Stephen Kilcullen: Women Don’t Belong in Ranger School
The Wall Street Journal publishes today the opinion of Stephen Kilcullen, an ROTC grad and Ranger School grad in a piece titled Women Don’t Belong in Ranger School. He picks up from a quote by General Ray Odierno who claims that the Army owes women a shot at Ranger School; “If we determine that we’re going to allow women to go into infantry and be successful, they’re probably at some time going to have to go to Ranger School.”
Odierno would be right if that’s all Ranger School is – a punch hole in a ticket to command. Kilcullen says;
It is this culture of excellence and selflessness that attracts young men to the Ranger brotherhood. The Ranger ethos is designed to be deadly serious yet self-deprecating, focused entirely on teamwork and mission accomplishment. Rangers put the mission first, their unit and fellow soldiers next, and themselves last. The selfishness so rampant elsewhere in our society has never existed in the Ranger brotherhood.
And that is the secret of the brotherhood’s success. Some call it “unit cohesiveness” but what they are really describing is a transition from self-interest to selfless service. The notion of allowing women into Ranger School because denying them the experience would harm their careers makes Ranger graduates cringe. Such politically correct thinking is the ultimate expression of the “me” culture, and it jeopardizes core Ranger ideals.
But, that doesn’t matter to Big Army, it doesn’t matter to those people who are going to make the decisions who think that special operations is some exclusive club they can’t join. Big Army leaders like Eric Shinseki who took Rangers’ berets from them and gave them to everyone, because when Shinseki was a tanker who had his tanker black beret taken from him in 1979 and he couldn’t wait to take it back from the Rangers.
If I thought for a second that allowing women in Ranger School wouldn’t change the school and the valuable lessons they teach young combat arms leaders, I’d say go ahead. But I know Big Army better than that. I watched simple things like allowing pregnant soldiers to remain in the service turn into a huge leadership problem. I saw the cadet corps of The Citadel blamed for the failure of fat ass Shannon Faulkner when she dropped out in days after two years of legal battles to get her in the course. Wiki says of her;
After four hours of the military indoctrination training, she spent the remainder of the first week in the infirmary before voluntarily resigning, citing emotional and psychological abuse and physical exhaustion.
Yes, after four hours, she was exhausted. Actually, she expected to be hand carried through four years of college and spent not one minute preparing for the rigors of cadet life. And yet the cadets at the Citadel were blamed for her failure.
Similarly, the media would expect women to graduate from Ranger School and blame the instructors and students on their failures (there’s a thing called “peer evaluations” at Ranger School last time I checked), so Big Army, in it’s infinite wisdom would change the standards, and they’d probably do away with peer evals – one of the most important parts of the school, so assholes don’t get to be Rangers until they change their ways.
The whole point of Ranger School is to simulate combat stress as closely as possible, it’s mentally and physically demanding and there’s no room for relaxed standards, unless we’re willing to only fight enemies who’ll agree to relax their own standards in regards to fighting women.
This isn’t a post against women in general, it’s post against Big Army who I know will screw this up.
Crossposted at Business Insider.
Category: Big Army, Military issues
The most persuasive arguments I’ve read opening combat MOS’s (and Ranger school) are:
1) Promotions. (BTW women attained the highest ranks in the Army years ago, as in SGM, CW5, and 4 star Generals).
2) They want to. (Though I’ve seen very few that “wanted” to go themselves, but rather they thought they knew someone that might have a chance.)
3) So their tab will get them instant respect. (Yeah, that’s a fleeting thing. That patch buys you about 5 mins, until your mouth & a** catch up with their eyes.)
Of course I discussed these at length long ago: http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/ps/2011/01/discussing-the-arguments-against-women-in-combat-units.html
Most arguments against dropping women into combat units have to do with winning battles, shouldering an equal share of the weight, and winning wars, i.e. National Security.
1) If 10 Grunts go out on a 7 day patrol, with 1100 lbs, there is no room for one to carry only 50 lbs, and split the other 70 of their portion amongst those carrying 110.
2) There is no room in that combat squad for 2 of those individuals to have a sexual attraction, while the others attempt to bring their fraternal group through a successful objective and back home in as complete of pieces as battle allows.
And these arguments have not changed in since the first time the idea was first brought up: http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/ps/2011/01/discussing-the-arguments-against-women-in-combat-units.html
In recent years, those arguing for the political correct policy change, normally point to FET as “proof” that women are already in combat roles. FET does NOT have a combat mission. Their mission is to chat up the women in towns that happen to be in a combat zone. It is important work, but it is NOT combat. Because it is so important, they are often sent on those missions within a combat patrol, for their protection, and as a force multiplier, but not with a mission to seek out and destroy the enemy.
http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/fet/
About a year ago I gave some thought to the idea of allowing women to belong to SOF units. My greatest concern was what has been mentioned here by a few; the Army’s inability to maintain consistent standards. It is still my greatest concern. The idea I developed was to form a female SOF unit. You can see my idea spelled out in some detail here http://isthetimeright.wordpress.com/summary/
Updated with name: About a year ago I gave some thought to the idea of allowing women to belong to SOF units. My greatest concern was what has been mentioned here by a few; the Army’s inability to maintain consistent standards. It is still my greatest concern. The idea I developed was to form a female SOF unit. You can see my idea spelled out in some detail here http://isthetimeright.wordpress.com/summary/
I think Ranger School can serve as the perfect wind dummy by proxy for all of SOF in the “will they? won’t they?” debate over allowing women in SOF. There are basically three ways that this can go and no matter what it would end up being helpful for the discussion. First, they could go your route and maintain the training standards as they currently exist. This would show everyone two very important statistics. 1. How few women actually want to participate in this kind of training. 2. How few of those through massive attrition either at the pre-qualification (chin ups) or during the training itself would actually complete it. Second is the “let’s tailor the qualification and training to the capabilities of women” approach. While this course of action would have catastrophic effects on the entire Ranger program going forward, it would nevertheless serve as a warning to other SOF courses that a) if you allow this in your program it will also suffer grievously and b) there is at least the chance that this diminution in quality would create a public backlash that could help to protect other SOF units from this disaster. Third is the combination where they start out with option 1, find out that few women are interested and fewer still graduate and then graduate to option 2 of destroying the curriculum to save face. If option 1 is even attempted, then you can be sure that option 2 is not far off. Uncle Jimbo can make jokes that Demi Moore already went to BUD/S (SEAL Training) in the movies, but this threat to SOF quality is all too real. As a SEAL, I fully support the Rangers jumping on this grenade since it really is the only hope for the SEAL Teams to avoid this fate. P.S. This has been tried before in a way. Back in the 90’s during the DEA Snowcap program where DEA agents were forward deployed to Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela to assist local security forces in counter narcotics interdiction at the source. I had the misfortune to… Read more »
I copied my comment from another blog to put it in the discussion here. Didn’t mean to imply that you guys are supporting this. Bad Froggy
As a Signal Officer, I can’t go to Ranger school (because I can only hold one job in the Regiment at my rank and I’m not likely leaving Bragg until I’m promotable) and didn’t attend Airborne School until I was assigned to XVIII as a 31-year old Major (2 years ago).
I’m perfectly ok with that.