Women to be cleared for combat roles (Page 9)

Glad to be able to answer. Rather simple, actually. The woman who cannot do the job, carry the load, etc., will be told "thanks you for your interest, please return when you can do the job. Have a nice day."

As for drama, the stockade is specially designed to deal with this issue.

Women, with the proper training, can be as savage as men can be.   With the proper training, in martial arts, women can hold their own.    With decent eyesight and hand/eye coordination I can teach a women to be as deadly with a rifle as a man can be.

A soldier is trained, not born.

While I was in the Marines we had no women in the front lines where we were.  Different time.  That being said I met more that a few IDF women who I won't not have wanted to mess with.   I know of the women who served in the Soviet army and served admirably against the Germans.   One of the greatest snipers in the world was a women. There is precedence in other countries and other times.

It not for me to say one way or the other.

Wonder how long this thread will last.  I'm amazed that it made it to 11 pages.

I don't have a military background, but I've had the good fortune to be around lots of tough female athletes.  I've played basketball with and against WNBA talent.  One was 5' 3" tall, and trust me when I tell you this chick was diesel.  Mad ball-handling skills, fast, strong...to think she would have been denied the opportunity to do anything makes no sense to me.

If these ladies can pass the tough physical and mental tests, more power to 'em!  Love it!

lol, and us enlisted sailors thought quite the opposite.  OK, at least us combat systems types did.  Air Conditioned spaces, four hot meals every day, your own bed with lots of blankets to stay warm, more free time than I knew what to do with, yes lots of coffee, and you go deaf to the noise after just a few months.  I had a nice hammock strung on the O4 level aft and would stay out there for hours reading books every day.

The scraping/painting is mostly the deck apes (er Boatswain Mates) and their life is probably a little closer to what you described.

At the rate we are going we'll be deployed in ever sh*^hole around the globe, without congressional approval under the guise of a "police acton", so we'll need women, lots of them.

I served in two combat arenas.  I respect any person for wanting to do a unique  job but this can become problematic when the SHTF and chaos ensues.  I agree with Left Brain, my girls will not be on any front lines if I can help it, But at the end of the day I'll leave that decision to them, not without my input though.  The last thing I want to do is bury my girls for some dumb azz policians inability to make good decisions.

Women on the front lines now, it's the exception and not the rule.  I respect it, but it's rare.

And last, any lady that wants this including our glorious Senators, Front and Center, you first.  Anyone pusing this, put your name down and sign up, get you azz to the front, otherwise quit trying to be PC and frigging cute.  Then, if they go and feel the air pressue of a 50 cal whiz by and don't urinate on yourself, well, then I may think twice about this wonderful policy.

Dude, why do you think I went Navy... don't have to sleep in a mud hole, clean laundry, 3 hot meals a day and a bed...

...of course bed was a 2"x6'x2' mattress, and I could touch the rack above me with my finger tip and elbow on the mattress....

The part about the boat that sucked was that as single enlisted, that was your home. So no berthing on base when not deployed, and if you wanted an apartment you had to pay for it your self. But the saving grace was being around the beach, and sitting out on the back of the boat at night in the middle of the Atlantic withe the sky completely filled with stars and puffing on a Marlborough.

I think people have the wrong idea about combat troops.  They are not a group of serial rapists.  Furthermore, a woman would be a hell of a lot safer (from a sexual assault) when part of a combat unit then in a support unit.  Combat units are brash, rude, irreverent and generally should not be allowed out in public without supervision, but the one thing they never lack is loyalty towards each other.  There is as much of a chance of a combat unit letting a female member be sexually assaulted as there is of them letting it happen to a male member, basically slim to none and god help the person who tries.

And when I started collage, we were told that one in four women in university are sexually assaulted.

I guess the answer is obvious, eh?

I'm not saying the military in general I am saying the women who would be part of a combat unit.  Members of infantry units will mercilessly harass each other (we often put tear gas in each others rooms/pillows and blew up each others equipment), but none that I know of or have ever known would allow something like that to happen to a unit member.  Call me naive or ignorant but I have faith in my infantry brothers.  Like I said earlier, they will grumble, complain, make life difficult and in general act like idiots, at first, then they will come around and accept the women as part of the unit.  Infantrymen do this to every new member of the unit regardless of race, color or religion.  

Admittedly, I wasn't in the US Army, but rather a Staff Sergeant in the IDF, but nonetheless they skipped the part about functioning with "no emotion, no moral compass and no thought of ethical behavior".

Quite the opposite. With the power of destruction you have, you damn well better remember your moral compass and maintain your ethical behavior.

yessss

cant wait for the movie this year

Did you read the whole post or are you just trying to be argumentative?  I was referring to action in combat, not the reason for combat.  When it's time to fight (and if you were in the IDF you should understand this) there's no time for internal debate about right and wrong or about who said what to whom.  There is an objective to achieve and it will be achieved within the "normal rules of war".  This does not mean leveling a city block to take out one target, this means each member has to be able to function both instinctively and with clarity of thought.  Thee is no greater sense of responsibility then what an infantryman (and I would assume any soldier/marine) experiences when he has to look at a live target and decide whether or not to pull the trigger.  Again, there is no room for emotion or internal conflict.  

Think about it this way, when an infantryman has someone in his sights he has to decide in a split second if 1) the rules of engagement have been clearly met 2) is it a true target 3) is it still a threat and 4) is it the greatest threat (yes threat assessment is taught ad nauseam).  All of this happens while within a stones throw of the target and usually with a lot of outside sensory stimulation. I don't want to speak for anyone, but ask any military officer what happens when someone takes out the wrong target.  I say officer because they are the first ones who get blamed regardless of who pulled the trigger.

With all of that said understand that steps 1-4 answer all questions of ethics and morality, it's just not the same analysis of ethics and morals a non-combatant would typically use.

Last thing, do you really want an infantryman deciding whether or not a mission is morally or ethically acceptable?  How would they come to terms over watching their friends die or killing people , so a road could be put in someplace where the locals do not want or need a road? 

I agree, although there is a point that should be remembered. In New York, at least, they changed the physical tests so that women would have a better chance of passing.

Something that should NOT have been done, and something that should not be done in the military. Or any other place.

I agree with you, in principle.  I was lucky to not see combat during my Marine Corps enlistment, but having been a Police Officer for nearly 3 decades, most of it spent in specialized units, you're assessment of unit loyalty is on the money.

That being said.  I can also say, without any hesitation at all, that my experience has been that most women cannot deal with the truly physical, hands on, aspect of my job.  I have seen many come and go.  I have also seen a few who COULD handle it, but it's a small number.  I have also seen the morale of units destroyed due to relationships that formed between male and female members, complaints of sexual harassment, both justified and false (admitted), etc.  In short, MY EXPERIENCE is that mixed units are rarely worth the trouble.....but we are stuck with them.

Again, I think there are women who are capable of serving in a combat role.....but to say that any woman can, or than most women can.....I just haven't seen that.  

This will absolutely lead to selective service registration for women....and one day, if a really decent economy rises again, your "all volunteer" military won't look quite as viable as it does now. Draft women for combat? That's just crazy talk. The majority just won't be fit for it, no matter how loudly women who have never even been in a fight want to say they will.  

I'm against it....and I question the timing of the announcement by a General who is leaving in a few weeks.  Lot's of trading to be done in the next few months as the nation's debt, gun control, etc.,  is dealt with. It's pretty naive to think these types of announcements, at this time, are all about the issue at hand.  Most of this is politics IMO.

Why would something that has no basis in reality offend or be unfair?

For what it's worth, even though we may not fully agree/disagree I don't think this makes you a chauvinist in the strictest sense.  This is something worth debating without name calling.  It's been interesting reading the varying opinions all of which have some validity.

I will reiterate what I posted earlier, I am all for it as long as all requirements are equal including the requirement that the female volunteers must take some form of birth control.  The last part will never happen but it falls into the equality part since there is no way anyone is going to allow pregnant women in a combat zone, and rightfully so.

I absolutely know it doesn't....and I have a wife and grown daughters who can vouch for me.   

I have witnessed HUGE messes because of mixed units, and I think I've made it clear to anyone who takes the time to read entire posts, that it's almost ALWAYS the males fault when it comes to the really ugly stuff.  I just don't have the same faith in these types of morons as most people seem to have.  They're just..........hopelessly stupid.

But....that being said, remove the temptation and I'll take most of those idiots over most women to fight next to me. That's clear as mud I know, but I bet you get my point.   

I always enjoy a condescending post when the person who is writing it has no idea what he is talking about. Not the nuts and bolts of what the ROE are, since you covered that nicely, but to whom you addressed this. Staff Sergeant in the IDF. Combat Engineers, with the relevant combat service. So yes, I am familiar with action in combat.

Yes, I read your whole post. No, I was not being argumentative, I was disagreeing. Sorry if you have a problem with that. Actually, I'm not. Deal with it.

I agree, in combat you do the job. You do not question the action (at least not while it is happening. Question all you want later), and you do EVERYTHING to bring back your people alive and well. That is your job, and you do it. Period.

But combat, just like everything else, is not always black and white. Once in a very great while, one may run into gray, and that is where both moral and ethical decisions might be made. Don't misunderstand me, in a choice between moral/ethical, and keeping my people alive, or uninjured? The moral/ethical will always take second place. But sometimes you can change the scenario, and thus change it from a black/white situation, to a gray one.

I dunno, I used to fight for money, including last-man-standing group free-for-alls, and I've held my own in a few good bar fights

Okay, enough of my N=1 backdoor bragging. A sobering truth is that, with the obesity problem in the U.S. and all its concomitant health ills, the vast majority of people regardless of gender aren't going to be fit for it.

ETA from my limited memory, this is already a problem in the armed services and with recruitment.

Hahaha! Well I don't do YouTube videos and no I have never been in the woods around Quantico. I do have several maps of the Rocky Mountains in NM , both trail and topo. They are all quite well used and all intact. I will be happy to send them to you Matt for verification of those statements as they don't do me much good anymore. You will have to forgive some of the extra creases though, they spent many years in my waterproof map case, folded and refolded so the area of interest actually showed up in the window.

I haven't read the entire thread, but I'll just write...

Been there.  Done that.  It works.  Never been a problem for me and around me.

don't bother reading it....you are better off.