My thanks to Eugene for the invitation to guest blog and to Prof. Browne for a copy of his book. Also, my thanks to all for considering a different perspective on gender integration in the military and the much larger issue of how to best provide for the common defense of the republic.
My central premise is that military effectiveness is enhanced by the inclusion of the best qualified individuals in a gender integrated force, including combat roles. Participation should be predicated on individual performance and not presumed group traits. Women are neither inferior nor superior to men; we are all individuals first and foremost, accountable for our actions.
Not only does this make for the best defense, it is consistent with the oath that all servicemembers take to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
I emphasize the word republic (from the Latin res publica, or the people's thing) because the connection between citizenship and military service is as old as the concept of self-government; those who govern themselves protect themselves. Conversely, warrior aristocracies claiming a monopoly on the use of force based on their inherent superiority (birth into the nobility) are long viewed as antithetical to republicanism. This is in part because the reciprocal of protection is often obedience.
In the American example, the debate over the nature of the armed forces and who serves predates the republic. Issues of inclusion and exclusion are a constant thread in U.S. military history, both in (and between) the professional "regular" army and America's various citizen-armies. The same is true of the Navy. Military historian Alex Roland argues "that personnel is the most important topic...Who is going to fight, under what terms, and with what consequences? This is the fundamental question of American military experience."
Thus, the so-called "feminization" of the military over the last one hundred years is really part of what I call the Americanization of our armed forces.
In addition to teaching military history, the focus of my research is on the connection between military service and republican citizenship, --not gender issues. While I normally don't get into the "women in combat" debate for reasons that Mark Grimsley pointed out, I've decided to engage this time for several reasons.
First, the protracted limited war in Iraq will eventually force a new debate on the composition of the U.S. armed forces. The impact on readiness of current ground combat exclusion policies is but one facet of a much larger public discourse that needs to take place.
Some of the most contentious issues will include the use of armed mercenaries, integration of the Reserve Component, and conscription. While I am adamantly opposed to conscripted military service or labor (national service), there are advocates on the political right and left who are already pushing hard for both. Invariably, the proposals include some degree of female liability.
Secondly, there appears to be widespread misunderstanding about what constitutes military readiness and how it is measured by the armed forces. It is difficult to have a serious debate until such terms are understood in the context the military uses them.
Last, but not least, Prof. Browne's central justification for excluding women from combat seems to be the notion that women are inherently inferior to men, based on "new evidence" drawn from evolutionary psychology (EP). In other words, the individual doesn't matter. Yet, as Edward Hagen of the Institute for Theoretical Biology explains EP, "nothing in evolutionary theory privileges males over females, however, nor does evolutionary theory prescribe social roles for either sex."
This appeal to natural superiorty is reminiscent of Social Darwinism, where proponents of racial superiority misappropriated the work of Darwin to advance their social agendas. It was used to justify Eugenics and a lot worse. Arguments of supposed innate superiority (as opposed to demonstrated individual ability) have no place in prescribing the participation of adult citizens in America's public institutions.
Hopefully, in addition to addressing Prof. Browne's arguments, I can add some illumination on these and other larger issues central to providing for the common defense.
Finally, a few points of clarification on my background. On the issue of how to abbreviate my naval rank, it is well estabished that the Navy does not speak English. Having been retired and in the academic world for some time, Eugene's use of Capt. is fine with me.
The relevant point is that I am a practitioner who retired as an O6, not an O3. In addition to my aviation and shipboard experience, I have significant experience from while I was on the Joint Staff in how military readiness is evaluated on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare. My Joint Staff tour included various field assessments of Joint Task Forces which made it very clear that the Navy and Air Force have it much easier than the Army and Marine Corps.
That being said, there was nothing extraordinary about my career outside of the first female context. I was not a combat pilot nor do I claim to have any first hand knowledge of ground combat. My career spanned the years when Navy and Air Force women were prohibited by law from flying aircraft actually engaged in combat missions. We could get shot at, but not shoot back.
However, having lived through the "pink and blue" military force that Prof. Browne advocates a return to, I know why there is no going back. The risk rule and other paternalistic policies were as unfair to men as they were to women. They proved unworkable in the Gulf War. The issue now is whether we change (and if so, how) the ground combat exclusion policies.
There are many valid concerns about introducing women into direct ground combat forces. There are also many valid concerns that current exclusion policies are making it more difficult for commanders to get the job done while maintaining a legal fiction that women aren't in combat. It is time to review the current policies.
My next post will provide a brief historical overview of women in combat and address some of the current issues in Iraq and Afghanistan. I look forward to reading your comments.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Closing Comments:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-How Many Women Does it Take to Make it Worthwhile?:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Recap of Prof. Browne's Arguments:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Response to Comments:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Response to Comments:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Entry Standards, Strength, Fitness, and Cohesion:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Historical Perspective Women in Combat:
- The Americanization of the Armed Forces-Overview:
Then explain the use of gender norming in the PT scores for the Army. Why are 18-year old female soldiers allowed an easier standard (15:36 for a 2-mile run, 42 push-ups) than 51-year old male soldiers (14:24, 59)?
That doesn't strike me as a fair demand. Capt. Mariner, in the very language you quote ("Participation should be predicated..."), does not purport to advocate for every aspect of the status quo. More specifically, she does not even reference the "gender norming" you speak of. I don't see why she should have to explain a particular Army requirement when there is no indication that she supports it.
Of course, if Capt. Mariner chooses to defend the PT gender norming, I will sit here meekly.
Gaius, you missed the should in the quoted text. Her post doesn't do anything to explain the different standards, because she's implicitly arguing that it's not a prudent double-standard. RM's point is that it doesn't make sense to exclue women from combat on the basis of being women. Each potential soldier must be evaluated based on some objective criteria of combat ability. If 25% of female recruits can run 2 miles in 14:24 and do 59 push-ups (or whatever standard the military decides is acceptable for a combat-sufficient soldier), then we should be willing to place those 25% in combat.
I imagine RM's response would be: don't normalize it to gender, don't normalize it by race, don't normalize it by age. Just determine a good standard that's makes a good soldier, then take everyone that exceeds that threshold.
The percent of women that can reach that standard will be lower than the percent of men that meet it, but by flatly disallowing women in combat, the military is arbitrarily restricting its potential soldier pool. This will become more of an issue the longer our armed forces are at war. It may not have been an issue had we walked out of Iraq in 2005. But as the war there and in Afghanistan pushes on, we'd prefer that our soldiers don't grow exhausted because we weren't willing to put combat-capable people into the fight because of notions of gender.
Despite the slogan "An Army of One", that's really not true. There's no such thing as a Super Soldier, and in combat the group dynamic is everything. So, sorry, but after having served in combat arms and service/support, the dynamic is everything. The drama found in mixed units is simply not worth importing into the line.
In any case, if the standards for men make sense, and a vanishingly small number of women can meet them, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the extra money (recruiting, female specific facilities/equipment, etc.) to allow a tiny number of women into the Armed forces even if they could do the job.
Welcome, Capt. Mariner, and thank you conspirators for providing us with her views.
It depends on your perspective. The people who coined the phrase res publica restricted its military to those rich enough to provide their own arms, and restricted command above the level of the century to the aristocracy. It was only after the Marian reforms were accepted (i.e. after the Sullan backlash) that enlistment of the Head Count into the legions was the norm--and facilitated the end of the republic (except in name).
I hope the author's analysis of effective forces will not based on the unconstrained mode of limitless resources, since in the real world resources are constrained.
I also hope her discussion of mercenaries will reflect that according the GC Protocol a mercenary has to be "neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict", which would exclude Americans.
And if the author is retired, her rank is CAPT/Capt (ret.) To leave off the qualifier is more misleading than however it is abbreviated.
COL (ret) libertarian soldier
1. Women are, in fact, quite inferior physically.
2. Your presumption that there is a warrior aristocracy in the nation is absurd. Comparing the exclusion of women to a male aristocracy misses the point. Women are not suited for the job, period.
3. Even if you could find a rare few (no where near that 25% suggested by Dylanfa, probably closer to 0.25%) that can withstand the rigors required of ground combat, they would be too disruptive an influence on the whole.
4. There is no "right" to be in combat. It is an obligation and a necessity. When we start obliging women and young boys to fight, then we're in big trouble. Women generally have the physical ability of young boys. Would you say that we should allow 14 year olds in ground combat? Only when the enemy is marching down Pennsylvania Avenue and we are more than desperate.
5. Women flying combat aircraft is more acceptable but only because we haven't had a serious air threat since Korea. When we get to where an enemy can actually get past our air defenses and start bombing our cities and our ground forces, and airports, we might want to reconsider women even in air combat, but that's not going to change anytime soon. We have 100% air superiority over the entire globe wherever we choose to go, so air combat is no longer much in the way of real fighting.
6. If women were so suited for ground combat, explain why in the history of the entire world, across every culture no nation has ever found it useful to have women in ground combat, save for extreme times when defeat is looming? Ground combat has not changed much in its nature. Nor have women and men. You can wish for an agenda of women being equal to men in all respects, but it isn't real.
7. You comment about women being excluded from ground and air combat roles being unworkable only highlights that we had already gone too far. If we're serious about defending this nation and its interests, we should return to a more exclusionary role for women.
Sanity is defined as the degree to which one perceives reality accurately. Our nation need not become collectively insane and imagine it to be real that women have a right or a benefit to the nation to be in ground combat.
To provide context as to my point of view, I served as a Sergeant with the 307th Engineers, 82d Airborne and later as an infantry platoon leader with the 1/7 Infantry attached to the 1st Armored during the Persian Gulf War.
Based on your position above, are you advocating that women seeking to serve in the combat arms meet the same requirements as the men in my infantry platoon in stark contrast to the present lowered standards? We are talking about the informal requirements for infantry, which are far higher than the minimum requirements for male soldiers as a whole.
If this is the case, I doubt a fraction of one percent of the women currently serving could make the cut.
If this is not the case, then you are lowering standards for the combat arms and will get soldiers killed.
I think it is going to be a lot closer to zero percent. My army service was in a military police unit where most women were unable to mount the M-60, and none of them could mount the M2HB or Mk19. Likewise only a few could change ammo or charge the weapons.
Also, they could not wear body armor and their equipment and move any distance either in the field or the MOUT trainer, after PT training and many tries. We stopped wearing body armor in MOUT after that, because they could not climb the rope grappel even when knotted (most still couldn't after we left off the armor but it was easier on the men who had to lift them) and they could not do the sewer trainer and were exhausted by the stairs and after a few room drills.
I also presume you're talking about officers. Outside of officers, multigenerational enlistments are not unheard of, but certainly not the norm. The majority are not, and I've never known any enlisted recruiter to turn down any qualified recruit.
Heh. I joined the Army later in life after I had already done most of my professional training. When I went through boot camp, I did so with a group that was mostly my age, ranging from mid 30s to mid 50s -- most of us had been recruited for specific skills. Needless to say, we didn't break any records with our PT results (though we all had to meet standards). Some of the younger folk did quite well -- particularly those who were going on to specialized combat units rather than the basement of a bunker in Washington, DC.
Nonethless, we stumbled through it. One of the most amusing things I remember was going through some of the common soldier skills training and coming to the part where we learned how to dig foxholes. Our instructor was a delightful petite young woman E3 who could not have weighed more than 95 lbs.
She picked up the entrenching tool and told us how to properly dig the foxhole. One of the women in my unit noted that it would take a long time to dig a foxhole the way our instructor said, and asked what to do if we were under fire. Our instructor laughed and said "OK, this if for the ladies. If you ever have to dig a foxhole quickly, you need a George. Let me show you." She then shouted for George, and this 6ft 6in huge guy came lumbering up. Our instructor then added "In case of emergency, attach George to the entrenching tool and continue as previously instructed."
You are correct. I was speaking of the officer corps. Of course enlisted recruiters will take anyone they can get.
However, while they do not require a history of military service, the military does encourage generaltional service and likes to see it on officer applications.
Really? That's what we are calling it?
I"m pretty agnostic about this topic, but I read it with great interest, However this type of language creep is doubleplusungood.
Scipio is correct that we are developing a military class, but I would agree with Skyler that this class is not excluding others from the military.
The men in my family back at least three generations have generally served in the military - mostly enlisted, some officers, with both NCO and officer tours in my case.
I am hardly alone. In the service, I found many similar families in the South and to a lesser extent in the other parts of the country.
What worries me is not that we have military class in this country, but that we are also developing an equally dedicated non-military class of families whose members rarely if ever serve and who disproportionately fill our academic and political elites. In my discussions on legal and political blogs, I have come to the sad conclusion that the cultural divide between these two classes is often profound. This is a sure recipe for trouble in the future.
I like this angle at least. Also, I for one would rather have American women in combat than mercenaries.
Contrary to military practice, it is usual in civilian life to address and refer to retired and reserve officers by the titles they held when on active duty, and to abbreviate those titles according to the rules of ordinary English. Moreover, except on first use, one ignores the distinctions between the ranks of first and seccond lieutenant; lieutenant commander and commander; lieutenant colonel and colonel; and the various ranks of general officer -- addressing them as "lieutenant," "commander", "colonel," and "general" or "admiral," respectively.
It is not misleading to do so unless the author is implying falsely that the officer in question has current command authority. It is merely a courtesy intended to recognize the officer's honorable service to his country.
Hence, while I might first refer to you in a written piece as Col. Libertarian Soldier, Seventh New York Infantry (Ret.) (Not knowing your real name, I can't look up whether to put in a Guard or Reserve regiment, or simply to use AUS, USMC or USAF), in subsequent references, you'd simply be Col. Soldier, or spelt out Colonel Soldier. In no case would I use the telegraphic abbreviations of titles in the civilian world.
It's analogous to the abbreviations for the names of the States. On a letter, I'd use the abbreviation MA for "Massachusetts." In a bibliography, I'd list a publisher as "Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley," with the traditional abbreviation. The Postal Service codes simply are not used in formal writing; they are for the convenience of the Postal Service.
Military performance depends on teams (skilled groups), not individuals. People don't need to be "best qualified"; they just need to meet minimum standard. "Best qualified" must also include "suited to the rigours of the environment" (ie. life in the field or at sea) as well as technical and academic checkboxes. "Group traits" can not be assumed away if they happen to be part of the reason the team functions as such. To emphasise: one does not "participate", one serves as a member of a team. It would be helpful if the premises were rephrased to remove the flavour of a high-school intramural sports program mission statement.
Some women are capable of combat service, just as some men are incapable of it. The issue hinges on whether "some women" is "very few women", whether there are any costs of "participation" (eg. unacceptable reductions of standard), and whether the costs outweigh the benefit (the increase in the size of the pool of people willing and capable of serving in a particular arm).
With respect to standards: the standard is the minimum, and the minimum is good enough. If the minimum performance standard for one person is deemed acceptable for a particular gateway (eg. entry into basic training, completion of basic, entry into infantry school, etc) then it is applicable to everyone.
>"In case of emergency, attach George to the entrenching tool and continue as previously instructed."
In case of emergency, George is probably going to be already occupied wherever his physical attributes make him most useful. But that raises the point: that even in a non-gender-integrated field unit, tasks are typically assigned to whoever has the most talent and acumen. Not everyone has to be George. But not everyone can hand off to George, either. Anyone who has observed a small team in action knows that members will pick up slack for each other from time to time for temporary weaknesses, but that a person who presents a continual burden erodes group cohesion.
Straw man already?
Not to mention reduces the chance of accomplishing the mission.
Does that count, now? It's been a while since I've been in.
In other words: "I am woman; hear me whine." We are not even 10 minutes into the debate, and already she is playing the misogyny card!! EUGENICS??? ... Sheeesh!
I never heard Prof. Browne even come close to claiming that "women are inherently inferior to men." The only things I heard him claim were that (1) the vast majority of women have *much* less physical strength than the average male and would therefore be at a huge disadvantage in hand-to-hand ground combat, and (2) Males are hard-wired by evolution to 'kill people and break things' whereas most women aren't; those psychological differences would presumably make it even more difficult for most women to become effective ground combat soldiers.
A very few of the commenters (myself included) raised additional, subjective moral/sociological objections, suggesting that it is fundamentally barbaric and uncivilized to unnecessarily expose women to high risk situations as long as there are still any able-bodied men left standing. But this was a minority viewpoint, and I certainly didn't hear Prof. Browne endorsing it. And in any case, that traditional, chivalrous viewpoint would be summarized as "women are more valuable than men," NOT as "women are inferior."
As for physical fitness testing requirements, the fact that they change for men based on age suggests (but does not conclusively prove) that the idea isn't to ensure that all the men meet some minimum level of physical fitness, but is more like getting as much as possible out of each serviceman, ensuring that each serviceman is seeing to his physical fitness, and creating a general fitness culture. So it would be something like "be all that you can be" which mitigates in favor of lower numerical requirements for women on tests of physical strength. Granted, those numbers for women seem to be lower than those for even considerably older men, so I'm open to the argument that the women would be too weak to perform critical ground combat functions.
In any case, preventing women from flying planes into combat sounds pretty darn hard to justify based physical weakness. What does flying planes have to do with upper-body strength?
DISCLAIMER: I am one of those effete liberals from a nonmilitary family, and don't know much about the combat or the military. This is why I'm merely agnostic on women in ground combat roles, even though I'm a feminist.
This seems like a flagrant straw man to me.
Simply using the phrase "superiority" changes the context and the moral value significantly, compared to a slightly more accurate phrase like "physical superiority," let alone "more physically suited to the task." Claiming that Prof. Browne says that males are flatly "superior" is a significant distortion, since it makes his argument sound vastly less palatable.
Similarly, the idea of "privileges" and "social roles" misses Prof. Browne's point in the same fundamental way. Just as he didn't claim that men are "superior", nor did I read his arguments to claim any sort of "privilege". And I'm sure he wouldn't consider it a question of "social role", but of "capability." More importantly, EP provides not evidence, but explanation. If women are (on average) less suited to combat, it is because of their physical or personality characteristics. Those characteristics may follow from EP (or may not!), but it is the characteristics that matter, not why they exist.
I'd like to make clear that I'm not trying to take sides in the debate here; I'm not military, and I don't consider myself sufficiently well-informed to have an educated opinion. Hopefully that'll change by the end of this segment, but Capt. Mariner will need to avoid such straw-man arguments if she wishes her side to come out more convincing once all is said and done!
I hope that Capt. Mariner addresses this, because I think that it is a very compelling argument against women in combat positions. Top combat performance requires team cohesiveness as much (or even more) than each individual's physical abilities. Even if a women meets the high physical qualifications (upper body strength, stamina, etc.) required for combat, her presence in a unit is detracts from the cohesion of the squad or unit.
(Though race or sexual orientation might possibly also detract from team cohesion, I don't think that it comes anywhere close to that from gender.) It's not sexist to observe that, in a group, men are more quickly and more easily comfortable with other men than with women, and vice versa.
Creating all-women units wouldn't solve the problem because there would still be a lack of cohesion in the larger military group, as a unit is just one small part of an army.
Maybe. My experience is that enlisted level team cohesion fades fairly quickly at higher levels. At the company unit level it is still strong, at the battalion/squadron (200-500 men) level it is there as a strong group ID (ie in an airport bar: "Who are you with?" "3/6--you?" "VMA-214"), at the regiment/division level it is fairly vague.
In my army time group ID faded quickly above the battalion level unless the soldier was a member of special unit such as 101st air assault or ranger.
While "identifying the best qualified individuals" is great in theory, in practice we are all people with limited time and resources. We cannot evaluate every aspect of every person on a case-by-case basis, we have to use shortcuts. Those shortcuts are the dreaded "stereotypes" that get a bad rap in today's world, but which evolved as useful, time-saving generalizations about the expected strengths and weaknesses of members of certain groups. Sure, anytime you generalize about a group of people you may wind up missing out on somebody who would be just what you're looking for, but the fewer outliers there are, the less likely that investigating the individuals of that group will have benefits outweighing the costs.
I can't say it's a good start for her rebuttal. They say "lead with strength", but she's led with ad hominem attacks on her opponent, dancing just around the edges of calling him a sexist patriarchal oppressor blah blah blah etc etc etc.
Great, then we will call your position "Stupid dumb evilness", and mine "Great smart wise plan". Oh, and my team will run all the professional journals so we will enforce those terms.
Men in combat also tend to "protect the girl". Remember the huge issue when there was a young female soldier captured during the invasion of Iraq? The army pulled out all the stops to recapture her. That was nice, but had she been a he the situation could have been evaluated on it's merits. There could have been more people killed in a desperate attempt to recapture the girl.
The issue with gays in the military is identical. The problem isn't the sex. But when men begin to pair up, they're not spending 100% of their efforts fighting the enemy while staying alive.
This country isn't desperate enough to require women in combat. There is no right of a women to demand it, any more than men have a right to be allowed into combat with any number of disqualifications.
Sorry, but I'm not going to consider anecdotes or personal impressions to be much by way of evidence: it's just to easy to find what you want to believe in personal experience.
The Army would have gone all out for any MIA that they knew the location of. Indeed, rescues abound in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The MoH given to Murray in Afghanistan was part of a rescue in which over ten soldiers died and no one was actually saved until days later.
In addition, the Lynch op was part of an overall clearing op to eliminate an enemy force that was behind our advance and clearly threatened our supply lines.
So, it has to be rebutted, yet again.
Yes, the Israelis tried it and it was such a colossal failure that they stopped doing it and refuse to do it again.
Oh, and Elliot, you don't need to describe yourself as an effete liberal. One's political persuasion is irrelevent when presenting an argument, or should be. As is ones' military background.
But it does require an understanding of the real world. I'm not sure why you disagree with the observation that women are physically inferior to men. Yes, being weaker is by definition inferior. We need not distort the language. If it is true that men are more susceptible to heart attacks, that is irrelevent since most of that susceptibility comes at an age that we're not addressing here. The same is true is there is any difference in length of life. This is an aspect that is of no relevence to this argument. For the purposes of anything we discuss here, women are physically inferior to men.
And that's because a trained and serving person's judgment and observations are worthless, but some grad student who took a mil history class once and and now is in a soc masters course is well able to judge unit cohesion factors during drive by observations.
RE: Women In the Combat Zone
Would you please address this....
TO: Rosemary Mariner
RE: Women In the Combat Zone
Would you please address this....
Sex, soldiers and consequences at Bagram -- WorldNetDaily today*
I've other matters as well. But this will do for a start.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[A woman's place is not, repeat NOT, forward of the COMMZ. -- CBPelto]
I've other matters as well. But this will do for a start.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[A woman's place is not, repeat NOT, forward of the COMMZ. — CBPelto]
P.S. TO: blogmeister at volokh.com/comments....
How on God's green Earth can you put in a link that is NOT going to violate the 60-character limitation?
RE: Apologies of Previous Post
But when this silly system refused to post my intended article, with a link to an item at WorldNetDaily on this very subject, things got garbled and confused when I tried to do it again and determined that I had to do the 'link' via circumlocution.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[If you really want to foul things up, it takes a computer.]
Good lord. Here we go, down the rat hole. Are you from Mars? If not, please stop now.
This isn't a parlor game or a theoretical debate. The winning of battles hang in the balance here. This is no place for nonsense.
If you're going to peddle this nonsense, at least have the common decency to tell us about your combat experiences. Please describe the combat situations in which you were a direct participant. How many enemy kills are you responsible for? How many enemy have you dispatched in hand-to-hand combat? How many of your wounded fellow warriors have you picked up and carried to a more safe position, and how far did you carry him?
There is a scene in "300" in which a deformed Spartan asks Leonidas for permission to join the fight against Xerces' army. Leonidas makes a telling point about what is required of a warrior.
Women have a place in the US military but no place in combat. Trying to peddle this "based on the individual" nonsense in our politically correct era is worse than sophistry, it is dangerous.
You need to think long and hard about the consequences of your argument. You're not going to die on any battle field as a result, but brave warriors will.
And their deaths will be upon you. Take note of that.
Or even old men and young women, for that matter!
But there's the ideal solution: If we so desparately want to have women in combat, just let 'em wait until they're post-menopausal. That way, you won't have all those unit cohesion problems --- and they'll scare the Hell out of the enemy soldiers as well ;-) I know, I'm a sexist pig: So sue me.
Not all women will measure up just as not all men will. Our male soldiers lose in hand to hand combat situations, too. The real key to close combat is to fight smarter, not to be the biggest.
You left out the Marine Corps, which never "went forward" and the IDF which has gone back.
Putting women in combat is not going forward. It is marching to defeat.
This is obviously preposterous.
We do not build combat forces on individual heroics. Since Napolean, armies have been built on the mass levee. Armies must create and sustain forces based on human performance in the aggregate.
This means basing policy decisions on statistical measures, i.e. valid and true generalizations, that are likely to produce adequate combat forces. Ms. Mariner goes wrong at the outset.
By way of competing ethos, I'm a former US Army Infantryman. I've personally seen the poor results from integrated land combat forces.
Many posters here have asked for evidence that women cause combat units to under-perform. Although, this misplaces the burden of proof onto the negative, I've included links here:
UK MOD study
A good summary
Great. The current Administration makes torture policy on the basis of "24". Now were told to make military policy on the basis of "300". Can we teach science on the basis of "Star Wars"?
Right! Just because nobody in the past ever successfully taught a pig to sing, doesn't PROVE that it can't be done.
Oh, boo. Talk about arguing in bad faith. What cheap rhetoric. Her entire "argument" is: "Why do you hate vagina?"
RE: Concerns &Issues
"There are many valid concerns about introducing women into direct ground combat forces. There are also many valid concerns that current exclusion policies are making it more difficult for commanders to get the job done while maintaining a legal fiction that women aren't in combat. It is time to review the current policies." -- Rosemary Mariner
Indeed.
The first is the fiction.
A female Army 'Ground Surveillance Radar (GSR)' platoon leader is NOT in combat because those types are not supposed to 'fight'. Bull pucky. They're working on the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA).
This is just more politically correct obfuscation, i.e., lies. Lies get people killed in combat; one way or another.
RE: Capabilities and Limitations
How many women are capable of working weeks on end in the muck and filth of a combat zone? Carrying 100+ pounds of equipment out the door of a C130 inflight? Humping 80 pound rucks and equipment? Going the last 200 yards under heavy fire to close with an entrenched enemy and killing them in hand-to-hand combat?
Heck. Damned few. And YOU know it.
We're talking serious 'clueless' here if you think they're up to that.
Then there are the logistical aspects.
Which is more important in supplying a combat force cut off from it's regular lines of supply? Food? Bullets? Kotex?
Imagine the 101st at Bastogne with women making up a large part of the combat forces.
Then there is the business as related to in the WorldNetDaily article I cited above.
I seem to recall, in my professional readings at IOAC in 1980, something about the draconian measures Marshall Tito had to implement in order to keep his co-ed partisans focused on fighting the Nazis instead of on each other. I believe it was summary execution by the company commander in front of all members of his command.
Combat is historically described as long periods of boredom punctuated by brief episodes of terror.
Bored people WILL find something to do. And, if you put a man and a woman on LP/OP in the middle of the night, well ahead of your principle line of defense, they'll figure out something to do.
Indeed, based on what I heard at LEDC '92, from veterans of GWI, that male-female truck driving team was captured by an Iraqi patrol because they were tired of driving and were doing something else when they were caught with their breeches down.
Same thing happened at Fort Carson in early 80s while I was there.
There was a call for a medical evacuation due to a cold injury. The battalion could not raise it's direct support ambulance team. The battalion XO went looking for them. Found them. Using the cots in the back end of their ambulance for recreational purposes.
Hope that gives you more for your thesis, Herren Captain.
Looking forward to reading it.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. -- Thomas Jefferson]
Happyshooter, true; I agree. But I'm also thinking of the fact that in combat settings, one unit will be fighting alongside another unit, and that in life and death combat situations, ease of interactions between members of different "teams" is very important.
Elliot Reed,
Do I have any actual scientific evidence that women in a team of men lead to a lack of cohesion? Do I have scientific evidence that generally men are more quickly and easily comfortable with other men rather than women? No. But you need not throw out common sense, and mine and yours and everyone else's personal experiences just because it hasn't been statistically documented.
Obviously men can work closely and effectively with women - it happens every day in thousands of offices around the world. But no one's life hangs in the balance. Combat - which is a life and death situation - requires a group to come together to work for a common goal as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it seems to me that this is more difficult with team members of different genders.
And sadly ad homenim arguments are not as rare on this board as they ought to be. I figured that since somebody was fairly likely to accuse me of effete liberalness anyway, I might as well insulate myself from the charge by admitting to it.
I read Prof. Browne's arguments; they shouldn't be too hard to shoot down.
RE: No Proof, Eh?
"Do I have scientific evidence that generally men are more quickly and easily comfortable with other men rather than women? No. But you need not throw out common sense, and mine and yours and everyone else's personal experiences just because it hasn't been statistically documented." -- just a thought
Actually....that's EXACTLY what they want to argue; "You have no proof. So, whatever you say is only anecdotal and of no worth."
However, I'm reminded of how frequently 'common sense' is accurate.
Case in point....Denver International Airport (DIA)....
When Denver's government was looking around to find land to build a newer and bigger airport on, they visited the area to the northeast of the city.
As part of their research, they asked the people in the area what they thought of the idea. Many of the old-timers said it was a bad idea. Why? Well, they said, because they get more fierce thunderstorms and funnel clouds than any other part of Colorado along the Front Range.
The researchers blew these reports of 'common sense' off.
The land was purchased and construction began.
Meanwhile, a few miles west of there, in Boulder, CO, NOAA was starting tests on the then-new doppler radar system.
Guess what they discovered....
...those crazy old-timers, with their 'common sense' were right. That land, in the Spring and Summer was rife with funnel cloud formations inside of fierce thunderstorms.
Heck, four years earlier, while driving along I-70, east of Denver, I watched a C141 scrambling to save itself from under a thunderstorm.
It had just taken off from Lowry AFB and it looked, for all the world, to be hanging in the air by an invisible string. Unmoving at a 30° angle.
I watched in wonder, trying to figure out what has happening when all of a sudden a huge dust-storm started directly underneath it. It was caught in a micro-downburst.
It did manage to scramble out of it.
The point here is that when people like Elliot Reed, and perhaps Captain Rosemary want to make a point, they won't accept common sense, if it flies in the face of their theory.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Science is Truth. Don't be misled by facts.]
- Combat vet (VN)
- Staff REMF (GWI)
- former Drill SGT
- Former field grade combat arms officer (armor)
- Former OR analyst
- current spouse of a NG field grade officer (lawyer)
a couple of comments:
1. as SLA Marshall pointed out in Men Against Fire, soldiers don't fight for God and country, they fight for "the respect of their squad mates"
2. regardless of how high tech the weapon systems, combat at the pointy edge of the spear (e.g. Infantry, Armor, and Combat Engineers) is all about unit cohesion. Those that have it win, those that don't lose.
3. (thus far, fairly straight forward). Unit cohesion in the squad or tank crew is about a shared warrior ethos, shared experiences, and frankly male bonding about how we're bigger, tougher, and meaner than those SOB's on the other side of the lines and frankly, tougher than the rest of the squads in our unit.
4. ground combat leadership is the toughest job in the world. everyone needs to be confident that everyone else is pulling their fair share of the dirty jobs. The idea that the Sarge is playing favorites, and Jane doesn't walk point is a morale killer. women in those direct combat jobs make the leadership job tougher, and hurt unit cohesion on average.
5. women are different than men. They have better hand eye skills and less testosterone. They make good pilots and intel analysts. They have poor upper body strength and make terrible direct combat troopers. The basic gender bias in the PT tests says it all. Add to that the gender difference in body mass. Even when a 120 pound woman can run as fast as a man in a test, she won't be able to do that when both are wearing 100 pounds of gear and its 110 in the Iraqi shade.
6. Ok assume 1 in 1000 enlisted women (and we need to focus the discussion on enlisted women and not female USMA grads.) can perform the real set of direct combat job skills wearing 80 pounds of crap in 110 degree. And she can do that aligned with the 50th percentile of 11B'S or 19E MOS's. So we have 1.2 million folks in the Army (all compos), and say 13% roughly are women? so that's roughly 150,000 women overall and 150 that can meet the standard, of course only 50 are in the Active Army. Now factor in choice. How many WANT to be riflemen, instead of medics or MPs or truck drivers. your 50 becomes 5.
(little aside: in Germany in 77, I was in a combat brigade near the border. Division wanted to assign women to the BDE HHC. The BDE CDR initially refused. not because he was against women (his wife ultimately outranked him as an Army SES civilian, when he wad only a BG) no, because he refused to take any women until Division sent him 3 and a female SGT. One was too much work. 4 was a managable number in a unit of 77.)
7. Bottom line. the Army isn't a social experiment. It is all about combat readiness, not about freedom and individual rights. there are not enough enlisted women who are both willing and capable of meeting the honest workload requirements in a direct combat squad or tank crew to make it cost effective to do so.
effectiveness not individual rights
Captain Mariner correctly, in my view, understands the critical importance to a republic such as ours of the issue of who fights. Although we now have an entirely professional military - except, perhaps for one enlistment junior enlisted personnel and some ROTC-commissioned junior officers, such a military would have been anathema to the Founders. However, despite the country's reliance primarily on militia or volunteers until the First World War, it should be noted that our officer corps has been primarily professional (in the higher ranks) since the early days of the republic. And, Captain Mariner's service, the Navy, has almost always been (again junior enlisted and some junior officers excepted) a fully professional service, which gives a different perspective.
Even with the strong devotion to the 'citizen soldier' concept in the 19th century (the impetus for such institutions as the Virginia Military Institute, Norwich University and the Citadel, all in the first half of the 19th century, as well as the requirement for military training contained in the 1862 Morrell Act establishing the Land Grant Colleges), the officer corps has always been primarily professional, especially at levels above regimental command.
One of the critical issues today, which I would like to see Captain Mariner address, is the fact that the upper and upper-middle classes are no longer significant sources of the officer corps of any of the services (except, perhaps, the Navy, where the yachting traditions of the (primarily Northeastern) upper class still makes attendance at Annapolis socially acceptable in a way that attendance at West Point is not). I would be particularly interested in her thoughts about the appeal of the academies to upper and upper-middle class young women -- I have known several and found them very impressive in many ways, though I think the jury is out on whether they could withstand the rigors of close combat.
Herein, I think lies the real rub. There are no easy answers to these issues, and reasonable men and women can differ. At my alma mater, VMI, women cadets are held to the same physical standards as male cadets, which is not true at the federal academies or in the services. It means fewer women excel physically, and correspondingly fewer women are even willing to submit themselves to the regimen, but it does mean that women who do make it are accorded more respect and more likely to be treated equally by their maile classmates. Even so, there remains discomfort with women at VMI.
However, I think it is crucial that as a society we discuss and come to some conclusions about these knotty issues. While I try to remain open-minded, my own Burkean tendencies probably make me lean more towards emphasizing combat effectiveness over other factors, because if our forces do not win, the values of the larger society, including equality, will not prevail.
Men are stronger than women. Strength matters in combat.
2) I applied for military scholarships as a high school student. I was found unqualified to be a pilot because I was too tall (specifically, I had an excessive 'sitting height.') That reduced my chance of earning an airforce scholarship. In theory, I could complain. Aircraft could easily be designed to allow people of my sitting height to fit. But it would be expensive and benefit a very small number of people. My 'rights' to be a pilot were outweighed by the military's 'rights' to fight wars in a cost-effective manner. (I put 'rights' in quotations because they aren't really rights. In fact, it should say, my 'opportunity' to be a pilot was outweighed by the military's 'choice' to fight wars in a cost-effective manner).
Rights talk isn't appropriate in this discussion. it is entirely reasonable to restrict the opportunities of a very few (tall sitters for pilots, females for combat soldiers) to maximize efficiency and minimize cost. The military is not obligated to be 'fair' (Whatever that means). It is obligated to be efficient.
Sk
Lightweight batteries and/or fuel cells to power little stuff like my radio or NODs haven't arrived yet. I'm not holding my breath for powered armor.
irc is right on about the team dynamic. We need the best individuals, true. But I would rather take 5 guys who are across the board 70 or 80 percent performers that work as a tight, integrated team than 10 110 percenters who can't come together to accomplish a goal. I'll say again, that the number/percentage of women that could hack it in combat arms is extremely small to begin with (those minimum standards you throw out don't apply to the infantry). The number of women who can physically do the job and integrate themselves with the men who do the job is much, much smaller still. When you factor the cohesion issues in on top of that (be they a form of sexism or not), you stand a great chance of overall negatively impacting performance of the team. Cost/benefit analysis points to no women in combat.
With all due respect to CAPT(ret) Mariner's career, Skyler's point about air combat is on the money. Yes, pilots have to be in great shape (to withstand g forces). Yes, they face great risks in training and combat. Hell, I'd even say that as a population pilots, male and female, are probably in most measurable ways superior to grunts. But combat experience of the two communities isn't comparable. A few hours of very stressful, technical work accompanied by hot meals, showers, mandated adequate rest vs. hours of trudging in the heat with 60-80 pounds of gear, often with limited showers, sleep, meals, constant fear of the enemy, etc. It's a different world. Don't get me wrong, I love those flyboys and all the bot death they can bring to my fight. But there is a reason the ground commander is the commander of the overall battle.
If there are any Joint Tactical Air Controllers (actual pilots who serve as forward observers for ground units) I'd love to hear their opinion.
I hate to say it, but a alot of pro-women in combat folks have never served and won't accept anecdotal evidence. I'd day give them what they want and let them reap what they sow, but somehow we military guys get blamed if the PC agenda doesn't work out.
RE: You're Right
"Remarkably, one person's common sense is another person's ideologically-induced bias." -- Elliot Reed
It all depends on whether or not one is willing to accept factual evidence.
RE: You're Wrong
"When I tell you it's just common sense that my law school would be rife with sexism and bias against women, and my experience confirms that, you won't buy it because it goes against your preconceptions." -- Elliot Reed
I'll accept your report, as I've seen similar reports from credible sources that corroborate your report.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Your prejudice is showing.
I wonder if the the 'good captain' will do the same.....
Lightweight batteries and/or fuel cells to power little stuff like my radio or NODs haven't arrived yet. I'm not holding my breath for powered armor"
Closer than you think LTDan
Battery breakthroughs have occured recently with nanotubes and should be hitting the market in the next few years.
Anyway the time it takes to develop doesn't affect my argument. As I see it the real problem is just cost. How much should be spent on individual soldiers?
RE: Well....
"Closer than you think LTDan
Battery breakthroughs have occured recently with nanotubes and should be hitting the market in the next few years." -- SenatorX
Wake me when it comes to reality.
RE: What Price Glory, Captain Rosemary?
"Anyway the time it takes to develop doesn't affect my argument. As I see it the real problem is just cost. How much should be spent on individual soldiers?" -- SenatorX
How much you got to spend, Senator?
And how many such equipped soldiers do you need?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[And when you ask them;
"How much should we giiiiiive;
They only answer;
"More! More! More!" -- Favorite Son, Credance Clearwater Revival]
First, in the infantry, there is no expectation of privacy. And this is something that a lot of you are taking for granted.
Showering together, and standing guard over a squadmate who is taking a dump are only small snapshots of the actual living conditions. Unless you are on liberty or leave, you are always with the members of your platoon. There is no privacy. Even if you try to sneak off to the can with a dirty magazine, your squadmates know exactly where you are, and what you're doing. (In some facilities, they may be sitting on the next toilets, with no seperating walls between.)
Second, it does not matter if you are only 140 lbs soaking wet. The biggest SOB is always the casualty in casualty drills. And you'd best be able to carry him. Both of your lives may depend on it.
When I was in, I weighed around 190 lbs. Throw on sweat-soaked flack jacket and deuce gear, and I was pushing 270. Without a weapon, piece of crew serve weapon, ammunition, helmet, or backpack. On a march (AKA "hump"), it wasn't unusual for me to be packing more than my body weight before I even picked up a piece of the crew-served weapon.
And I was about average size. There are some big ol' boys out there.
Third, if women are allowed at a standard that they have trouble meeting, there will be a lot of political pressure to lower the standards.
You can see this throughout the current military standards.
Fourth, many women are perfectly willing (nay, eager) to exploit their sex and attain power over others. In the military, this is no different, but there's a lot more control to be had. Whether this was one of the two female-led prostitution ring scandals at the Comm school while I was at MCAGCC, or the Motor-T driver who had to pee, was mortified that someone might see her doing so, and got the Regimental Commander to stop a live-fire regimental exercize and have everybody turn away from her direction. (And no, those aren't the only such anecdotes I have. Despite being fairly isolated from those gender games by virtue of being in the infantry.)
There's a reason the acronym "WM" (officially "Woman Marine") is often used for "Walking Mattress".
Fifth, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of idealistic young men volunteering to join the infantry. There is no need to expand the applicant pool. (And make no mistake, nearly all people in the infantry explicitly volunteered to serve in the infantry.)
Sixth, we currently have the most powerful military in the world. We know our current system of men-only in combat roles works. You do not try to fix what isn't broken.
Now, there might be some women out there who play well with others.
But from having spent some time around sororities and the medical proffession, I have to say that, IMX, it is far from the norm.
The thought of a cohesive all-female unit is one that my wee brain simply cannot accept without a lot concrete evidence, over a significant amount of time.
Ditto that with respect to a mixed-gender unit.
Check out those huge power cables. What will they be attached to in the field.
Plus, is it truly ruggedized and ready for use in field conditions? No. It is hard to keep 4 trucks running perfectly all the time.
That stuff won't field any sooner than a decade or two from now.
There still is the aggression factor. Men are in fact, generally more aggressive than women. Aggression in combat is necessary to win.
RE: It's Not Broken....
"You do not try to fix what isn't broken." -- Luke
....from YOUR astute perspective.
But, from their perspective, they're not getting what THEY want. And what do women want? Mostly self-aggrandizement. [Note: Check out some of the discussions at Dr. [InstaWife] Helen's and Advice Amy's blogs.]
Military effectiveness, success on the battlefield and the fate of the Nation take a second seat in their eyes. Therefore, from their perspective, it IS 'broken'.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Ever see a diarrhea ward in the middle of a jungle? I did when amoebic dysentery raced through my infantry battalion at the Jungle Warfare Training Center, Panama Canal Zone. We couldn't dig the slit trenches fast enough. And even then we were never really sure just what it was we were digging in....
Are you listening to what you want to get into here, girls?
There seems to be little room for disagreement that combat is extremely strenuous and that physical requirements for those who engage in it need to be exacting. There also appears to be little dispute that if the same exacting standards are applied across the board, only a relatively small fraction of women will meet them. Several people have expressed concern that allowing women to even try to meet them will create pressure to lower the standards for women to let more through, or even to lower them across the board. Capt. Mariner will speak for herself on this point, but I see nothing in her initial post to suggest that the type of egalitarianism she espouses would demand anything other than women being given the opportunity to perform to the best of their abilities, neither being excluded categorically nor having standards relaxed simply to let them in. Assuming this to be the case, then the only question is whether there is any factor other than physical ability that would justify categorical exclusion of those few women who could meet the requirements. (I note that the UK MOD study Alcyoneus linked reaches the same conclusion on this point: that physical ability does not justify any categorical exclusion of the 1% of women who could meet the standards.)
The key sticking point appears to be that of unit cohesion. The UK MOD study Alcyoneus linked concludes that women do have innate tendencies to be less aggressive, but that the obstacles this poses to unit cohesion can be overcome by training in non-combat situations. With regard to combat situations, the UK MOD study says simply that we don't know. The study concludes that the only way to know is to risk troops in combat, and since there is no compelling gain in military effectiveness to be obtained as a result of the experiment, nothing justifies the risk.
I think this leaves us with three main questions:
1) What, exactly, are the cultural and psychological factors (on the parts of both men and women) that present impediments to unit cohesion in mixed sex settings? To the extent that these are cultural factors, it seems possible that they can be overcome. Even to the extent that they are somehow innate, I would venture to guess that the 1% of women capable of pushing themselves to meet the physical standards of combat are likely to be outliers psychologically as well.
2) Can these impediments be overcome by training and acculturation? I think in discussing this we have to be careful not to minimize the problem. We're not talking simply about corporate sensitivity training here. The fact is that for millennia soldiers have been socialized to overcome their human instinct of self preservation in large part by specific appeal to their sense of manliness and their role as protectors of women. Whether we like it or not, the masculine gender role and the psychological package that goes with it are a large part of what convinces men to risk and sacrifice their lives. Card carrying Battlestar Galactica fan and cheerleader for gender neutral equality though I am, I do wonder whether the price of breaking the gender barrier in combat is not merely teaching men to get along with and respect women under stress, but finding a whole new way to motivate them to be soldiers in the first place. I don't claim that this is or should be insurmountable; indeed I hope it isn't. But I think it needs to be confronted.
3) The final question, assuming that we conclude whatever impediments exist can be overcome, is whether the price of doing so is worth it. It sounds as though Capt. Mariner may well have arguments to the contrary, but it appears at first blush that the motivation for integrating women into combat is not any potential for rendering the military more effective but rather a political goal. I don't claim that such a goal is invalid, but if the real underlying goal is to avoid making women second class citizens, then we need to ask whether the combat exclusion really does this and whether the political gains to women from eliminating it would justify whatever costs we would incur in retooling our military to be combat integrated.
Why not experiment in an academic setting first? :)
let's have The Dept of Ed and the NCAA abolish all gender differences in college athetics. all colleges would just field 1 basketball team, wrestling team, football team track team etc. no women's or men's gender based teams.
women would have full political rights to participate in all sports based on sheer ability and drive. after all Capt Mariner's position is:
If the teams come out better (e.g win more battles) then we should proceed to the Army.
RE: UK Studies
You seem to put a LOT of credence in studies conducted by the UK.
Frankly speaking, I have serious doubts as to the veracity of studies conducted by a group that is so egregiously politically correct as to be surrendering its national sovereignty before our very eyes, last week. Not to forget how they, as a government, are bending over backwards to appease the fanatic Muslims in their midst.
Their credibility strains credulity. Except that of the more credulous, here.
RE: The First Assumption...
"Assuming this to be the case, then the only question is whether there is any factor other than physical ability that would justify categorical exclusion of those few women who could meet the requirements." -- Chris Newman
....and your 'only question', amongst several....
....you seem to be overlooking one glaring problem; sexual relations.
Why is that?
You talk glibly about 'unit cohesion', but what do you mean by that? Does any of it have anything to do with men and women squabbling over sexual access to each other?
Let's go back to your UK study....
"The [UK MOD] study concludes that the only way to know [the affects of mixed gender combat formations] is to risk troops in combat, and since there is no compelling gain in military effectiveness to be obtained as a result of the experiment, nothing justifies the risk." -- Chris Newman
So, you're willing to risk other peoples' lives, and worse, for your social experiment?
Okay. You should immediately go forth and organize such a unit and be an integral part of it.
We'll throw you into Tikrit and see how you fare.
Peronally, I'd rather take lessons from history. Why don't the Israelis have co-ed combat units any more?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Wise men learn form other people's mistakes. Most people learn from their own. Fools NEVER learn.]
That undoubtedly explains why men will climb out of their relatively safe foxhole and run across a field of live fire to take out an enemy machine gun. It does not explain why they enlist in the first place(or in the case of draftees, why they show up instead of heading for Canada).
I believe that the main thing that motivates them to enlist in the fiirst place is some kind of (possibly subconscious) belief that they are protecting 'their' women and children.
If I'm wrong, please prove it; but if I'm right, then the presence of women in combat would (over the long term) undermine the motivation of the men to fight.