outstanding abilities was to be assigned to a fast attack submarine, that submarine's combat readiness would be diminished, because the indescribably complex synthesis of small unit cohesion would be irreparably damaged, and no amount of Civil-Rights whining or psycho-babble can alter that ugly fact.
Did you have any photos of a female gutting an Iraqi?
How'bout one carrying around an Iraqi republican Guard members head on her humvee?
Oh yeah ??? Well, it just so happens that I WANNA BE "barefoot 'n pregnant" !!! But all you wanna do is spoil all my fun . . . don'tcha, ChemBabe ???
Reality.
When I was getting out the Army I failed a PT test. I felt embarassed, ashamed. A couple of my female Army buddies were talking about how well they did on their PT tests. My failure outdid their excellent scores.
If the Army would be allowed to have normal training instead of the current watered down version. And Women were required to meet the same standards as the men. There wouldn't be any debate about women in combat, because so few women could make it.
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