Legislation to allow women in combat specialties
That fake Mexican woman in Congress has decided to amend the Defense budget with a bill that would lift restrictions that prevent women from serving in combat Military Occupational Specialties in the Marines and the Army according to the Air Force Times;
Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, has prepared an amendment repealing the policy that prevents women from serving in front-line combat units in the Army and Marine Corps.
The House is scheduled to take up HR 1540, the 2012 defense authorization bill, next week with plans to pass the $689 billion policy bill by Memorial Day.
Sanchez’s amendment would implement a recommendation made earlier this year by the Military Leadership Diversity Committee, a group of current and retired officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians, which determined that combat exclusion laws hurt advancement opportunities for women. The final report of the commission was due at the end of March but has been delayed until later this year because defense officials said it needed more study.
Ya know what else hurts advancement opportunities for women? Death. I know that the “group of current and retired officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians” included no one who actually participated in combat while in uniform. They couldn’t have if they arrived at the conclusion that success in career advancement has priority over the forces’ safety.
Every time I hear this discussion, I flash on Shannon Faulkner who fought for years a legal battle to get into The Citadel, and then when she did, she crapped out because she’d gotten so bovine-like that she couldn’t meet the standards. In other words, she expected to be carried on the backs of the corps of cadets through graduation.
Combat has one standard and there’s no room for weak backs. I’ll admit that there are men who can’t meet the standards…I chaptered three of them before we went to Desert Storm.
Speaking of Desert Storm, let me tell you about our support battalion’s ambulance platoon. Out of 22 members, 10 got pregnant in the two months between our notification and deployment so they couldn’t deploy. Was that a readiness issue? After we deployed to the desert, some of the members of that same platoon drove around to the battalions selling sex at $75 a pop out of the back of their ambulances.
Are all women in the military like that? Certainly not. I’ve known some women who could run circles around many men and who were as chaste as the day is long, but all it takes is one Shannon Faulkner to screw up an infantry platoon’s proficiency and performance. And we all know the politically correct crap that goes along with “the first [insert minority ID here] person to…” in the military.
This is completely wrong-headed, and the fake Mexican congresswoman is just doing this to ingratiate herself with feminist groups and the anti-military and social experimentation segments of her constituency.
Category: Military issues
Let’s take this from the basics:
Men in the military are not permitted to grow their hair long. I believe this is for good reason. I was told that it was because of the hygiene, and the fact that hair can get in the way or get caught in weaponry. I agree.
Women are not made to cut theirs “high and tight”, but in combat MOS’, wouldn’t those same factors apply.
Not too long ago, a lady commented here, about the once a month hygiene difficulties of a women, and on how much more difficult it is for them at that time. Great point.
Men must meet a certain standard in Physical ability. Because it is what is needed to perform the job. If women in the same MOS’ are held to a lesser standard, how could we expect them to perform the same job, (handling, mounting/dismounting a “Ma Duece” perhaps), as timely and well as a man?
And back to my time in service, (right after we replaced the musket), we had women in the Army, in the Air Force, in the Navy, and in the Marines. They were WAC’s, WAF’s, Wave’s, n BAM’s. They performed a necessary job, did it well, made rank, stayed in til retirement,,,,,,,,
Women don’t have a “right” to be in a MAN’s slot, anymore than a Man has a “right” to a promotion that he did not earn.
We’re dealing with it soon enough in the submarine community. Oh, it’s gonna be a fuckin hoot, let me tell ya.
Loretta Sanchez…
“The Vietnamese are trying to take our seat!”
She is such a piece of shit.
Anyway, here’s the point: “Sanchez’s amendment would implement a recommendation made earlier this year by the Military Leadership Diversity Committee, a group of current and retired officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians, which determined that combat exclusion laws hurt advancement opportunities for women.”
So the point here is that the rules are standing in the way of their advancement opportunities. My initial reaction is that we already have affirmative action that gives women and minorities special treatment in advancement at the expense of white guys like me. Women can shoot up through the ranks without putting in half the effort as men. It’s disgusting. Talk about incompotent people being placed in positions of power.
But that’s not even the most important thing to consider. Combat effectiveness should ALWAYS be the focus. What’s best for our ass-kicking power is more important than what’s best for some whiney woman’s career.
By the way, affirmative action hasn’t been very beneficial to my career either. Not that Sanchez cares. She wants “equality” not equality.
Long retired, and was in a non-combat MOS.
That said, if I was in an infantry unit, and a woman came IN, I’d be putting in transfer paperwork ASAP.
In my 12 yrs active AF starting in 1954, there were no women on the flightline. Period. Gen. Lemay said there would be no women on SAC bases. Period. I was stationed at Whiteman AFB for 6 yrs and the only women on that base at that time were a few nurses for our medical clinic. I guess Gen Lemay was happy.
I should have added that there were no women on flightlines at Hickam nor Travis.
Medics are technically a non-combat MOS, but we do NOT let them anywhere NEAR the line. Officially. Sometimes they sneak in as “attachments” but brother let me tell you, dealing with women in the chain of command adds a whole new dynamic. Whatever drama you had before suddenly becomes a soap opera, and a lot of female officers are passive aggressive in the extreme. I’ve seen female NCOs go nuts over minor things and Female officers are if anything worse, because the Army almost TELLS them to be passive aggressive. I understand shit details tend to go to those you don’t like, but still. . . it gets ridiculous if you don’t have a 1SG willing to tell them off.
Its not PC, but I’m going to say this as honestly as I can. Units with women in them are 10 times harder to deal with than all male ones.
But that doesn’t even touch on the physical reasons to include weight carrying capacity (their hips are NOT designed to carry loads the same way as men) Stamina and speed, (just why IS the 2 mile run standards so much lower?) the idea that a mostly male unit would “protect” the females, and lets not forget my favorite: women are psychologically predisposed to “nurture”, the battlefield is a bit of a jump in the opposite direction, so no one really knows if more extreme cases of PTSD might result.
This is just another Dem political stunt, like DADT repeal and women on Subs. It makes no sense to the people tasked with implementing the policy (timing and even in most cases the NEED for such) and we’re just supposed to salute, say Hoah and carry on like the GOOD little mindless robots we are.
Oh, hell. I’d open it up. I just wouldn’t change the physical standards to accommodate gender.
And I wouldn’t let anybody test unless that person already has a decent chance of meeting those physical standards.
I have a fine tactical mind, but I was 35 before my weight broke into the triple digits. There never was a need for a gender distinction to keep me out of a combat role.
That said, anything in my hands can become a weapon. And if it were me making the decisions, I would be very interested in sending females trained in hairdressing, manicure and pedicure techniques into Afghanistan, and I would not necessarily want them to be huge. They’d also need a working knowledge of at least one local language. The beauty-shop skills can be taught, but the language requirement is tough.
I don’t know how to think about that type of assignment. Certainly a woman in such a position must have some kind of physical combat training, and I suppose it should be close-quarters (knife, pistol, hands, feet?), plus the basics (obviously, she’d need to be able to pick up any weapon likely to be in the area in an emergency).
So where does that leave us? What is a sensible way to accommodate that type of assignment within our system? Is the real solution an MOS that takes into account dealing with oppressive religions and male-chauvanist-pig societies?
Bottom line: Men and women are different. They are not interchangeable parts. Treating different things differently is not discrimination.
I agree that this is a stunt. It worked exceptionally well with Repealing DADT, with so-called gay conservative groups imploding with their support of the repeal.
Women in combat MOS is not about the individual woman, or the chosen ones who will be given rank and position. This is about Democrats having lost the Feminist Mojo to conservatives such as Governor Palin and Rep. Bachmann. The meme goes: if woman can do anything, then woman can do anything.
Being an artillerist, I’ve served with women assigned to brigade-level HQ and higher; and in our support battalions. In a peacetime Army, they were professional. In wartime and on operational deployments to Bosnia? Most were professional.
This measure is also an insult to women who serve, and have served. They made the rank by going to the schools, walking the trail, taking good assignments and bad. Now? Now soldiers won’t know if their female leader is competent, or a quota requirement.
Before I’m willing to consider women in combat MOS, IMO DOD needs to get to the bottom, if you’ll pardon the pun, of all of these sexual assaults going on. There’ve been so many reports of rape, and countering accusations of accusing joe of rape in order for the female to avoid UCMJ, that no one knows what is true. But, the VA is reporting more women veterans as survivors (to one degree or another) of sexual assault.
There’s been no study of how to best integrate women into combat MOS – there’s been the political position with a veneer of statistics, but no serious, scientifically-based study.
Real-world, no-kidding issues are not, and will not be addressed. To do so may reveal truth. This amendment is not about truth, and it is not about women. It is about reclaiming the mantle of Feminist from conservatives.
“There’ve been so many reports of rape, and countering accusations of accusing joe of rape in order for the female to avoid UCMJ, that no one knows what is true. But, the VA is reporting more women veterans as survivors (to one degree or another) of sexual assault.”
Just wait until we have a few women in combat who become POW’s. Happened in WWII, happened in Vietnam, happened in Desert Storm, happened in OIF.
2 words-Jessica Lynch.
I want to back-track just a little bit. This is an issue for discussion within the various branches of the military service. It is not a good subject for legislation, because legislation has a very bad habit of producing perverse results when people subject to it in the real world encounter revolting developments.
This infantryman is steadfastly against opening combat MOS’ to women. I have seen a very few women who might make average grunts on the line, and none who would be extremely impressive. The only female that made it past Zero day in my Air Assault class had a very impressive time on the road march, but that doesn’t mean she’d be able to keep up with us carrying a standard light infantry load. Let’s go through my limited military experience and interactions with females: 101st: About 45 days without a real shower or bath after entering Iraq. We had an Air Force unit sharing our tent complex in Kuwait that had a few females; we were all distracted by them and our PL one night found a porta-john occupied by one of them and a man one night. Not even two weeks into the deployment and they were already working hard. First four or five months we had no cots, power, or running water. After over a month of slit trenches and baby wipes we built a shower and outhouse and burned shit until around September 2003. Just before a parade through Clarksville when we got home a female Sergeant was recognized by one of the Afghanistan vets as part of a group whoring themselves out back in 2002. Go to Air Assault a 10 or so days after getting back home and watch 30 or so females wash out of the obstacle course. TOG: A bit more interaction with females. MP company commander relieved (and Tomb Badge revoked) for having sex with enlisted Soldiers after pictures spread around. very few females on the field during ceremonies (of course, but even 289th MP Company had few when they were on the field). Went to PLDC, most of the females were at least proficient but one sandbagged the entire course. The instructors threatened to kick a few of the louder 11Bs out for continually pointing out the malingering nature of the female. I guess it’s better to send three or four good NCOs home to protect one POS. Recruiting: Yay! A… Read more »
“It is not a good subject for legislation,”. Precisely, Valerie, that’s why the dems are always happy to do it. It’s not being offered for good reasons. It’s being offered for political reasons.
As Jonn said, this is being done to appease the social experimenters and AA crowd, not to improve the military. From the repeal of DADT, to the short-lived attempt to legalize gay marriage by having the Navy chaplains perform gay marriages, to implementing the recommendations of a “diversity” commission, it’s all about votes.
You don’t make standards based on the exception to the rule. Women are almost never the physical equals of men, this is a scientific fact, proven by DODs own studies, both those of the 70s, 90s, and, again through expirence in our current conflicts.
When studies don’t have the desired outcome how do they react? By calling for another study, until they get the outcome they want. They do this by watering down the standards, until they are almost meaningless as any kind of valid objective arbitrator. Then they can chaulk up another issue they’ve “fixed” and move on to the next task that must be “equalitized” into impotency.
The problem is logic and efficiency can’t be subdued, old topics keep returning because they were never solved in the first place. Only critics were silenced. Which leads advocates to spin even more elaborate webs of untruths to justify the initial ones.
This is poltics compromising combat effectivness plain and simple!
Sorry, I know I’ve ranted on this blog plenty of times on this here very topic. STILL PISSES ME OFF!!!
For those want women in combat jobs, ask yourself this: Why aren’t women playing in the NFL? It has NOTHING to do with intelligence, marksmanship or communication skills. It has everything to do with physical requirements, and brute-force ability.
Hormones also play a VERY big part of that. I am so tired of all this craptacular social-engineering experiments being conducted by assmaggots who have never been involved in the military.
The crap will get people killed, and when it happens, those responsible for this legislation ought to be charged with murder and put to death. Publicly.
Tim, now you’ve done it. Loretta Sanchez, D-Fool, will soon introduce legislation demanding that women be allowed to play in the NFL, MLB, the NHL and the NBA. Never mind lingerie football, or the WNBA, or women’s hockey or softball. Those don’t count, after all the females won’t get the same contracts as Peyton Manning, Tom Bradley and the rest, and that just isn’t fair.
As for your last three sentences, agreed…
I demand that our legislative body and executive branch prepare legislation that will effectively boycott the Olympic Games, both summer and winter, until the gender-specific events are eliminated. Participants should not be held back from achieving greatness by some arbitrary rule like gender-classification.
On the “study” that was perpetrated by this gender group, they mention that women are underrepresented in the senior ranks. Well, give me the number of women who stay in to serve in the senior ranks? Do women stay in the military as long as men? And this study concludes that women are hurt because they are not allowed to serve in Combat units, yet Service Support and Support units outnumber Combat units, 8-10 to 1. The tooth to tail ration favors the advancement of women. And plenty of them are in “combat” for women to receive the same “experience” as men. The majority of General/Flag Officer billets aren’t even “combat” related. There is no reason why a woman can’t be promoted to take over US Cyber Command or TRANSCOM.
I was in the first group of women commissioned thru ROTC directly into a branch. We never saw Fort McClellan or the WAC. Went through all kinds of BS over the years, just because some people could not accept that the military does have places for women. By the time my career was done, I didn’t encounter anyone who was stupid enough to challenge my competence just because I was female.
That said, the Infantry is not a woman’s place. I doubt Armor or Artillery is, either, simply based upon the strength requirements. If ADA still exists, yeah, ok, if the woman meets the same standards as the guys.
I truly hope no lives are lost due to legislation this monumentally stupid.
I had 6 women come into my airborne unit and within 6 months 4 were pregnant. Can’t see how this enhanced the operational readiness of my unit in the slightest
If you guys think having a woman that’s less than lack luster in infantry, armor or artillery try having several in an MP unit. Neither one carried their weight, our squad always had to mount their 60’s & load them in the gun trucks. All they had to do was woman(man)the 60’s and they bitched about that…the rest of us did ingress & egress.
Twas a damn good thing when Uncle Sugar Army gave us 6 of the V-100’s….they could hide inside them and not be a pain in our butts. Neither could shoot a .30, .38, 12gauge or M-16 worth a shit….Yet, they consistently passed weapons qual’s….go f’ng figure.
I would like to point out that MOST women I talk to do not want to be ANYWHERE NEAR combat. Being on the FOB can be scary enough, and rolling up and down Predators or God Forbid Irish, sometimes felt like a fools errand, sure to get you wounded or killed. By my reckoning there are no “million dollar” wounds anymore, you get hit you’re probably losing something.
So I’ve got to ask a serious question here, and I’m asking mostly the women mind you; When did it become wrong for a man to want to protect a woman? Call me a chauvinist, but I’d really rather not have to treat women that get torn to pieces. I don’t want to treat guys that get torn up like that, but women getting hurt like that somehow seems. . . wrong. Is that really a wrong opinion to have?
Just another case of the ‘progressive’ mindset vs the conservative mindset. Conservatives are about equality of opportunity and focusing on excellence of results. ‘Progressives’ are about equality of results and excellence of ‘diversity’. Even then, conservatives and ‘progressives’ define results differently. While conservatives’ idea of results RE: the military is based on specific tasks military members must complete successfully, the idea of results for ‘progressives’ RE: the military is based on ‘diversity’. The conservative, logical mindset will look at the tasks to be completed and then set standards to get the people best suited to complete those tasks. Anyone will have the opportunity to prove they can achieve the standards. But only those who achieve the standards will be chosen. If the pool of people chosen are all white men, all black/hispanic/asian men, all white women, all black/hispanic/asian women, etc, matters not to the conservative, logical mindset. What matters is that everyone chosen meets the standards and will complete the tasks successfully. The ‘progressive’, emotional mindset will ignore the tasks to be completed and look only at what pool of people they want chosen. If they see that the standards set to successfully complete the tasks are preventing their ‘diverse’ pool of chosen people, they will change the standards to help their ‘diversity’ agenda. If this change in standards negatively affects the successful completion of the tasks, it matters not to the ‘progressive’, emotional mindset. What matters is that those attempting to complete the tasks are properly ‘diverse’. Anyone or company or organization who/which focuses on ‘diversity’ instead of excellence should be avoided. Period. But, how about we take the emotional ‘diversity’ illogic of feminists and ‘progressives’ to its logical end. Someone mentioned that this crap started when these riTARDs started ignoring results-based success and started looking at ‘diversity’-based ‘success’. For example, they looked at the NFL and started bitching that there were not enough Black QBs or Black coaches, etc. So, they started the ‘Rooney Rule’ to force teams to interview Black coaches. Well, as far as I can tell, the demographics of NFL players skews to Black athletes.… Read more »
[…] left the following comment in response to this discussion at This Ain’t Hell: Legislation to allow women in combat specialties Just another case of the ‘progressive’ mindset vs the conservative mindset. […]
Sigh…Title IX comes to the military.
[…] in combat units? This ain’t Hell… has the legislative […]
The final double standard will be that working in a combat specialty will be an OPTION for women, for men? Not so much.