The Pentagon has announced a new policy regarding the assignment of women in combat that does the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Instead of putting the needs of the military first, the Pentagon is taking incremental steps to implement the deeply flawed recommendations of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission.
The MLDC, composed largely of equal-opportunity experts, has recommended policy changes that would treat the military like just another civilian “equal opportunity” employer. To advance “diversity metrics” for female personnel, the commission has recommended policies that weaken or eliminate women’s exemptions from assignments in or near direct-ground-combat battalions. These include “tip of the spear” Army and Marine infantry battalions and Special Operations Forces.
Americans are proud of women in the military, and there have been some changes in their roles since 9/11 that deserve recognition. For example, female engagement teams (FETs) and cultural-support troops interact with civilian women and children in war zones in ways that are difficult for male personnel. It is dangerous duty “in harm’s way,” but still not the same as direct ground combat, which involves deliberate offensive action against enemy forces under fire. Direct-ground-combat missions, with physical demands beyond the capability of almost all women, have not changed.
If a soldier is wounded in battle — what we saw in Baghdad in 2003 or Fallujah in November 2004 — a collocated support soldier may be the only person in a position to evacuate the wounded soldier on his own back. In this environment, women do not have an equal opportunity to survive, or to help fellow soldiers survive. Lives should not be put at needless risk just to satisfy “diversity metrics” or the career ambitions of a few.
It is not realistic to expect that women will be held to the same physical standards as men. Attempts to establish such standards always are attacked by feminists as “unfair.” The result is lowered, gender-normed standards that mandate inequality in the name of “equality.”
By formally eliminating rules affecting units collocated with infantry battalions, the Defense Department is imposing needless complications and burdens on direct-ground-combat units. The Pentagon also is inviting another ACLU lawsuit challenging young women’s exemption from Selective Service registration, which the courts have upheld as constitutional because women are not assigned to direct ground combat.
For this reason, the incremental policy changes announced today will have harmful consequences not only for our brave women and men in the military, but for unsuspecting civilian women as well.
— Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, served as a member of the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces.
"The Pentagon also is inviting another ACLU lawsuit challenging young women’s exemption from Selective Service registration, which the courts have upheld as constitutional because women are not assigned to direct ground combat."
Why is this problematic? Notwithstanding your other objections, this seems to be a sensible outcome. Our society has moved past the antiquated notion that men bear the duty of protecting our country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRE: "Our society has moved past the antiquated notion that men bear the duty of protecting our country."
Not all of our society, just the damaged portions of it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll guess two things about Spades:
(1) He never served.
(2) He has no daughters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe will not have full equality until the number of women who have died in combat is equal to the number of men who have died in combat .... since 1776.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse.
I demand full equality!!!!!
Another disgraceful decision by the U.S. military. I weep for its sad state and am glad that my service was 20+ years ago.
O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAre all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.
"It is not realistic to expect that women will be held to the same physical standards as men. Attempts to establish such standards always are attacked by feminists as “unfair.”
Actually it's not at all "feminists" who attack these standards. in fact, women undergo their own standards just as men of various ages do already.
"While physical training standards have been adopted to make them more equal between the sexes, opponents claim that women do not possess the physical strength to serve with men in combat roles"
This is hardly a "feminist" claim. Who would believe a "feminist" would claim women don't have the same physical strength? In fact, the opposite is true -
"While physical training standards may have been unequal in the past, it is not a fact any longer. Physical training standards that focus on equality of the sexes prove that women can compete in training and perform combat roles as effectively as men."
External Link
This whole post is based on out-dated and biased assumptions. The real question is why do conservatives prefer women not be given the same jobs, jobs they can obviously perform, as men?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRE: the comment:
"The real question is why do conservatives prefer women not be given the same jobs, jobs they can obviously perform, as men?"
The quick answer is America still wants its military to win wars, not serve as a petri dish for lunatic liberal social experiments.
I don't know whether to fall out of my chair laughing or just hang my head and cry at this brain dead liberal idea that women are the equal of men in physical combat.
Women don't have the same physical strength and stamina as men. That is a proven, observed fact that is obvious to everyone except the idiots on the Military Leadership Diversity Commission and their enablers. Soldiers serving in direct combat have to march for long miles carrying heavy equipment and women can't do that as well as men. Period. On occasion soldiers have to fight the enemy in hand to hand combat. A woman can't defeat a man in hand to hand to hand combat except in the fantasy alternate universe inhabited by liberals. Women don't have the same upper body strength and therefore can't throw a grenade as far. The list of things that a woman can't do in combat as well as a man is very long.
Here's a thought experiment that even brain dead liberals, feminists and diversity enforcers might be able to understand. Pretend that a platoon of combat soldiers composed of all men from Country A and another platoon of combat soldiers from Country B composed of all women come to grips in direct combat. Does anybody really think that the women from Country B are going to win the battle.
Lewis Forro
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVirginia Beach, VA
If Country A's platoon is a bunch of whiny, pampered, liberals who are always asking "why should *I* have to do it? That's not fair!" and Country B's platoon is comprised of Alaskans and other bitter clingers, then you betcha Country B's gonna win! ;)
Oh, wait, you said Country A's platoon was all men........
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyou betcha ;)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, Hugh, physical equality standards prove that some women can compete equally with the average man, and a very few can compete equally with an above-average man, but no top-tier woman (barring enhancement) can compete with a top-tier man in combat-related measures.
As to why conservatives (specifically social conservatives) prefer women not be given these jobs, partly:
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1) Men and women are different - conservatives admit this, but also don't believe it makes them "unequal"
2) Women should not be in combat because they should be the better natures of our civilization
3) Men should feel a need to guard and defend the women in our society because they are the lifeline of it - this is a bad thing in combat
Hey that is why we have birth control
Yugoslavs gave up on women in combat roles post WWII. It seems that in integrated combat units (Partisans) 25 percent of the female soldiers were pregnant at any given time. Plays heck with unit readiness. Also hard to set up maternity wards out in the boonies.
I also saw some articles that reported that on our coed carriers about a hundred swabbies are pregnant at the end of the cruise. Got to love breeding your own future crews.
On the other hand, I have to say that spending the military budget to fund daycare for unwed mothers seems illogical. Presumably the Hyde Amendment still applies insofar as the other solution?
But what the hey, adding 10-20 percent to the defense budget to allow for all the maternity related complications is a small price to pay so that a woman can get that coveted combat experience that will earn a top promotion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I also saw some articles that reported that on our coed carriers about a hundred swabbies are pregnant at the end of the cruise."
Actually, that ignores the number of pregnancies that turn up just as the ship is getting ready to deploy - preventing the pregnant sailor from the necessity of going to sea.
(captcha? "hit the sack"!)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse". . . just as men of various ages do already."
I won't get into the debate between hughman and ditkofan, but this is the first thing I thought of. What rationale does the US military use to maintain age-graded fitness standards?
That's not a hostile question or one I think trumps the discussion. I really want to hear from someone who might know the answer.
Police forces have some reason to adjust their physical requirements for women, in the belief that a female cop, though weaker, might have better skills at calming people, etc. Does any similar rationale exist in the military?
We don't try to calm the enemy, do we?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"What rationale does the US military use to maintain age-graded fitness standards?"
Knowledge accommodation, is the short answer.
Yes, as men age they become less physically capable - although when I retired 25-years after first entering service, my PFT run time was only 1:36 higher than the first time I ran my PFT, and I know plenty of other Marines who did the same or close to it.
But, clearly some men do deteriorate over time to such a degree that makes it difficult to meet the same standards that are set for a 20-year kid. However, that 45-year old GySgt, 1stSgt. or Lt. Col have personal knowledge that makes their institutional value far outweigh their physical shortcomings. Thus, the tradeoff - for the institution - is well worth with.
A 20-year old female doesn't have ANY institutional knowledge that makes accommodating her physical limitations worth it, institutionally. In fact, it's just the opposite: She has inherit physical limitations as well as other biological infirmities (from a military standpoint) that make her worth much less than the cost of accommodating her - and that's true for a large part of her career.
I'm not saying women in service haven't been of value - they have, clearly. Without them, we probably wouldn't have enough mission-critical jobs filled given the fact that we operate in an age of an all-volunteer Service. But, placing them in ground combat units would do NOTHING to help offset the trouble they'd cause.
However - to an earlier point the original poster made - I don't have any problem with making women register for Selected Service. That should have happened the day the 19th Amendment was enacted. There are PLENTY of jobs in the military - logistics, transportation, medical, supply, legal, etc, etc, that would lend themselves perfectly towards women. I don't see any practical or moral reasons why women shouldn't have to stand for the draft as any man has to.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseScott, the other advantage the 45yo has is that he (or she) has also usually been promoted to a position that requires less physical capability. The staff at division or group has less need to be quite as rock-chewing fit as the platoon soldier he commands.
As far as the draft - we don't generally draft cooks and drivers. When we reach the need for a draft, we draft to fill those positions which will most commonly become vacant - the line grunt. This makes it hard to square with the idea of some draftees only being available for certain, non-combat, jobs. I don't disagree on the "fairness" issue, but it just doesn't balance out right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTry looking at the statistics of those women who attempt the physical feats required by ground combat. Many, including my daughter, have seriously and permanently injured themselves trying to carry 150 lb. soldiers. Other jobs in the military, requiring different skills, are fair game, and are quite as necessary to any war effort. It is plain silly and stupidly criminal not to judge these things with integrity and sense; it takes moral courage not to pander to the selfish demands of idealogues who put private agendas above the well-being of our troops and the country we serve.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the military has been watching too much Xena: Warrior Princess.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMay I defer to two eminent Brits:
“ 'Female soldier’ ought to be an oxymoron. The difficulty arises when prosperity and easy living detaches a society from the realities of life in its armed forces.” – BRUCE ANDERSON
(of the UK Spectator and Daily Mail)
“Armies don’t really need homosexuals, or women, or any particular minority, and to turn them into playgrounds for social justice can only ruin them.” – KENNETH MINOGUE
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse(Actually, an eminent Australian, although he is at the London School of Economics.)
A country that sends women into combat is a country not worth fighting for.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh, but I think that women should be sent into combat. Real combat. Foxholes, trenches, bayonet charges, tactical nuclear hand grenades, or whatever the military is doing these days.
You see, women are historically under-represented in combat causalties, and as we all know, when it comes to "diversity" it's historical under-representation that counts, as well as disparate impact.
In fact, I propose an affirmative action program to correct the historical under-represenaion, the same way that colleges corrected the historical under-repesentation of women professors starting in the 1970s: Hire them in droves, regardless of merit, and if necessary create useless departments for them to fill.
Recall that the USA had a useless war back in the Vietnam era. Then, young men were being drafted and sent to die for no good reason, even as the young women of the same generation would go ahead to get gender preferences in education and hiring. Women of that era called the system "unfair."
I say, let us equalize Selective Service, and require women to enroll. Then, start a useless war somewhere (the USA is good at this), and ship the women off to fight and die, in large quantity. There's that historical under-representation to correct.
I am not joking. If the reason the military sends men into combat is actually due to relative levels of physical stature, then the proper response would be to set a stature requirement. Anyone who makes it, male or female, is sent to the front line. Anyone who doesn't, male or female, gets to stay home. When you come right down to it, that's how bus drivers are chosen, isn't it?
Or, are you trying to tell me that all men are more vicious than all women? Not so. I am sure that I do not need to argue this point.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse