Women in Infantry

Are you kidding me?

If muscle strength does not matter in combat , why do combat soldiers spend so much time developing it?

Testosterone is the fight or flight hormone. Infantry men run on testosterone. As one military commander put it ..."testosterone is what ultimately takes the hill".

Remember Jessica Lynch? The country went berserk when on female soldier was supposedly captured ("OMG they are going to rape her!!!"). The Iraqi invasion was all but put on hold to find her. The country was obsessed. She was found alright ... resting comfortably in a hospital bed when half the special forces in the country came crashing into the unguarded hospital to "rescue" her.

When the military culture starts adopting the PC delusions of the broader culture it will acquire its pathologies as well.

What's next, women in the NFL? "They can do anything men can do" ... Yes of course, all evidence to the contrary.

Our military is 100% voluntary.

If a woman can meet the physical (and other) requirements to serve anywhere she wishes to serve, more power to her, and there should be no reason why she should be excluded from any branch of service.


What should not happen is lowering the bar on those requirements. Something that may or may not happen. Time will tell.

Generally speaking though, I'm fine with it.

In a country that's supposed to be about freedom and having choices, why should being a female prevent anyone from serving your country in any way you desire to serve it. (as long as you meet the standards)

If they meet the requirements, let them serve.

motokid wrote:

If a woman can meet the physical (and other) requirements to serve anywhere she wishes to serve, more power to her, and there should be no reason why she should be excluded from any branch of service.

I can think of one reason ... their presence may compromise the mission. Other than that .....


The Israelis had women in close combat in the 1967 war. Nearly cost them their country. Men were busy protecting female soldiers instead of doing their duty. It was the last time the Israelis had women in close infantry combat despite fighting several wars and skirmishes since.

There are other cultural ticks which must be considered beyond fitness. Are Americans prepared to suffer numerous female combat deaths? Besides the point you think? Low morale on the homefront can lose wars. As Clint Eastwood said in Dirty Harry ... "That's a hell of a price to pay for being stylish".

I'll refer you again to the Jessica Lynch story.


It should be noted that the military has conducted numerous studies which all conclude precious few women are capable of meeting the current physical requirements for infantry duty. Make no mistake Moto - the requirements will be lowered.

And so we're clear - I'm talking close infantry combat. Women already serve with courage and distinction in many other aspects of battle.

It can't get any more simple than this.

Our military is 100% voluntary.

Anyone who wishes to serve should have the right to, in whatever capacity they can.

If there's a standard set of requirements, and citizen A can meet those requirements, then citizen A should be able to serve.
REGARDLESS OF GENDER.

If you don't like those kinds of rules - don't volunteer.

I know a lot women who are 10x tougher than most men. Gator, I think your view that women will get all giggly and go running away screaming if they see a spider is a bit... outdated? sexist? I understand your point that the men may feel overprotective of them, but I think in the heat of battle most soldiers are overprotective of ALL their fellow soldiers, regardless of gender. It's not like the females are walking around in evening dresses and high heels out there.

The world has come a long way since 1967.

I agree with motokid. There are standards that must be met to serve in various capacities. Those standards should NOT be 'adjusted' but whoever can meet those standards should be allowed to serve, IMO.

motokid wrote:

It can't get any more simple than this.

Our military is 100% voluntary.

Anyone who wishes to serve should have the right to, in whatever capacity they can.

If there's a standard set of requirements, and citizen A can meet those requirements, then citizen A should be able to serve.
REGARDLESS OF GENDER.

If you don't like those kinds of rules - don't volunteer.

Simple being the operative word.

dmmcd wrote:

Gator, I think your view that women will get all giggly and go running away screaming if they see a spider is a bit... outdated? sexist?

I never said or implied that.

gatorfan wrote:

Simple being the operative word.

Truth does not need to be complicated.

motokid wrote:

Truth does not need to be complicated.

Especially when it can be avoided.

gatorfan wrote:

motokid wrote:

Truth does not need to be complicated.

Especially when it can be avoided.

So your position is: Women should be disqualified/barred from doing certain things for no other reason than they are women.

Has nothing to do with ability.
Just that they don't have a penis.
That alone means they can't.

Period.

Is that your plain and simple truth?

motokid wrote:

gatorfan wrote:

motokid wrote:

Truth does not need to be complicated.

Especially when it can be avoided.

So your position is: Women should be disqualified/barred from doing certain things for no other reason than they are women.

Has nothing to do with ability.
Just that they don't have a penis.
That alone means they can't.

Period.

Is that your plain and simple truth?

No Moto. You used the word 'simple' ... I was being sarcastic.

Your point is that if women meet the criteria, that is all that matters. Take your argument to the logical extreme. What if women (who meet the criteria) fighting in infantry divisions means we lose the war? Should women's rights trump victory?

You need to argue that women in infantry divisions will not adversely impact our fighting effectiveness therefore their desire to serve should not be denied. You are "simplifying" it to an inalienable right.

This is war, not the Division of Motor Vehicles. Though our armed forces are beginning to resemble it.

gatorfan wrote:

No Moto. You used the word 'simple' ... I was being sarcastic.

Your point is that if women meet the criteria, that is all that matters. Take your argument to the logical extreme. What if women (who meet the criteria) fighting in infantry divisions means we lose the war? Should women's rights trump victory?

You need to argue that women in infantry divisions will not adversely impact our fighting effectiveness therefore their desire to serve should not be denied. You are "simplifying" it to an inalienable right.

This is war, not the Division of Motor Vehicles. Though our armed forces are beginning to resemble it.

All your posts are full of "what if's" and "maybe" and "perhaps" and "possibly"....., but none have any FACT.

If a female MEETS the standard, they then are deemed equally as competent as males.

So that means win or lose - it's got nothing to do with gender of the soldier.

We're fighting a non-winnable war as it is now. Does that mean the men fighting it are the reason?

So in your world Moto it is incomprehensible that changing the group dynamic in an infantry unit from all male to mixed gender might effect the unit adversely? And it's your assertion that this must be proven to happen before we say no? Meaning lots of young kids must die, or we must lose a war, before we have the FACTS to prove it's going to happen?

You do realize that infantry soldiers are usually about 18 - 25 years old don't you?

Here's a FACT for you. It takes 2 months to prepare an aircraft carrier for deployment. During that time the ship is loaded with supplies and drills are done. In the 2 months to load a ship, fully 1/3rd of the female sailors assigned to the ship become pregnant and need to be replaced by sailers who have not drilled for that ship (no pun intended).

Here's the deal Moto. The US has such enormous firepower that we can afford all these follies (militarily, not financially). But when the day comes and we need to fight a real war (and don't be so sure it won't happen) our military, if it insists on reflecting our broader broken culture, will function like your local DMV.

You act as if, with the stroke of a pen, tens-of-thousands of women are automatically, and magically, going to be placed directly onto the front lines of some imaginary new world war.

1) How many women do you think really want to be in combat/infantry positions?
2) How many of those will be able to pass the tests and requirements?
3) What war are you so freakin afraid of right now?
4) So your major fear is our military service-men can't control themselves?

motokid wrote:

You act as if, with the stroke of a pen, tens-of-thousands of women are automatically, and magically, going to be placed directly onto the front lines of some imaginary new world war.

1) How many women do you think really want to be in combat/infantry positions?
2) How many of those will be able to pass the tests and requirements?
3) What war are you so freakin afraid of right now?
4) So your major fear is our military service-men can't control themselves?

1) You mean women are different than men? Sexist!!

2) You mean women are different than men? Sexist!!

Kidding.


3) Not "afraid" of some imaginary war. I just understand, based on history, that the world can change radically in a very short period of time and nobody ever sees it coming.

4) There are already huge problems in the military with service men and women not controlling themselves. It's rapidly becoming a welfare program with fraudulent disability claims and unwed pregnancies. That's my point. It's hard enough without pretending you can throw 20 year old BOYS AND GIRLS into a combat unit together and expect gender and sexuality not to be disruptive. It's PC rubbish. And no amount of "training" is going to prevent these problems.

Moto, you seem to support the idea based on the notion "there won't be enough women for it to matter that much". I would have no problem with this argument in different circumstances but not life and death. I also saw what happened with affirmative action. It went from bumping up GPA's a few points for kids born into hard circumstances to a complete travesty of justice (I know this first hand).

I watched a discovery channel show on Marine Corp boot camp. There were severely overweight women falling out of hikes and bursting into tears on the side of the trail. How the hell does a morbidly obese woman get into the Marine Corps? And they don't wash out. They enter a "special program". This is what I mean by the military adopting the broader non-judgemental, it's not your fault culture. Yeah I know, you said if they meet the requirements but still ... don't you see where this is headed.

Anyway, I'll let you have the last word then I'll drop it.

Cheers and thanks for the spirited debate.

Well, I am infantry, so I've had real world exposure to this.

I agree that if somebody can make the cut, then they should be accepted.

I don't agree that men will be overprotective of women in the infantry - in the infantry (and probably other combat arms) we are ALL each other's brothers in battle. We will put our lives on the line for each other in battle, and it doesn't require somebody being female to get that sense of mutual commitment.

Nor am I concerned about the issue of sex, and throwing women into infantry units will distract the boys such that they're ineffective. As far as I'm concerned, if you're in the infantry and yet so lacking in self discipline that soldiering next to somebody that has different naughty bits than you do throws you off your game... get the hell out of the infantry, I don't want to soldier next to you. In fact, I don't want you in the armed forces at all. If you pull that kind of crap in any platoon that I command, I WILL put your ass in jail. Guaranteed. And military law says I can do exactly that.

I understand gatorfan's concerns, but if you can't be trusted to keep your dick (or whatever) under control when you're in uniform, why the hell should I trust you to have my back in a TIC? I have heard this is a real problem in some areas of the military, but as far as I'm concerned that's a result of tolerance and not enough people being put in jail for fraternization. That can be fixed...

And I don't even care if the nation decides it needs a period of soul searching angst every time a female soldier is killed, captured, raped, whatever. That's their problem, not mine. We ache for every buddy we lose, and their sex isn't going to make it any more - or less - painful.

HOWEVER...

INEVITABLY...

Standards WILL be diminished. Eventually, at some point. We've been watching police forces, fire departments, etc do this for the last 20 years or so. Not all of them, but more than enough to prove the point. And not just physical standards - discipline standards. That has already happened. Recently a full Colonel in Afghanistan got caught in a relationship with one of his corporals - which she initiated. His career was pretty much destroyed by the court martial and he was fined and imprisoned; she got a minor slap on the wrist, not even losing rank.

Lots of examples like that. Inside and outside the military. Whaddya think that does for moral when the troops see selective levels of discipline based on sex? Think they don't believe the fix is in?

Everybody will swear that won't happen, and they might even believe it. But at some point, there will be accusations of sexual discrimination, artificially high barriers, etc and the knee jerk reaction will be "reevaluation" of standards and similar silliness. The same people who don't care that 95% of the male applicants can't pass a pathfinder course - and all of those applicants already from airborne special forces - will be outraged that 99% of females can't make it through a basic infantry course.

Somebody will say "what war are you Neanderthals so freakin' afraid of, anyways"? They'll point out all the armoured vehicles we USUALLY ride around in, the helicopters we fly in, blah, blah, blah. They won't pay any attention of what it was like in Tora Bora or the Shahi-Kot Valley - they won't even know where in the world those places were, much less how those operations went down. These are the same people who talk about being in "an unwinnable war" - while shoving the military into fighting the war the way they think it should be done, which does indeed make it unwinnable. The sort of people who, in the interests of fairness, have us calling a military lawyer back home who is on duty in the Puzzle Palace to make just those judgements for us, to get authorization to take out a couple of guys we're watching with night observation devices planting in IED at the roadside. "Can you see guns"? "No." "Well, they might be farmers". "Farmers don't farm around here in a culvert under the road at 0200hrs". "Doesn't matter, can't confirm their Taliban, permission denied".

That's the problem with having naive civilians meddling in how the military conducts it's business - instead of just simply telling the military what they want accomplished. We've seen that going all the way back to when Johnson had Robert MacNamara telling the JCS how they were to fight the war in Vietnam.

So standards will be "adjusted". And that's when the whole thing is going to go sideways. And then not only will those lower standards admit unqualified women - they'll also serve as a path of admission for unqualified males who would not have made it. Been there; seen it. Now you have unqualified women AND men in those units, putting not just themselves but everybody around them at risk.

My opposition isn't to the concept of women in combat; good on those who want to serve in combat arms I say. My opposition is to what all the politically correct assholes will do once that door is open. All those politically correct assholes should be brought out to a base, stuffed into body armour, helmet, fully bombed up webbing, a ruck, rifle, and then have their asses dragged through a 2 x 10. After they've done that, a couple of hundred yards of section battle drills. By force, if necessary.

Might straighten them out a bit on ideas of what is good enough for infantry service.

The problem with this is that the price for failure in the infantry is a bit different than the price of failure of an Obama "stimulus" program, or an entitlement program of one sort or another. When those little "we must all be winners" social and economic experiments fail, what we get is a big bill. When we screw up with our point of the bayonet combat forces - people come home in aluminum boxes when they shouldn't have. Not to mention battles lost.

And when that happens, just who is going to stand up and volunteer to take responsibility for that?

There's no room for weakness in the infantry, and even more so in specialized forces/units. Not because the men who serve in and run those units are Neanderthal brutes, but because the reality of war has left us with lessons learned that weakness WILL get you killed. And the guys fighting beside you as well.

So as a constitutionalist, I don't see any legitimate way to deny females the right to apply to serve in the infantry, the Seals, Delta Force, the PJs, you name it. On the other hand, I don't see any way the Constitution provides some protection against standards in those units being subverted so that women (and equally weak men) can make the cut - thereby diminishing the capability of those units and greatly enhancing their risk of failure in battle.