The Defense Department has announced the opening of some 14,000 new “combat related” roles to women in the military, another incremental win for those seeking to erode the protections that have long kept women out of the most dangerous assignments.
Supporters believe the move, and the eventual removal of all barriers preventing women from combat, represents a great advance in “equal opportunity.” That belief is dubious, but more to the point, it is irrelevant. The purpose of the military is to fight and win wars. Personnel policies should be based, first and last, on combat effectiveness. If putting female soldiers on the front line had even a small adverse impact on combat effectiveness, it would outweigh whatever other, political or symbolic benefits might accrue.
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Conservatives — most recently Rick Santorum and Virginia governor Bob McDonnell — have been divided on this issue. We think there is sense in Santorum’s suggestion that, e.g., a soldier faced with the prospect of a female comrade’s death might be driven to act in ways contrary to the best interest of the mission. We also think that the instinct of men to protect women in danger is both natural and moral, and that there would be something perverse about seeking to train it out of our soldiers.
But we take issue with Governor McDonnell’s assertion that the reality of female soldiers’ having died in Iraq and Afghanistan counts as evidence of the propriety of dropping them into firefights in forward areas. There remains a gulf between combat support and combat per se, just as there is a gulf between the soldiers who fall in combat and the civilians who die as collateral damage.
But leaving such disputes aside, it is important to emphasize that, before the first woman could fire a single shot in an infantry unit, there would already be a host of practical challenges to overcome. The very Pentagon report announcing the policy shift acknowledges that a broader integration would mean forward barracks, and even whole “weapons systems,” would have to be retrofitted to provide privacy to each sex. Is this the most cost- and combat-effective way to spend defense dollars that are suddenly in short supply?
Perhaps more insidious is the inevitable injection of gender politics into military affairs that would come with full combat integration. The physical demands of a number of intense combat and special-operations roles are already barriers to entry for countless servicemen, and were in fact a part of the Pentagon’s original rationale for precluding women from them. But the influence of political correctness, which has already seeped into Pentagon culture from greater Washington, would only increase with the culturally charged entry of women into these intense roles. Current integration policies have demanded gender-normed scoring on physical tests owing to undeniable sex differences in physical abilities. But the ability to survive is not gender-normed.
Military women have served bravely and selflessly and done everything asked of them. The present direct-combat exemptions ensure that they won’t be told to serve in ways that deny them the most important equal opportunity of all: the opportunity to come home.
The overlooked variable in this equation is the social dynamic. I spend more time with my fellow soldiers than with anyone else in my life, and I'm married with children. Gender integrated units, most of the military, are constantly plagued with the issues that arise not only in the form of discrimination, perceived or actual, but also marital infidelity and distraction from mission. Are we all so professional that we can overcome this? Mostly, but not everyone and not for 9-12 months alone on a FOB and out in the country sides of Afghanistan. Gender integrated units deal with "drama", and that's not a hit on females, it's just the reality of gender integration in the military.
I believe the Marines did a study on women in combat after they found that while women might be able to carry the heavy equipment loads required, they were getting hairline fractures in their bones. Their bodies just weren't designed to carry the weight long-term. Pregnancies will definitely go up. Marital problems back home will increase. The Army will want to insert long-term birth control in the women to control the pregnancies (hey, the President just mandated I have to pay for birth control, how is that a stretch?). This policy is going to be a nightmare.
The Libs use the excuse that women are getting killed anyway in their "support" roles so we might as well move them forward. I would say, if women are being killed and they aren't supposed to be in combat situations, maybe it is time to change the policy and move them back!
Bottom line, a bunch of feminist chicken hawks want to sacrifice our daughters on their altar of feminism. Maybe they should join up or shut up!
Last I checked, the military is having a hard time even getting recruits that aren't too fat to fight. Opening it up to women probably has more to do with getting able bodied soldiers than any gender politics. How can you win anything if you are a shirt jog from a coronary?
I hadn't heard this. Do you have any support for it?
And how would adding more unqualified applicants help the recruitment rate?
The authors are right on this one. It's either a meaningless gesture because the percentage of women who qualify for most roles they can't already attain will be so low it will be insignificant.
What is far more likely is that they will make the tests easier in order to impress their politically correct masters and our military effectiveness will suffer at a time when we're facing increasing challenges on a decreasing budget.
Pretty soon they're gonna outlaw male weightlifting in this country because it's a form of misogynistic chauvinism. The very fact of working out means you hate women (pretty much everything does nowadays)!
I don't think the military is currently having trouble making recruitment or re-enlistment goals.
However, the concern about the pool of eligible candidates for military service is real.
Some cannot make weight standards. External Link
Others are not in physical conditioning for the demands of basic training.
The rise of medication for ADD/ADHD and related diagnoses further limits the pool. I believe that candidates cannot have been on medication for the 12 months before joining.
That is before you screen for ASVAB scores, criminal record, and drug and alcohol abuse.
Having said all of that, in this economy, especially with predicted cutbacks, the military can afford to be very choosy.
This doesn't surprise me. One of my sons is in the military. He was recently transferred to a base where most of the jobs are desk jobs. He told me that a bunch of the people he works with are having difficulty keeping up with fitness regulations. I guess it's like any sector of the work force. If you have to sit at a desk all day reviewing schematics you're more likely to gain weight.
You overlook one important fact: women aren't able bodied.
There is a reason that there are separate basketball, tennis, lacrosse, soccer and even golf competitions for women, and no women's football at all. Women are not as big; they are not a strong; they can't hit as hard; they can't take as hard a hit; they can't run as fast or as far; they can't carry as much weight; they can' t throw things as far.
I am 61. I can do twice the number of pushups required for women solders between 17 and 21.
Before I'm even willing to begin discussing women in combat, they must be made subject to the wartime draft under Selective Service. Equal goodies/opportunities come after equal responsibility/obligation, and not before.
What you're advocating is essentially the ERA, or 'Equal Rights Amendment' that was happily defeated decades ago, thanks to the great Phyllis Schlaffly. Men and Women cannot be equally subjected to the draft or selective service, as there are these things uber feminists rarely consider known as children, who need parents and who generally find being orphaned disagreeable. And also because women are not integrated into combat for good reason. Physical standards should not be remotely different for women, as this endangers everyone. But the Left doesn't care about common sense or nature - only their destructive ideology. The feminist Left simply does not accept gender distinctions, i.e., that men and women are opposite and complimentary halves of humanity. Their campaign in the militant equality movement has brought us rampant illegitimacy, welfare dependance and fatherless homes, not to mention the tens of millions of exterminated unborn. It has caused an appalling culture of misandry and the virtual annihilation of female virtue, courtship, and overall purpose for young males who are dismissed by baby mamas who prefer the State to be their provider. All these social ills have risen by 300% since 1970. Yet they will zealously maintain that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. Tell that to all the fatherless children in housing projects across the country.
I realize this is an utterly Neanderthal point of view, so chauvinistic it should be punished severely, but it is my belief that no civilized society should deliberately place women in combat, simply because women don't belong in that role. It is an uncivilized act for a society to subject women to combat.
Doubtless the feminist political-correctness element is fundamental on the question of females at the tip of the spear. OTOH, there is a history of Israel using women in combat units at some time in its history. The hairline fracture thing is the closest I can come to a real physical argument against such deployments. Still, I would like to see some specificity re: the phrase "combat related" before I called foul here. It's possible that the editorial writer is not in possession of sufficient facts to make this call.
The "success" of the current policies regarding the assignment of women rest on radically changed physical standards and - in the case of the Navy and Air Force in particular - the absence of any actual combat, in particular anything resembling combat against a competitive enemy. Steaming around the Arabian Sea for 6 months on a ship that fires the occassional cruise missile into Afghanistan might be many things, but it is not combat. Ditto flying well above any possible weapons range, against countries that lack air forces or air defense systems, and dropping the occasional GPS-guided weapons. Even the more limited ground combat circumstances have revealed significant problems, and being in a vehicle convoy that is exposed to hostile fire or attacked by IEDs is not Iwo Jima, not even Fallujah. What is appalling is that many officers (male and female) really think that these things do constitute combat. Maybe that's why we consistently fail to win: we can't think realistically about war in any context.
Pregnancy and fraternization remain major problems. When the commanding general in Afghanistan attempted to deal with the problems that resulted from pregnancy, he was "counselled" into silence. Double standards are huge: women officers were retained in command despite flaws that would have resulted in men being removed. The Navy had a record number of commanders relieved last year, the vast majority for sex-related infractions.
The bottom line is that our current forces are less combat effective, less battle-minded, and less martial than would be an otherwise identical but all male force. None of the promises made by advocates of women in the military have been kept, and judged against the standards they themselves set (equal physical performance, no modifications of standards to accommodate women, control of sexuality, fraternization and pregnancy), this has been a major policy failure.
Men lust after women. Women lust after men. Having mixed sex combat units will introduce a hopelessly difficult dynamic into what needs to be a cold, effective unit. There will be jealousy, there will be soldiers killed by their comrades over lust, there will be soldiers lost because a collegue was protecting his lady. To introduce women into combat units is just the stupidest, most anti-human nature move imaginable. It will further weaken the US military.
Which, of course, is why BHO will do it.
Hopefully the next Republican president (please Lord, may he be sworn in in 2013!) will countermand this.
No, Jason, this is not the same argument made to justify veils and burkas. Veils and burkas are not intended to keep platoons of soldiers from being distracted by lust. They are used to keep women hidden away from the normal commerce of civilized life, which is a bit of a different thing; and to maintain ownership of the woman by the man, which is a bit more of a different thing.
