Women in Combat?

Over at Big Peace.com Jim Hanson has what might be one of the opening salvos on allowing women to serve in front line combat units. In his story he links to an article at Stripes.com titled ‘Commission to recommend allowing women in combat units’ which mentions that a “military advisory panel appears poised to recommend allowing female troops to serve in combat units without any restrictions...”

Two years ago Congress established The Military Leadership Diversity Commission to look into the subject of allowing women to serve in front line combat units. Based on the name of the commission and who established it (Congress) you could already guess what direction the decision was going to be. Here is the list of names of those on the commission. When looking these over, please remember that the military is comprised of 17% female. This commission was stacked in the agenda setter’s favor.

As a retired vet, there is no way that I could support allowing women in a forward combat unit. Most of the women I served with over my 27 years did so admirably and will continue to do so. But adding direct combat to the list of activities they have a part in is a no-go. As you readily point out, most in a forward combat unit are your aggressive type-A personalities and adding females to this mix is only asking for trouble on two fronts. While engaged in actual combat, their hard-wired desire to protect those that are weaker (yes, the liberal male is included here, with reluctance) will only distract the warrior from full combat effectiveness. While back at the forward base, this type-A personality will spend time trying to attract the females, which could either hamper preparedness or create conflict between fellow warriors vying for her attention. The feminist reading this will more than likely say “get over yourself”, but is this social experiment really worth the lives of both the female assigned to the combat unit and the warrior? Thousands of years of protect the women of our world will not be change just because Diane Finstein (sp?) wants to score points with her female and liberal voters.

As you might guess, allowing females in direct combat units is something that I cannot, nor will I ever support. Call me a Neanderthal if you must, tell me that my knuckles drag on the ground, I really don’t really care what you call me. There are certain things that just shouldn't happen and one of those things is deliberately placing the women of American in harms way. For the same reasons why I always checked over my sisters and my daughter boyfriends. I don’t want them harmed, whether it be by some jackwagon teenager looking for one thing from my daughter or her getting shot by a bad guy.

Many will point to the recently repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and how service members will supposedly respond to this. “Focus Groups” have found the rank and file don’t have issues with openly gay members serving. While I don’t necessarily doubt the numbers the focus group discovered, I don’t trust the methods. Any focus group can be manipulated by an agenda setter, either through how the questions are asked, or by cheating the data. I know first hand, as a recently retired service member, the “vast majority” (as quoted by several sources) don’t support openly gay service members joining if it has a negative impact on unit cohesion. I was a firm supporter of DADT. It allowed gays to serve, but kept their lifestyle low key.  And I didn’t have to go to some re-education camp to teach me that gays are great and just like me.

Allowing women to serve in a direct combat unit just goes against the basic instinct of men. Men have been trained for eons to protect the frail and the weak. The VAST majority of women fall into this category as compared to men. If front line combat success were based only on intellect, then I would still have issues with them serving, but those would have nothing to do with whether to woman was capable enough based on her smarts. If it were a purely intellectual exercise, women would perform as well as men in combat. But it is not intellectual. It is primal. It is kill or be killed. It is stick a knife into the guys gut while you stare him in the eyes. It is being stronger and more willing to kill than your opponent.  It is having your buddies back, and carrying out on your buddy on your back if necessary.

Why is it there are separate categories for men and women for athletic feats? We compete in many of the same events (100 meter dash, marathons, downhill skiing) so way the separate categories? Would it have anything to do with the fact that men would dominate every category and women’s names wouldn’t ever grace the record books if not for the separate categories? The bottom line is that men are much more physically capable than women. Several years ago, when I played fastpitch softball, a traveling women’s team challenged us to a game. These ladies were near Olympic caliber players and while we were a very good team (several trophies in regional tournaments), we were no where near the caliber of the top mens softball players. We cleaned their clocks. An above average athletic man can beat nearly all women except for those very rare Olympic caliber females. Why point this out? Front line combat is speed, strength, and stamina and the very vast majority of women cannot put all three together to form an effective combat warrior. They might be able to get two of the three, but why should the men be expected to pick up the slack for a deficiency. They aren’t expected to pick up the slack if a male member is lacking in one of those categories. This not only makes the unit less combat effective, it puts both the males and the females in danger.

There is no question that women have performed well in the combat environment when called to do so. They are part of convoy teams that occasionally get ambushed and they have held their own. They are effective fighter pilots, able to support the troops on the ground. But a highly trained front-line combat unit is a different beast altogether. The physical requirements for sustained combat and preparedness may be too much for the vast majority of women.