HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

This is the logical conclusion of the drive already well under way when Ford (which means Nixon, really) forcibly coeducated the service academies in 1976, lying already about maintaining standards as Carter does today, but it’s none the less insane for that.

If I were a Russian or Chicom Marshal – or a bloody-minded jihadi – I should be having a hearty belly-laugh at this Yankee folly… But I’m an American vet, so I remember better days and tell myself that what can’t last, won’t.

From The New York Times:

In a historic transformation of the American military, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday that the Pentagon will open all combat jobs to women.

“There will be no exceptions,” Mr. Carter said at a news conference.

The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women often found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 14 years.

The military faced a deadline set by the Obama administration three years ago to integrate women into all combat jobs by 2016 or ask for specific exemptions. The Navy and Air Force have already opened almost all combat positions to women, and the Army has also increasingly integrated its forces

Women have long chafed under the combat restrictions, and they have increasingly pressured the Pentagon to catch up with the reality on the battlefield.” [Editor’s note: This is not true. Most women in the military do not want to be in combat positions.]

— Comments —

Don Vincenzo writes:

The leftward march of the military – and clergy – continues unabated.

The fact that we now have two female “Rangers,” whose successful completion of their course is questionable, is yet another platform that leads our Commander-in-Chief further up the food and military chain. Further, the emasculated men who now serve dare not ask if these fraudulent female Rangers were held to the same standards as the men. To do so would be considered sexist, which is defined as disagreeing that women are physically different from men, a belief, according to our betters, that one must not have.

But in the last analysis, the real laugh is not on a Russkie or a Chicom general, but on us, for our political correctness has reached levels that preclude us from even thinking about our own survival.

My wife is fond of saying, “We get what we deserve, and we deserve what we get.” True, all too true.

Funky Phd. writes:

I can see it now:

A young lieutenant, just arrived in country from West Point, clicks off his radio and turns to the soldiers huddled in the trench as bullets whizz and snap at the top of the berm.

“I’ve just heard from the C.O.  There’s a machine gun nest on hill 43, and the platoon is taking a lot of casualties.  We’ve got to take it out.  Here’s how we’re gonna do it.  Suzie, you take the left, Marie goes up the center, and Lisa, take the right side.  Keep your weapons on full auto and take some extra grenades. The rest of us will stay here and provide covering fire. Now go!”

Mark Jaws writes:

I am probably a bit more “liberal” than most of your readers on this topic, perhaps because I completed a 20-year Army career and served with A FEW females who could do it all.  However, I must state that I was a military intelligence officer, which is combat support, and not combat.  But for several years back in the 1980s I was assigned to an airborne military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg and there were SOME females who jumped with full equipment, including a 15-pound M-60 tripod (in addition to their 60-lbs of equipment, and marched ten miles at night with the rest of us.  They were good shots and pulled their fair share of duties.

Thirty-three years ago at Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning, my “Tac” Officer was a female, and she was one mean, tough little firecracker.  And a darn good leader to boot.   My OCS class started out with 42 females and we graduated with 17.  Had it not been for quotas, we should have only graduated about ten.  But those ten females were good soldiers.  Good leaders.   Unfortunately, the quota mentality allowed some deficient female candidates to graduate, which impacted morale among the male candidates.  This will likely happen in combat units as well once women are allowed to serve in them.

0f course, to someone like me, who has just about totally given up on this country, particularly if Hillary is elected, that may not be a bad thing.   I once told Lawrence Auster that people such as us may one day find ourselves having to contend with a U.S. military turned against the conservative citizenry by nefarious left-wing politicians.  Better to resist an army in disarray, than a highly motivated, coherent force.

 WF writes:

So far, this is all posturing by the liberal press. Any woman can say they would go into combat, but
the proof is in the pudding. The Army can say that women will take all positions but we have yet
to see any women going into combat.

During WWI there was a women’s combat unit in the USSR which upon going into battle dissolved on the spot.

The government should look closely at that experiment.

Pete writes:

With due respects, sir, the argument that a “few females could do it all” is wholly insufficient to justify inclusion of women in the combat arms, and even in many combat support/service billets. Here’s why: men act – and perhaps more-importantly, bond – differently in a co-ed environment than they do in the presence of other males.

Outstanding/elite all-male military formations are characterized by brotherly love, i.e., the willingness of individual soldiers (Marines, airmen, sailors, etc.) to “take a bullet” for one another. The espirit d’corps of traditional (male only) units depends wholly upon trust, shared sacrifice and the notion that each man is shouldering his share of the danger, risk and hardship associated with military service – up to and including combat.

Moreover, enlisted men trust their officer leaders only when they fulfill a very specific set of criteria – namely, leaders (whether NCOs or officers) must be seen as being the best at everything they do. Bluntly, the men must see their leaders as alpha and not beta males. Second, leaders must be seen to share the same hardships and dangers as the men they would lead. Third, the true leader never asks his men to do something he himself is incapable of doing or unwilling to do. At the very least, he may no longer do those things, but he once did. Finally, the true leader puts the needs and welfare of his men before his own. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep – until the needs of his men have been addressed. He is the first on the field of battle and the last off of it. Although rank hath its privileges, he cannot be seen to enjoy too many comforts his men do without – or he risks losing respect of his men.

The introduction of women into heretofore all-male formations is enormously destructive to the unit cohesion, espirit d’corps and morale of those units – and this outcome is independent of the capabilities, talents and skills of the females themselves. The very presence of women profoundly alters the willingness of men to trust one another, sacrifice for one another and ultimately, risk harm and/or death for another.

The strength of the wolf really is the pack – and that pack is male.

Those who oppose the inclusion of women into the combat arms solely on the basis of how much weight an individual woman can carry or how well she fires her individual weapon in comparison to her male counterparts have already lost the argument; in effect, taking this stance tells the cultural leftists that if they find one woman who can carry a heavy rucksack or fire her weapon as well as any individual male soldier (even the most sad-sack and mediocre one) – then their objections to women in the infantry, etc. will no longer be valid.

However, even if we take your argument at face value, women still fall short.

Re: “But for several years back in the 1980s I was assigned to an airborne military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg and there were SOME females who jumped with full equipment, including a 15-pound M-60 tripod (in addition to their 60-lbs of equipment, and marched ten miles at night with the rest of us.”

On the basis of your time in the military, you probably know that carrying a 60 lb. ruck plus a fifteen pound tripod is a fairly typical load for a foot-soldier or paratrooper. Carrying that does not mark an individual as an extraordinary soldier – or even an exceptional one. Friends recently-retired from (or still in) the Marines, Army Special Forces, and the like tell me that men in such units routinely shoulder loads in excess of one-hundred pounds – and on extended long-range patrols and missions, one-hundred fifty or even two-hundred pounds aren’t unheard of.

There are reams of studies, medical findings and much more – many from military physicians and researchers – attesting to the fact that women cannot and do not hold up under such physical loads as well as men. Even the most-elite females are incapable of surpassing standards set by the physically-fit, typical eighteen year-old male recruit fresh from basic or boot camp.

It should also be borne in mind that performance during training (even when that training is strenuous) is most-emphatically not the same as operational performance – let alone performance under fire. If I had a dollar for every would-be female super-soldier who thinks she’s hot stuff because she can run a decent time in a five-K or do a few pushups or sit-ups, I’d be a wealthy man. Here’s the problem: the APFT isn’t combat, not even close.

The Pentagon, anxious to please those politician-feminists on the ‘Hill, does a neat little switcheroo to show that women really and truly are cutting it in today’s inclusive armed forces: they “gender-norm” the physical fitness and readiness tests, then they relentlessly promote and publicize the women who can “cut it,” and finally, the perfumed princes fudge testing and performance data which contradict the officially-approved, politically-correct version of events. The services have been hiding inconvenient, contradictory, or politically-troublesome data for decades going back to the late 1970s/early 1980s when the service academies were sexually-integrated. Like their cultural Marxist counterparts in places like the USSR, history which does not comport to the officially-sanctioned version of events is erased, hidden or otherwise neutralized.

As you have probably figured out already, I am a traditionalist who is against women in the military in anything except the traditional support and medical roles. However, I am not blind to the fact that I am something of a dinosaur in today’s world –a throwback, if you will – and that changes happens whether we like them or not. At the very least, I believe that if we are going to have large numbers of women in the armed forces, perhaps even in the combat arms, then we ought to at least segregate units by sex. Doing so would perhaps mitigate some of the most-deleterious effects which arise from forceful sexual integration.

Moreover, to date there has not been a comprehensive, politically-unbiased, scientifically-sound and independent study concerning the pros-and-cons of the all-volunteer force structure, in particular as regards the integration of women and open homosexuals into the ranks. True, the Pentagon and DOD and the services themselves have done numerous “studies,” but these have often been self-serving, biased and less-than-rigorous. The armed forces, one might say, know where their bread is buttered, institutionally-speaking.

It is unwise to make policy on the basis of politically-motivated cant, ideology and the institutional covering of posteriors which are now so common in the armed forces and in politics, but that is exactly what we have done.

In closing, if you are interested, you might find the book “Coed Combat” by Kingsly Browne to be worthwhile. His treatment of the subject is, in my view, evenhanded and thoroughly-researched.

A reader writes:

Not surprising, but that isn’t how it will be for our soldiers with mixed units.  It will be the case of many lives at risk and wasted because of weak links who shouldn’t be in combat.  But what does that matter to politicians or the higher ups in service or to the liberal media:  they will consider those lives to be a worthy sacrifice for the cause of equality.

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