Consulting the “experts” on women in combat

I had to think a couple of times before I posted this link that James sent us because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m being the big bad infantryman bashing some Air Force chick, but, ya know what, she’s asking for it. She’s Senior Airman Stacy Fogarty and she says she served in Iraq, which is honorable enough, but I’m guessing that as an expert on women in combat, her experience is somewhat lacking. But that’s not what she tells the reporter dude;

“The enemy is not looking at us and say oh, they’re women. Let’s not do what we were going to do. They just see us as Americans and we should see each other as Americans not broken down by male and female,” she said.

“Do you feel that you had combat experiences when you were in the Air Force?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Yeah,” she said. “Civilians are throwing bombs over to the base. So at any time we could be hit. You’re not segregated out there as to who is combat and who is not. The minute you hit the AOR (area of responsibility) that’s a combat.”

Fogarty acknowledged there is a difference between being “in combat” and being in an infantry unit where you have to pull a trigger.

“Do you think you could have been on the front lines pulling a trigger?” I asked.

“I do. In the military you’re trained to do what needs to be done for the greater good,” Fogarty said.

“As soon as I asked that question I thought I’m not sure I’d even ask that question to a man,” I said.

“It’s interesting isn’t it?” she said.

Now, my wife’s friend, a nurse, was killed in Iraq when she was out running around the Green Zone one day when a mortar landed near her, I’m pretty sure that if she had lived through that experience she wouldn’t admit that because she’d been blown up, she’d make a good infantryman. But Fogarty, somehow thinks that because she *could* have been blown up at some point in her tour, that makes her equal to any infantryman. Actually all that makes her is a potential target. I’m sure she did a fine job, whatever that was, because she doesn’t tell us what she did in Iraq, but I think if we knew what her job was, we’d think her bravado would seem even more ridiculous.

While I’m sure her Air Force training was the best they could give her, I’m also sure that none of it had much to do with pulling triggers, not that it’s a bad thing, the Air Force seems more focused on their specialties and less on the ancillary war-fighting stuff, mainly because they have people in the Air Force to protect their technicians from the war-fighting stuff, and they depend on the Army and Marines for extra layers of protection.

I’m also sure that Stacy joined the Air Force so she’d be back from the battle, otherwise, she might have enlisted in the Marines or the Army. but, that’s just speculation because I don’t know what her job was in the Air Force, but she’s not exactly forthcoming on that point.

On edit: MCPO NYC USN (Ret.) dropped a video off in the comments, and it turns out that she worked in a medical supply room, so yeah, she’s a hardened combat vet more than qualified to comment on women in combat.

Category: Military issues