Comments: "We haven’t heard a peep about this monstrosity from any GOP legislator." [Bumped]
It doesn't make any difference. Hussein won't let them fight anywhere, anyway.
Posted by Fat Man at January 24, 2013 3:50 PM
Dude, I saw G.I. Jane, and so I KNOW the gals can hack it!!!!!
Posted by Uncle Jefe at January 24, 2013 4:55 PM
The people of my country have become a herd of cowardly, effete, feminist losers. There really is nothing sacred anymore.
Posted by Denny at January 24, 2013 6:23 PM
If the feminists want complete victory, young women should be registering for selective service on their 18th birthdays just like the guys.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think it's an indication of something wrong with a society when its women, especially those of child-bearing age, are put in the front line warrior's role on a regular basis.
Posted by Grizzly at January 24, 2013 6:30 PM
I was surprised to see this here. That young woman is in the same platoon as my daughter, Emily, who weighs 120 and is 5 ft tall. You can imagine my dread that she may well wind up in Afghanistan or Syria or Africa.
I even dread the possibility that she will end up shooting her fellow citizens.
I agree with Auster. We are doomed. We murder our unborn, and now we send potential young mothers to die, and we still want our Social Security bennies.
God forgive me for approving her decision to go. It is bad enough that our young men die in wars, but this is beyond reprehensible.
Posted by Jewel at January 24, 2013 7:51 PM
I think I'm going to be sick.
Posted by Jewel at January 24, 2013 8:29 PM
Jewel: I sympathize. We are a Navy family going 'way back, but my son is going to be the first male of the line who will, God willing, not serve in his country's defense.
Why? Because his country -- the United States of America -- doesn't exist anymore.
And the entity that has taken its place isn't worth dying for. I'm not sending my kid into harm's way to protect homosexual "marriage", abortion on demand, or free phones for ghetto ghouls. Eff that.
I know a lot of conservatives still buy into that God & Country stuff. Hell, even I still stand when the flag passes, although I no longer salute or pledge my allegiance. But the plain fact of the matter is that the "country" in "God and Country" isn't our country any more. The government in Washington no longer represents the interests of the parties it was created to represent: the American states. It is now a tyranny run by people who hate us and everything for which we stand, and I say to hell with it.
I'm loyal to the country, not the government. My allegiance is pledged to the old America, the America with the 48-star flag. That America was worth the blood of its sons. This one isn't.
I'm sorry your daughter is in the Army. However, it's not too late for her to get out. There are a million ways, some legitimate, some not, to escape an enlistment commitment -- and for women it's even easier. An online keyword search under "get out of army" will prove enlightening.
And as for the oath she took: she swore to defend the Constitution of the United States. Under the current political order, that document is no longer in effect. Therefore, no oath to defend it can have any meaning so long as the current political order exists.
Above all, don't blame yourself. You thought you were doing the right thing, and the situation can be salvaged. May God bless you both.
Posted by B Lewis at January 24, 2013 8:45 PM
Wait till she gets to the part where she has to crouch in a hole for days, in the snow and rain, and crap on her e-tool. Panetta is an idiot and a fool.
Posted by Casey Klahn at January 24, 2013 9:19 PM
There's a terrific piece by a Marine captain about women in combat. She was a physical specimen, much better shape than I am and much tougher. She was able to keep up with the men but... she found out that after a short period of time, she couldn't. She did not have the endurance and body strength to maintain the brutal life soldiers do for weeks at a time in the field and broke down both psychologically and physically.
She makes an excellent case that women simply are unable to maintain combat readiness and fight a sustained combat, particularly not to the level of excellence the US military demands.
But for these people, its never been about being a good military. Its about being a PC military, and with women in combat, its also a military the public is less likely to support the use of.
Posted by Christopher Taylor at January 24, 2013 9:22 PM
Oh yeah, and unlike Steve Rogers? No experiment is going to turn that girl into Captain America. I'm sure she's brave and honorable and loyal, but that ain't enough.
Posted by Christopher Taylor at January 24, 2013 9:26 PM
This is something else no one wants to talk about, especially the fantasists running the military:
Rape.
http://www.laprogressive.com/ignoring-military-sexual-trauma/
Posted by Jewel at January 24, 2013 9:32 PM
The one question you've got to ask yourself is, Do I trust these guys, the SecDef, the Chiefs, and their bosses? Well, do you?
If so, you trust that they will do their sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, as best they are able. That in God we have placed our ultimate trust, that as a moral nation we will have and continue to earn his Blessings and Grace. That we and our chosen representatives will find the courage and honor to do His Will. And everything will be ok.
Well, if you don't trust them, then you know what will happen. The institutionalization of what has always happened ad hoc. Some guy works hard to be the general's pet, or he attaches himself (and now herselves) to the senior leadership, in a series of increasingly "important" assignments. But to get their ticket punched, they still need those all-important "combat" assignments. So a cupcake assignment will be found, where she will only have to go outside the wire rarely, and deal with token enemy action. And claim a Purple Heart for a boo-boo. And with ticket punched, it's onward and upward.
Same as it ever was, only now with bells on. Every soldier has seen guys like that. And now most of the women will be. An entire batallion of pulchri-John F'n Kerry's to lead us Forward.
There's another, newer/older path. New to us anyway. The political commissar, known in our army as the Commander's Equal Opportunity Adviser. Even the commissars had to go and shoot something every once in a while, they weren't allowed to lead entirely from behind a desk.
Am I griping? Maybe. Do you trust these guys the low-information voters put in place?
A peacetime army becomes full of such time-serving careerists. Nimitz and Eisenhower had to fire them by the bucketful. It took Lincoln two year to find Grant and Sherman and Sheridan. It took Bush even longer to find Petraues, because our modern Army has created barriers with rotations and career plans, to finding and pulling the successful warriors from where they are and giving them instant command over their erstwhile superiors.
Being a warrior is not a career, it is a vocation, and it comes with great costs and risks, personal and professional.
Governments only promote the warriors when the people finally decide, enough is enough, win or go home; or when losing is unacceptable.
The Usurper says our wars are over. Do you trust these guys?
Posted by John A. Fleming at January 24, 2013 10:31 PM
The one question you've got to ask yourself is, Do I trust these guys, the SecDef, the Chiefs, and their bosses? Well, do you?
If so, you trust that they will do their sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, as best they are able. That in God we have placed our ultimate trust, that as a moral nation we will have and continue to earn his Blessings and Grace. That we and our chosen representatives will find the courage and honor to do His Will. And everything will be ok.
Well, if you don't trust them, then you know what will happen. The institutionalization of what has always happened ad hoc. Some guy works hard to be the general's pet, or he attaches himself (and now herselves) to the senior leadership, in a series of increasingly "important" assignments. But to get their ticket punched, they still need those all-important "combat" assignments. So a cupcake assignment will be found, where she will only have to go outside the wire rarely, and deal with token enemy action. And claim a Purple Heart for a boo-boo. And with ticket punched, it's onward and upward.
Same as it ever was, only now with bells on. Every soldier has seen guys like that. And now most of the women will be. An entire batallion of pulchri-John F'n Kerry's to lead us Forward.
There's another, newer/older path. New to us anyway. The political commissar, known in our army as the Commander's Equal Opportunity Adviser. Even the commissars had to go and shoot something every once in a while, they weren't allowed to lead entirely from behind a desk.
Am I griping? Maybe. Do you trust these guys the low-information voters put in place?
A peacetime army becomes full of such time-serving careerists. Nimitz and Eisenhower had to fire them by the bucketful. It took Lincoln two year to find Grant and Sherman and Sheridan. It took Bush even longer to find Petraues, because our modern Army has created barriers with rotations and career plans, to finding and pulling the successful warriors from where they are and giving them instant command over their erstwhile superiors.
Being a warrior is not a career, it is a vocation, and it comes with great costs and risks, personal and professional.
Governments only promote the warriors when the people finally decide, enough is enough, win or go home; or when losing is unacceptable.
The Usurper says our wars are over. Do you trust these guys?
Posted by John A. Fleming at January 24, 2013 10:31 PM
Well, like Auster says: the ultimate triumph of Feminism...
My long, long experience of "feminism" has been, from the beginning, that its loudest adherents have always demanded to be treated as equals while expecting special treatment.
"I demand you help me prove that I'm your equal." Is it any wonder that the best men got tired of that so very long ago? Anybody, anybody, who didn't see this day coming 40 years ago probably shouldn't be allowed out by himself.
Disgusting, heartbreaking - and pluperfect inevitable once the first special preference laws were enacted.
Posted by Rob De Witt at January 24, 2013 11:04 PM
Are any of these social engineers, these women who demand the right for other women to die in battle, have any of them ever served in the military? Aren't they usually the Code Pink anti war pacifists?
Posted by Jewel at January 24, 2013 11:08 PM
Vive La Différence!
Posted by Casca at January 25, 2013 12:15 AM
"Until you accept that the aim of Leftists is to hurt, not help, none of their actions makes sense."
John J. Ray
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/
Posted by Scott M at January 25, 2013 3:20 AM
Okay, as a retired artillery officer, let me be clear that this is a bone-headed policy. But the same time, it will not change anything very much. I do not see a time when women will be involuntarily assigned to infantry or the vast majority of other specialties putatively opened to them now. And believe me, women are absolutely not going to volunteer for them in any kind of significant numbers at all, leading them to again be closed to women (unofficially, but actually). Here is why:
Back in the early 1980s, the US Army opened artillery specialties to women except for cannon crewman, which is an incredibly physically-demanding job. A fair, but not great, number of women volunteered and most of them just as quickly volunteered out once they found out how hard it was.
By the mind-80s the Army officially closed artillery branch to women and retrained the two or so women who were still in it.
There are many jobs that women will naturally gravitate to and infantry and other direct-combat, extremely physically-demanding jobs simply are not among them. Civilian experience in the job market shows that this is true, and not just in physical jobs.
Case in point: my daughter is presently majoring in chemical engineering in an engineering university. In her entire class there are four other women with the same major and dozens of men. This is absolutely typical of the STEMs and is repeated from year to year. There is certainly no physical reason that women can't do the STEMs and obviously women as a class are just as intelligent as men as a class. And yet, despite the fact that female engineering grads' starting salaries are between 10-15 percent higher than men's, women simply do not volunteer to major in the STEMs in significant numbers. Why?
So let the liberals have their orgy of self congratulation on how they've made the military so gloriously equal and gender neutral. It means nothing much as far as actual assignments of women in the force at large. You just cannot fool Mother Nature and the women who are joining the military know it. We may expect an initial rush of a few women who think of themselves as trailblazers, an media frenzy of coverage thereof and Congressional hearings when women don't start appearing in large numbers graduating from the Benning School for Boys (aka, the US Army Infantry School) - and then women will continue to stay away in droves. Because they are not idiots.
Postscript: When I was the brigade fire support officer for 1st Brigade, 3d Armored Division, the brigade's tactical operations center (TOC) consisted our four armored, tracked command post vehicles (M577 if you're interested, do a Google search to find a pic). They were my vehicle pplus one each for Operations, the engineer section and the S2 Intelligence section. The S2 officer and all three section soldiers were females. Whenever we occupied a new position, it always took the S2 section about 15 minutes longer than the rest of us to get ready to fight because of the manual labor involved in setting the TOC up.
Understand, none of the women ever complained, none were slackers and all were pretty good soldiers and did a good job in their specialty. They were simply too bodily small and under-muscled to keep pace with the men of the other sections. Usually the operations and engineer troops would finish their setup and then help the S2 section.
Posted by Donald Sensing at January 25, 2013 6:31 AM
Are any of these social engineers, these women who demand the right for other women to die in battle, have any of them ever served in the military? Aren't they usually the Code Pink anti war pacifists?
Posted by Jewel at January 24, 2013 11:08 PM
In other words, isn't this just another example of some better-than-you type standing on the sidelines and exhorting "Let's you and him fight?"
Yes, ma'am. I'd bet lunch on your being right. The various arguments put forth about leftism being a mental disease are the only explanation that can make sense of the jaw-dropping sense of entitlement displayed by people like media benjamin and her ilk.
Posted by Rob De Witt at January 25, 2013 8:37 AM
As retired Navy, as father of two beautiful (aren't they all) draft age daughters, as a man who has been involved with America's adventures in ambiguous transitioning areas for the last 30+ years, I am both appalled at Leon's decision--as he heads out the door--and mindful that in the last ten years of campaigns, the front lines of the battlespace are undetermined. We've lost many good warriors in the campaigns, many of them have been women, serving their country. So, perhaps Leon is just making official that which existed de facto.
BUT, But, but, why do we need to expand the pool of available personnel at the very time the size of the force is shrinking? If opening up all of the military to women contributes to combat effectiveness and efficiency, then I am all for it. If it is a neutral or possibly (probably??) deleterious, then we should not do so. Period.
So, when I read J.D. Johannes'
Elite Infantry: As the military gets smaller, it needs to be more elite
I could not help but think he nailed the way ahead, perfectly.
An excerpt:
To have a more mature combat arms less likely to cause international incidents by doing stupid things on video, the age of enlistment for the military should be raised to 21. Soldiers, after completing boot camp and a non-combat MOS could then try out for a combat arms position. This ensures that infantrymen really want to be in the infantry, and by making it more difficult to get into through a selection process, there will be even more pride in being in the combat arms leading to more dedicated and motivated infantrymen.The IQ requirement for soldiers should be raised to 110. Yes, this reduces the pool of potentials, but also reduces the number of personnel required as more intelligent service members will be more productive and require less supervision.
and
To ensure the physical resilience needed, the schools of infantry need to become longer, more arduous and the initial screening more rigerous in ways that mimic actual combat. The actual size, weight or physical appearance of the applicant should not matter. I have seen some very chubby mortarmen hump a base plate up and down mountains all day then drop rounds with sniper like accruacy.I would go so far as to making the Army's Ranger School the base level standard for all light infantry.
With the downsizing of the military and the increasing assymetry of the threat environment, the service chiefs should not be lowering the standards of the combat arms. The standards should be increased to ensure the maximum quality for the defense dollar spent. If women can meet these standards and have the desire and physical resilience to survive a 30 year career in the infantry, then maybe one day there will be a female of commander of CENTCOM and she will be one tough, bad ass officer who even the most salty of Marines will follow into combat.
Just so.
Posted by Sandy Daze at January 25, 2013 8:49 AM
Earlier someone made reference to MARINE Captain Katie Petronio recent article concerning opening MARINE infantry position to women. The article is from July 2012 and is, IMO, an important contribution to the discussion.
Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal
Posted by Sandy Daze at January 25, 2013 9:09 AM
The way I see it is we have had women marching for equal rights for years. Lets give them what they want! Since women are 51% of the population we have just double the number of potential military members to send to combat.
As someone long ago said, you reap what you sow.
Posted by flyslow at January 25, 2013 9:13 AM
What difference does it make? What difference, at this point, does it make?
Posted by Sandy Daze at January 25, 2013 9:21 AM
What gets me about this stupid need to make the military lok like the civilian world is that a military was never, in modern civilized times, meant to be like the rest of the citizenry. What we ask of the miitary is beyond the norm, so the norm cannot apply in the military services.
Posted by Don Rodrigo at January 25, 2013 9:35 AM
B. Lewis: It grieves me to say this, it deeply does, but I think you are right. The Constitution does not rule this country anymore, so what is the use or utility of taking an oath to defend it even unto death?
Posted by Donald Sensing at January 25, 2013 1:30 PM
Donald Sensing at January 25, 2013 1:30 PM: If you were to examine reality by the rules of classic fiction, the current government of the United States would by the Bad Guy -- the evil empire that the Good Guys were trying to defeat.
BAD GUY CHECKLIST
[x] Wants to control world
[x] Ruthless in its pursuit of power
[x] Populace under constant surveillance
[x] Controls thought by means of mass-media psychological warfare
[x] Uses brute force to deal with dissenters
[x] Secret police everywhere
[x] Laws enforced by paramilitary "stormtroopers" instead of peace officers
[x] Leaders insulated from population at large
[x] Recognizes no truly "private" property
[x] Nomenklatura
[x] Laws based upon human whim rather than Natural Law
[x] Oppresses Christians
[x] Props up one ethnic/racial/religious group (Southern white Christians) as public bogeyman
[x] Recognizes no limitation on power except for human will
[x] Does not defend women, children, widows, and orphans
It's hard, I know. My uncles all fought in World War II, and I grew up thinking of the United States as the Good Guy. But the plain fact is that the government of this country has become a force for evil, and the sooner we all come to terms with this fact, the better.
"You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it." -- George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), Easy Rider (AIP, 1968)
Posted by B Lewis at January 26, 2013 8:20 AM
Women in combat. Just what does that MEAN?
I'm still not sure that the thrust of this is to get wimminfolk into the Infantry. It seems that it's more to do with what used to be called (and still might be) DCPC (Direct Combat Probability Code) identifiers on the Modifcation Table of Organization and Equipment (the master cookie-cutter lists that provide form to units. For example the MTOE will allow for a squad of 11 persons, of which there are a Squad Leader, two Team Leaders, and eight Joes.
Or, it might provide for six teams of three soldiers each (one SGT, two SPC or Pvts) as equipment operators/drivers.
Those six teams will be DCPC coded as to what was the possibility of them being in Direct Combat (e.g. two-way rifle range). (Three being not much, two being kinda, and one being oh, yeah, rock&roll.)
The MOSs of the team members are all the same, say telecommunications specialists. But the teams marked as DCPC 1 were only supposed to be filled by men, while the DCPC 3 could be filled by men or women. (I don't remember about the Twos, but I guess they were mixed boy-girl, too).
In the battalions in which I served, in three different infantry divisions and two corps, we didn't really pay attention to that (and this was in the olden days -- I retired in '94). We had women linguists serving as low-level voice intercept team track commanders (M113 APCs), even though they were (as some would say) Just Girls. And they were down there breaking track when necessary, too. The positions qualified as DCPC 1. But there were women on the teams, and leading some of the teams.
My son's outfit in Afghanistan did a lot of walking around in the dirt with an MI support team in support of elements of an Infantry brigade. There were a number of womenfolk who served on those teams, walking around in the dirt, taking (and returning) direct fire (that's a two-way rifle range for ya). I kinda think those teams were coded DCPC1 (if such a thing exists any more).
So I'm wondering if this big deal is just doing away with the DCPC coding all together. If you're in the MOS, you server any where the MOS is. Corps HQ or in support of an Infantry platoon.
Just my guess. Does anyone have any factual information about what this brouhaha actually MEANS?
Posted by OldFert at January 26, 2013 9:29 AM
This could all be resolved very quickly if the feminists would just take up arms and declare war on all of us gun loving sexist males.
Posted by Deadly at January 28, 2013 3:14 PM
This could all be resolved very quickly if the feminists would just take up arms and declare war on all of us gun loving sexist males.
Posted by Deadly at January 28, 2013 3:14 PM
Es ist traurig, dass einige Leute nicht auf den Punkt kommen und solche Kommentare schreiben!
Posted by Russel Nassef at February 20, 2014 11:15 AM