Who is Kathleen Parker, and what century is she living in?
A column in the Washington Post:
On any given day, one isn’t likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He’s a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.
But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.
Why, because toddlers don’t have fathers?
She dismissed the effectiveness of women in combat:
Women may be able to push buttons as well as men can, but the door-to-door combat in Fallujah proved the irrelevance of that argument. Meanwhile, no one can look at photos of the 15 British marines and sailors and argue convincingly that the British navy is stronger for the presence of Acting Leading Seaman Faye Turney — no matter how lovely and brave she may be.
She must have missed Sgt. Leah Ann Hester’s story.
I agree with Kathleen Parker. And for that matter with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If your worst enemy says the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, it still does.
“Why was the difficult task of searching the seas given to a mother thousands of miles from home?”
“Why is there no respect for motherhood, for the love of her child? How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don’t they respect family values in the West?”
Good, and therefore embarrassing questions.
And I see nothing wrong with how Faye Turney was dressed.
I think the British warriors who gave up without a fight and then gave the enemy their full and docile cooperation on every topic should be punished severely.
Except Faye Turney. God or Nature gave her another calling, that of being a mother. She should attend to it, and she should not be punished.
I did not miss Sgt. Leah Ann Hester’s story. Nor did I miss the story of Joan of Arc, who besides being among the noblest and best military leaders the world has knows, set a magnificent example for how to behave in enemy hands.
But it is not right to make general rules for armed forces based on small numbers of extraordinary individuals. Exceptional people should be the justifications for exceptions, not for regulations.
Women should not be at the front of the meat-grinder. Nor should children, even if you find examples of children displaying great courage in combat and being effective. Nor should old people, if it can be avoided.
I object to women on warships in the same way I object to the common use of child soldiers in Africa. Even if it works, and even if there are a few women and a few children who thrive on it, this is wrong, and it ought not to be done.
In his excellent book Braver Men Walk Away, Peter Gurney (a senior explosives expert who was kept busy by Christian terrorism in and from Ireland) told of a suggestion he got in a letter that the writer and other old people, not young men like him with a lot to live for, should be defusing bombs. It was a serious offer, and it moved Peter Gurney – but the answer was and must remain: NO! No way!
We have armed forces precisely so we do not offer up our women, children and the elderly as meat for terrorists and savages. And, if you do something like that, every time an oldster gets blown up, you give the terrorists exactly the kind of propaganda victory they are seeking. The whole idea is no good.
There are not only exceptional individuals but exceptional circumstances in war, when desperation means that women should fight, and for that matter so should children if they could be useful.
For one example, in the Battle of Hamburg, women manned anti-aircraft batteries defending the city. Why not? The British intended to slaughter men, women and children in the greatest numbers possible by terror-bombing, oops “dehousing”. The idea was to generate a fire-storm and the maximum possible slaughter of civilians, and it worked. Then, it’s right for the women to fight. (And I find it impossible not to cheer for them even though they were Nazis defending Nazi Germany.)
It would be insane to say in a case like that that the women should stay home and stay out of it. Home was in it, home was the target.
For that matter, toddlers should have fought too, rather than be incinerated helplessly in their cribs, if they could have been useful.
But nothing remotely like this applied in Faye Turney’s case. Kathleen Parker is right. And for that matter, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is right.
David, I understand your view and believe you’re wrong.
The notion of women as a protected class has a long history in our culture, but is slowly dissolving. Why would a 110# woman deserve more protection from a 200# man than a 110# man would?
When women’s roles tried to define them away from the sharp edges of the world, such protections made sense. I’m not sure they do any more.
There’s an interesting question as to whether we’re better off for it or not. My gut tells me we are.
A.L.
“Why would a 110# woman deserve more protection from a 200# man than a 110# man would?”
Because if he is a man, he knows that being part of the defensive perimeter for women is part of what a man is for.
Suppose you were in Darling Harbor with women friends when a Muslim rape gang was known to be active and had seized women going to the toilets, or in some other part of a city where the problem is more current. One of the women in your group needs to go. Now, do the guys (you and any male friends present) go check out the toilets? Or do you say “you’ll be right” and let the women go alone?
There’s obviously only one acceptable course of action. And it has nothing to do with who weighs 100lbs vs. who weighs 110lbs or anything like that. It’s an obligation for your gender, one you have no moral right to refuse, end of story.
I agree with David but on different grounds.
1: Women in Combat units (really all the military now) decrease effectiveness because the death or injury of them is demoralizing, and they can cause units to surrender rather than risk the women in the units. See the Royal Surrender Navy.
2: Faye Tunney (and the others) are selling their story individually to the tabloids. Tunney is expected to raise about $1 million for her story. This is what you can expect when you have lots of women in the military.
3: Women in the military contribute rather than fight the feminizing influence that tends to emasculate the military.
4: Women in the military by creating competition for women among many young men (and by definition most will lose) destroy unit cohesiveness. Pregnancies and jealousy and so on are not conducive to an effective military. Particularly bad in the Navy, but also deployment to Iraq or other Muslim cultures.
Rostering women is done ONLY when true disaster strikes, when the loss of men is so large that nothing else works. Men and women should have equal standing under the law but that does not mean they are the same nor that a 110 lb woman can be effective in urban combat as a 200lb fit male.
We have to decide if social engineering and making Feminist Utopians happy (who loathe the military anyway) and end up like the pathetic Royal Surrender Navy or achieve maximum military effectiveness.
I’m not committed one way or another on this issue, but wanted to add one item to part one of Jim’s comment.
In his book _On Killing,_ David Grossman touches on this issue: “The Israelis have consistently refused to put women in combat since their experiences in 1948. I have been told by several Israeli officers that this is because in 1948 they experienced recurring instances of uncontrolled violence among male Israeli soldiers who had had their female combatants killed or injured in combat…” (p. 175).
Grossman has been criticized for some of his arguments, especially the conclusions he drew from SLA Marshall’s study of infantry behavior in the Pacific, and this anecdote is unsourced, but perhaps relevant to the discussion.
When Nelson died at Trafalgar, they shipped his body home in a barrel of rum. According to legend, the crew of the Victory drank the rum afterwards, so as to have Nelson’s spirit with them always. Hence the song, “A Drop of Nelson’s Blood Wouldn’t Do Us Any Harm.”
Any chick who won’t drink Nelson’s blood should stay home; to the rest, welcome aboard. That goes for the men, too. Too bad the stuff didn’t last.
Its seems that single mothers should be our last line of defense not our first ,there something wrong with our society.
_Why would a 110# woman deserve more protection from a 200# man than a 110# man would?_
Given the right to bear arms, the question is somewhat archaic — but given the regularity with which that right is being denied by governments worldwide, I’ll answer it anyway. (Actually, it pertains even to “handgun use”:http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2001/B/200112206.html now that I think about it.)
If I remember the study correctly, the top five percent of women for upper body strength score equally with the 50th percentile for men. That is, only the top five percent of women are equal to the average man in terms of upper body strength.
As a consequence, in terms of defending yourself physically, whether hand-to-hand or being able to use field-expedient weapons or even some handguns, women are at a substantial disadvantage. Your 110 pound man is still at a disadvantage when set upon by the 200 pound man, but he is far better off than the 110 pound woman.
They’re equal only if he’s average, and she’s one of the top five percent of strongest women. Which is to say, they’re not equal.
I say this in the interest of answering the question you asked, not in the interest of opposing women in combat. In a counterinsurgency war against a traditional (and esp. an Islamic) culture, having women soldiers to perform certain tasks is an advantage that can’t be compensated for in any other way. The ones we’ve seen deployed have done magnificient jobs.
That said, these disparities are real, and we do have to take them into account. Deploying women in combat roles means making some adjustments to tactics.
Glenn, I’m with you.
To the rest …. I’ll just say that I’ve met a few male and female soldiers both who sadly lack the warrior ethos — and many, many more soldiers of both genders who embody the warrior ethos and are capable at their jobs, including female helicopter pilots with serious experience in dangerous places and female MPs who volunteered to do things like guard convoys in some of the bloodiest parts of Iraq.
Parker’s not high on my list of women I admire. Those female officers I know who have served in theater, who graduated as the only women in their cadres at Airborne Assault school and who have lots of ribbons flying helicopters in places where people shoot …
THOSE women I salute, along with their male counterparts.
Jim, I don’t know what service you’ve had or where, but I do know what patches and ribbons are on the Class A’s of my colleagues on the rare occasions when that’s the uniform they put on.
Equal opportunity dictates that women have the same chance of selling their story to the British tabloids as men. The current offer is 250,000 dollars no wonder they were all laughing and happy !
Sometimes biographies tell more about societies than they tell about the individuals in the biographies. In this case, this story tells more about Western culture than it does about any individual in the Royal Navy. This thread, in turn, is more about our culture than any British sailor.
If we are willing to say that two-gender services are of benefit to our nations, then we must be willing to say that we are willing to pay the costs. That goes for seeing women as well as men raped in captivity and widowers as well as widows being seen in the press as holding the family responsibilities when their spouses come home in caskets. Almost everybody in the services today see matters that way, which is a big change from 40 years ago. Then, the wives were the obvious support structure for the servicemen (e.g. “We Were Soldiers Once… and Young”). Now its the wives who are going to war in many cases.
Is that a bad thing? As Robin Burk implies, any unprepared soldier’s deployment is very possibly a very wrong first step. But for society, which seems to wish to glean the benefits of general participation in military service and not exclude women’s abilities, then we are almost forced to admit that this decision has been made for us on the basis alluded to in the toplevel by AL. We are, after all, in the 21st century.
But David Blue does have some points, which are all of the invarient types. Deploying mothers to combat demands that motherhood relatively has become less of a social priority. Perhaps this implies that fatherhood is now a higher priority than before, but given our culture, I doubt it. In any case, orphans are a normal product of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so precisely how are we now to deal with this invarient problem? David Blue gives one answer, but in response we have nothing uplifting in this particular case of Seaman Faye Turney and daughter. But Parker puts puts the question in the most sensational of terms: what sort of man lets his female social compatriots be raped and tortured? The answer to this is obvious: the same sort of person who lets his male compatriots have the same thing be done to them. Not to put a fine point on matters, but the answer to Parker lies not in the realm of sexual politics, but rather in what precisely constitutes patriotism. In the 21st century, as AL implies, men don’t have a corner on that question’s answer.
Tom —
Women in the military (which in the current 4th Generation war is the same as women in combat) is disastrous.
It is part and parcel of the feminization of Western Culture which has led from “Let’s Roll” to “Let’s Roll Over.”
Women are very bad at fighting, since their socialization and perhaps biology (still an open question) point them towards group harmony, conflict reduction, etc. Oprah vs. Rambo (simplistic I know but probably not the worst mental model).
All having women in the military does is feminize the Military. Which leaves the military an NGO with Guns and uniforms.
Wonder why:
1. The BBC has a reporter embedded with the Taliban extolling their “masculine” virtues and reporting in awe/admiration with how they kill British Soldiers?
2. The BBC refuses to air a documentary on the first VC recipient in ages because the anti-War folks (and of course Muslims) would object.
3. The Royal Surrender Monkey Navy and Marines behaved disgracefully, particularly in comparison with US Diplomats who conducted themselves with courage and discipline despite no military training for 444 days in Tehran.
4. Britain has surrendered: flying it’s Flag on prisons and government offices (Muslims object); Piglet from Winnie the Pooh (Muslims object); the statue of the Boar from the 1600’s in the Forest of Dean (Muslims object); teaching the Holocaust and Crusades (Muslims object); the Three Little Pigs in schools (Muslims object).
At no time and no place are Britons willing to fight for their values, beliefs, or much of anything else excepting Soccer Hooligans who are the only ones left in Britain who have not been feminized.
Too little influence on politics and culture by women leads to an odious regime like the Magic Kingdom or the Taliban. But too much leads to a society that says “let’s surrender” on everything. That believes in “soft power.”
The danger of women in the military is that we will see, without pushback, the US turning into the Surrender Monkeys of Britain. Even the French will fight more than the Brits. The feminization is a constant danger: Prohibition was largely driven by proto-feminist organizations such as the Temperance League and figures like Carry Nation.
I would also take issue with the idea expressed by Grim that “hearts and minds” are affected by seeing women perform combat duties. IMHO that’s a false assumption. The profound feminization in post-War Japan and Germany IMHO resulted from killing a whole whacking great lot of men ages 17-40 or so. Leaving women and children as the survivors. Leading in turn to much greater roles of women in society out of economic necessity. Remove large amounts of men from that age group and women will by necessity assume a much greater role in the society’s politics, economy, and culture.
Hoo boy.
“Women are very bad at fighting…”
OK, let’s take a deep breath.
No sane person doubts there are differences between men & women. These differences are the result of, and in turn the engine of, natural selection. Certain characteristics confer fitness: these are passed onto the next generation.
It’s no secret that organized fighting has traditionally been the province & the specialization of males. Armed Liberal can’t rewrite the laws of biology.
That said, in certain cases, women have been very good at fighting. The VC had lots of women fighting in their ranks. They were very good fighters. Their fighting fell into the category of the homeland under attack.
Women fight — and fight well — when their status as a protected class is destroyed by circumstances. When circumstances go back to normal, so do they.
In short, I reject the both the contempt shown towards women’s ability to defend themselves, and Armed Liberal’s naive view that America’s fightin’ women are going to upset several thousand generations of natural selection.
Small numbers of women who are part of a highly technologized army that can call on air support and pound the enemy into submission prove NOTHING.
“It is part and parcel of the feminization of Western Culture which has led from “Let’s Roll” to “Let’s Roll Over.”
Dude, give it up. This “feminized” Western culture completely dominates the rest of the world through intellect. You don’t like it? Go join the Taliban.
_I would also take issue with the idea expressed by Grim that “hearts and minds” are affected by seeing women perform combat duties._
What I was really thinking of here was the necessity of handling, interviewing, and sometimes searching women and female areas of buildings. A woman soldier can do that without necessarily creating a huge problem; whereas traditional societies view male soldiers doing so as a tremendous intrusion. Insofar as it keeps tensions lower, and reduces the friction between our forces and the civilian populations that can either shelter or inform on insurgents, it is useful.
Deploying mothers to combat demands that motherhood relatively has become less of a social priority. Perhaps this implies that fatherhood is now a higher priority than before, but given our culture, I doubt it.
My colleagues include quite a few two-military-career families. The parents have alternated deployments — and those deployments were sought after and voluntary, at that — to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army supported them in that arrangement.
On the lighter (but serious) side, anyone who thinks women are only fierce when traditional roles have broken down never watched girls field hockey. Trust me, the fabled playing fields of Eton didn’t have a THING on these teams as places to learn physical bravery, teamwork or commitment. 😉
There is a lot to shake out socially and militarily regarding the roles of women and men in a rapidly changing technological society. Some aspects of biology aren’t going to change any time soon. I’m a mother and a wife of 33 years; I can claim a little personal experience in the boy vs. girl thing.
It behooves us all to have a bit of humility, however, in drawing conclusions from that fact re: women in combat.
One of the fastest advancing areas of miltech research is nano armor and what are, essentially, the first steps toward machine-augmented and bio-augmented soldiers. This isn’t fantasy — demo presentations from 7-8 years ago showed nano armor that could camoflage, change from flexible to bullet-resistant, monitor bio systems and even adjust pressure to control bleeding if necessary. Those all add up to an exoskeleton, folks. We won’t be deploying them next year, but I think I will live to see them in the not so far future and I’m well into middle age.
“On the lighter (but serious) side, anyone who thinks women are only fierce when traditional roles have broken down never watched girls field hockey. Trust me, the fabled playing fields of Eton didn’t have a THING on these teams as places to learn physical bravery, teamwork or commitment. ;-)”
Field hockey isn’t killing. Killing can involve “fists, teeth, knives and rifle butts,” as an Israeli once told me about the fighting on the Golan Heights in 1973. Forget about the nano-technology: this is war.
Some women were not born to be maternal, and for Mr. Blue and Mr. President-of-Iran to summarily lock them up in the nursery just because of their mammary glands is the worst sort of paleolithic stereotyping.
I don’t see where the current female under discussion has behaved any worse than her male compadres. If she had broken down in weeping hysterics while the men were stoic and acted with proper British stiff upper-lips I could maybe see a point to be made. But since all of them behaved equally badly, then what the hell does the status of anyone’s mother- or fatherhood have on anything?
The other thing to consider is whether women in the military are volunteering to be there or are drafted. I don’t know how the British system works, but I’m going to guess that Seaperson Faye volunteered. By all means, keep her out if psych testing proves that she doesn’t have the “right stuff” to be a sailor, but be sure to test the other 14 sailor wannabe’s at the same time to see if *they* have gonads, too, before putting ANY of them out there where they can embarrass themselves and their country, and – worse – be a danger to other soldiers and sailors around them who actually know what they’re doing. And want to do it.
How many mothers were killed in the 9/11 attacks? How many mothers and children have been killed by Iraninan funded and Saudi-sponsored insurgents in Iraq?
As was famously said, Those without swords can still die upon them. We’re fighting an enemy that doesn’t fight fair. Women and children will tend to be their primary targets, because they’re incompetent cowards and we’re easier to hit. The less capable we are of defending ourselves, the more vulnerable we’ll be.
So, whether we join the military or not, we need to learn how to defend ourselves, and we certainly could use the encouragement of men to help us do that. If you want to ‘protect’ us, that’s the best way. Blathering about how ‘childlike’ we are, blaming approximately 3 billion human beings for the behaviour of of one poorly-trained British soldier certainly doesn’t help.
As a group, women don’t have the upper body strength that men have, but we’re better at other skills that are helpful in asymetric warfare, like accurate long-range shooting. I’d like to say that women are more skilled at diplomacy than men, but blundering doofuses like Nancy Pelosi would prove me wrong. In any case, we look harmless, even when we’re not, which is also useful in asymetric warfare. It doesn’t matter if you want us to fight or not. We have to, so hopefully we will.
Robin #18
I think that the group of people you are referring to would reject outright the concept of their families being used as negotiating pawns, unlike Seaman Turney. Apparently, there is a Mr Turney back in port, but in reponse to Iranian false charity visa vis Seaman Turney, nobody apparently thought to assume that she would place service above personal needs. The image presented was rather that the Turney’s depended on the Seaman’s maternal role. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2049302,00.html
and compare the summaries of the men to Turney’s. To be fair, Turney’s conduct post release has been pretty commendable:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2051565,00.html
but the main point is that Society was willing to ooze along with the Iranian gambit for far too long, and nobody ever thought to bring up any of the families of any of the men as negotiating pawns. Shockingly, I find myself in agreement with Polly Toynbee:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2051499,00.html
for the first time in a decade. But that shows just how far out this subject’s treatment really has become.
What should society expect of any adult is that they take responsibility for their children, but in the case of the military, this is often not stated in any public policy terms. That is what I was referring to in demanding more from the other parent in these families. In the past, exemplified by the wives associations in past wars, women were explicitly given that role. Today, I simply don’t see anything equivalent being explicitly demanded of the spouses. So Society is willingly held hostage by the false charity of the Iranians, for fear of expecting its military families to do what was seen as natural and right in the not so very distant past.
I am not saying that military service on a gender neutral basis is not worth its costs; I merely am saying that our culture is still deeply conflicted over what it means and consequently doesn’t see paying those real costs as being the natural implication of chosing gender neutral military service.
Recommended reading: Egerton, Robert B. Warrior women: the amazons of Dahomey and the nature of war Boulder Colorado : Westview Press, 2000.
I’m not saying this can’t be done. It can be done. It has been done. And it will be done.
I’m saying it ought not to be done.
There is a choice. The rivals of the Dahomey did not find themselves obliged also to create regiments of warrior women or lose. The model was there: vigorous masculinization and boasts of becoming men, compulsory contraception, all-women units encouraged to compete with men and in every way rewarded as an elite force, and so on. The other West African kingdoms did not adopt this model. They let their men fight, and on the whole they did fine. We don’t have to do this either. Having the men do the fighting is a valid option.
–
#18 from diana: “Field hockey isn’t killing. Killing can involve “fists, teeth, knives and rifle butts,” as an Israeli once told me about the fighting on the Golan Heights in 1973.”
I’d have stayed clear of the playing fields of Dahomey.
–
#19 from NahnCee: “But since all of them behaved equally badly…”
Not all.
One of the hostages, Dean Harris, 30, an acting sergeant in the Royal Marines, told a Sunday Times reporter yesterday: “I want £70,000. That is based on what the others have told me they have been offered. I know Faye has been offered a heck more than that. I am worth it because I was one of only two who didn’t crack.”
All women are not unsuited to war, and all British personnel in this shameful story did not crack.
It should be noted that there are exceptions, for the sake of factual accuracy, and because there is legitimate pride in being an honorable exception.
–
#13 from Tom Roberts: “Deploying mothers to combat demands that motherhood relatively has become less of a social priority. Perhaps this implies that fatherhood is now a higher priority than before, but given our culture, I doubt it.”
I doubt it too.
And I think this is a serious error of values.
Diana —
Women act very differently than men. On average (which is what we are talking about) women avoid conflict at all costs, and having women in the military which demands aggression and desire for conflict is a disaster. So some women in some circumstances (dire emergencies) performed bravely. On average you’ll get more Jessica Lynchs than anything else.
In a volunteer military requiring lots of fighting ability on the ground and expecting attack (up close hand-to-hand combat in many cases) at any moment it’s not a good idea.
Particularly since we are NOT talking about women’s ability to defend themselves but their capacity to ATTACK. Your points perfectly IMHO reinforce mine: the feminization of military culture makes only “ironclad defensive actions” permissible and inevitably lead to abject surrenders as seen in the Royal Surrender Navy.
The military demands aggression and women make aggression extremely difficult in the military (by militating against aggression).
Yes this “feminized” culture dominates Western Europe (but not China nor Muslim nations) and thus Western Europe is completely defenseless to resist attack. Feminization has many advantages but always leads to defeat at the hands of hyper-masculine cultures because there is no will to fight, rather only make deals or surrender.
I don’t WANT to join the Taliban and want to remain who I am (a Western man). For precisely this reason the feminization of the Western World MUST be resisted since to do otherwise would lead to a nation of Nancy Pelosis and Cindy Sheehans and Harry Reids who will cravenly surrender to bin Laden.
Grim — OK I take your point which is useful. I still think on balance however women in the military should be avoided due to the inhibition of aggression which takes place when women are present.
Women are outstanding border guards, detectives, investigators, and other professions where controlled aggression in extreme physical violence is not a requirement and their powers of close observation more than compensate for lack of raw upper body strength. But as noted field hockey is not killing.
Doug: I was actually agreeing w/you, sort of. But I see that you are the kind that is not worth agreeing with.
Whatever.
Tom,
“It is part and parcel of the feminization of Western Culture which has led from “Let’s Roll” to “Let’s Roll Over.”
I’m quoting you – again – because you didn’t say “the feminization of military culture.” You said, “the feminization of Western culture.”
To which I say: Bulls***.
Western culture leads in all spheres, except maybe the production of unwanted babies. There is no feminization, except in your paranoid excuse for a mind.
You are totally deranged. Equating Cindy Sheehan with Nancy Pelosi shows how deranged you are.
Going into Iraq was a horrible mistake. It was a strategic blunder of massive proportions. Iraq was a broke, bankrupt and backward country under Saddam, no threat to the west.
Nancy Pelosi has been very timid and accomodationist towards the psychopathic fat cats that got us into this mess.
You and the blowhards who defend this misbegotten Mission to Nowhere, screaming about the feminization of the West, are out of your minds.
We have ended up enabling the creation of a Muslim fundamentalist nightmare. And THIS you call a fight against Muslim extremism?
to Grim
In regards to your analysis of the average man vs. the top 5% of women in terms of strength, I would guess that women who serve in the armed forces, given the strenuousness of the training, are in the top 5-10% of their gender for toughness, if not sheer strength.
Personally, I am ambivalent about women serving in combat roles. My concerns in that regard mainly have more to do with troop morale and men’s attitudes toward the women, than women’s capabilities (which I think are likely equal to men’s in most regards).
Mentally, the women must be as tough as the men to handle the pressure of combat or they are dangerous to have around. Of course, that can be said of any men who cannot handle the pressure of combat, as well.
I would be concerned IF the physical standards were relaxed for women, as these standards exist for a reason and relaxing them puts all soldiers at risk. Any soldier, male or female, should meet the minimum physical standards necessary to handle the job. If physical differences preclude women from meeting the physical standards, then they should not be in combat roles. End of story.
That is not to say they cannot serve in other roles, but not in combat unless they meet the same minimum standards as the men must meet.
Diana
You said:
“Going into Iraq was a horrible mistake. It was a strategic blunder of massive proportions. Iraq was a broke, bankrupt and backward country under Saddam, no threat to the west.”
Strongly disagree, but a debate on this moves far form the thread of this post.
Suffice to day, Iraq was far from broke, Saddam was just siphoning the wealth for himself and his cohorts. he was very dangerous and capable of creating great mayhem, both regionally and outside the ME.
Iraqis, in fact, are some of the most well-educated Arabs in the ME. While the country’s prosperity had suffered from sanctions, the problems within the country stemmed from Saddam’s spending the money on himself, his family, his cronies, the Sunni minority, support of terrorsim in many forms, and his WMD programs.
While stockpiles of WND were not found, no one could account for what UN inspectors had already documented post-Gulf War 1. That should be enough to scare anyone. In addition, clear indictions that Saddam had ongoing WMD programs, including a nuke program, shoudl seal the deal that he was dangerous.
Would be happy to continue the debate in a new thread.
“I would be concerned IF the physical standards were relaxed for women, as these standards exist for a reason and relaxing them puts all soldiers at risk.”
Well, the standards aren’t relaxed — they’re just totally different. The USMC physical fitness test for men uses pullups. Because many women of “college age” can’t do even one pullup, the test for women is a flexed-arm hang.
Again, though, I’m in favor of women in combat. The ones we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan have done wonderfully, and we are justly proud of them. All I’m saying is that we need to be aware that there are opportunity costs, and that we have to make certain adjustments for those costs.
Grim I agree re: opportunity costs.
There are some generalizations here that need challenging.
In the past, exemplified by the wives associations in past wars, women were explicitly given that role. Today, I simply don’t see anything equivalent being explicitly demanded of the spouses.
If you don’t see it, it’s because it doesn’t need an Officers Wives Club meeting for it to occur. I see it every day where I work. Women AND men who are on post extend care to the families of women AND men who are deployed. It happens as an outgrowth of the Army culture. It’s that same culture which ensures that people organize to provide meals and child care to families in the unit when someone is hospitalized for other reasons.
So Society is willingly held hostage by the false charity of the Iranians, for fear of expecting its military families to do what was seen as natural and right in the not so very distant past.
True of Britain. Not here. At least not among the Army communities I know.
Re: mental toughness, you all DO know that at least one female pilot who was captured in the 90s was raped as well as tortured. You do know that, right? Some still don’t because until she talked discretely about it during OIF on national television, she didn’t make a fuss about it. She and her fellow female pilots went in knowing that if captured they might be abused in a variety of ways. They were toughened against that possibility just as their male colleagues were. Anyone of any gender who can’t face that possibility doesn’t belong in combat.
Diana, trust me — I do know the difference between field hockey and war. I’ve sent former students off to operational zones where their lives are in danger as we speak. We’ve buried a few here lately, too.
Heritage has a “useful roundup”:http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/BG836.cfm on the subject. Isreal’s experience is very instructive.
My own experience in the Army wasn’t good. By and large, women could not pull their own weight on combat missions. Combat units have to be managed on the ‘by and large’ not on the outliers.
Many nations have attempted to field all female combat units. It has proved almost impossible to get all-female combat-arms units to even 70% readiness.
The best evidence on this issue is from direct observation of combat unit performance, not individual heroics.
I believe these problems can be overcome.
Conscript your women warriors in early youth, and bring them up as men, knowing nothing but harsh discipline, rich rewards, and all the glory that the state can bestow upon them. Flog, hang and shoot: Hollywood starlets could be made to drill with precision, if you decapitated those that failed to do so in front of the others. Sterilize them all, and segregate them from men, except for competitions in which they must always be better trained and better prepared than the men. Make them the super-elite, the apple of everyone’s eye, and keep the position of your make soldiers inferior to them. (This of course will demoralize your male soldiers, who will always be far the majority of your armed forces, but what I am emphasizing here is that an army of amazons is a do-able project, regardless of whether it is worth it or not.)
Also, women mutilated in war must be regarded in the same light as men maimed in war, that is as utensils of the state which have become somewhat battered in achieving the results typically expected of them, and not as women whose bodies have been harmed by a state that does not properly care for women or sufficiently value womens most vital roles, such as motherhood.
Your amazons then will roundly surpass and defeat male soldiers, as long as they are full time professional elite soldiers and their male opponents are not, and even against male professional forces, they will give a memorable account of themselves. An amazon force that is built in this way will be no joke, no bluff.
If that’s what you want, it’s possible, and the Dahomey proved it.
But, the way to get here starts with a problem (such as a tendency of male bodyguards to mount coups, and a need for the royal bodyguard to be reliable and have a dominating influence in the army), and an attitude that demands results, regardless of what the measures needed to achieve these results do to women and their femininity, and for that matter regardless of what the methods employed do to your men.
If the mainspring of your conversion of young mothers to cannon-fodder is an unwillingness to face problems with your armed forces, such that you aren’t getting enough quality male recruits, combined with chronic dishonesty about gender issues, and indulgence, with a sense that young women are so wonderful they must have every good thing, including military careers and battle-honors too if they want them…
Then your really exceptional born warriors who happen to be female will still do the job for you of course.
But over-all, in the general case, which is what armies should take as their guide, this is how an amazon army of bone-chilling effectiveness and real hard core character is not created.
Do we have a social consensus to do what it takes to make authentic amazons in the general case?
If we do, it’s invisible from our practices. And if there is such a consensus, it certainly doesn’t include me, or anyone who thinks like me, or anyone who has an inner flinch at the thought of nubile women brutalized by severe and invariable punishments, maimed in war and generally treated as military munitions.
I think we’d be much worse people and much worse off if we did have such a consensus.
The Suppliants is well known play by Aeschylus. After it came The Egyptians and The Daughters of Danaus, both unfortunately lost. It’s this third play I want to call attention to, as a fragment of it remains.
In the second and third plays, the suppliant maidens are forced to marry their Egyptian cousins, an idea about as attractive to them as it is to us. Ee-eww! is the least of it: they start off fleeing and genuinely threatening suicide rather than be taken (which is the driving force of The Suppliants), and when that doesn’t work out, they justifiably swear to kill their husbands on the wedding night.
Hypermnestra, however, falls in love with her husband, and saves him, and so her family puts her on trial, to be put to death for having violated her oath. The court is about as prejudiced as possible, but she gets a good lawyer: the goddess Aphrodite herself shows up to defend her, and starts her speech by underlining her own divine dignity and the importance of the things that she is the patroness of. Love is no light thing, no mere excuse to be set aside once blood oaths and killing are in play. Love is a foundation of the universe: not the only one, but it’s up there, and it has its rights which must be insisted on, whatever that does to oaths, laws, courts and bloody schemes. Aphrodite starts to have her say … and oh what a pity we don’t have the rest!
I think Aphrodite’s defense is still valid though. It’s eternal, universal – or if you don’t believe in gods, than still as much of either of those things as humanity is.
Here’s a young woman. She’s in love. She’s going to get back to her husband, and if she’s a mother, to her baby or babies. That’s her top priority. That’s as it should be. If laws and oaths and bloody schemes say otherwise, so much the worse for them, because the source of authority behind her priorities is older and more universal and infinitely more primal and holy than any laws.
If anybody with, in my opinion, right values, values properly founded in the spirits of what really matters, gets a say in court, she will not get punished. She will walk. She will go safely home to her husband and progeny, and she will never have to go to war any more. Balance, harmony and a deeper, truer sense of justice will be respected and restored.
And that’s all she wrote for military discipline … as long as you keep insisting that a proper test case for military discipline is the rationality and moral rightness of grinding up seed corn, of using young wives and especially mothers as cannon-fodder.
So don’t do that.
“Two new guys in suits arrived. They didn’t shout like the others. One said he had come to make me an offer. If I confessed to being in Iranian waters and wrote letters to my family, the British people and the Iranian people, I’d be free within two weeks. If I didn’t, they’d put me on trial for espionage and I’d go to prison for ‘several years’. I had just an hour to think about it. If I did it, I feared everyone in Britain would hate me. But I knew it was my one chance of fulfilling a promise to Molly [her daughter] that I’d be home for her birthday on May 8th. I decided to take that chance, and write in such a way that my unit and my family would know it wasn’t the real me.”
Not exactly a living engine of war is she?
But that’s fine, her values are about what they should be, not what politically correct claptrap supposes they are or should be.
It would be crazy to punish her as though she was some sort of amazon warrior who’d let the side down.
Just send Topsy home, with hubby and Molly, where she belongs.
Wow what an idea cite the example of one outstanding individual as the standard that must apply to all. Now any government can cite the bravery of 13 year old drummer boys of the Hitler Youth in Berlin when they wish to allow 13 year olds to serve.
One wonders why no government in the world boasts of a shock battalion of such Amazons. When any civilization seeks to justify using women as cannon fodder while exucing healthy young males from serving distinguishes that civilization as one that is soon to enter the dust pile of history.
Robin #28
I think you are extrapolating from an exceedingly narrow sample. My points were about society, and in the top level this was at the Western/NATO group of nations level of discussion. You are referring to US Army posts. First of all, I find that your facts are not seen as prominently on USAF bases I work at, and are also certainly not true of US society in general. You’ve already conceded the UK case, but I would extend that extrapolation to the general European and Canadian cases as well. I noted the difference between these cases in my posts, and would furthermore note that USMC posts probably would follow your noted social pattern. But my thesis still stands for US society in general, and if it did not, how do you explain the issues involved with National Guard units or Army Reserve units in repeated deployments over several years? These servicemen are certainly military when deployed and the general population sees them that way, but they are closer to general social expectation and social support norms than regular Army and USMC post populations would be. In this case, Parker was not referring in the general case to what the services expect of its individual members, but rather what society expects of its military services which happen to have male and female members.
A contradiction of Parker’s argument cannot be founded upon an overly narrow foundation such as you attempt.
Perhaps I have a unique – or at least uncommon – perspective on the subject. I have worked with the Military, rather than being part of it, a “scumbag contractor”, dossing down on top of a Mk48 Mod4 when needed, signing chits at the officers’ mess, and teaching at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
As it turns out, because of my Intersex condition, I wouldn’t have passed the medical anyway, had I attempted to join.
Anyway, as a female who through force of circumstance (a highly androgenised body) had to adopt a male role (and my blood at least is chromosomally male) for most of my life, I’ve seen things from both sides.
And yes, I have a female societal role at last : my androgenisation was never complete, and I’m one of the dozen or so cases known where it was temporary too. But really, any Transsexual member of the military is in a similar position, it’s only the degree of medical intervention required that differs. But I digress.
There are numerous disadvantages of having women in combat roles, as has been pointed out.
In hand-to-hand combat – and any boarding operation can involve this – women usually are not as strong or large as men. This means that any sensible allocation of people, based on abilities not colour, sex, religion etc will have an overwhelmingly large proportion of guys to gals. I see no reason why physical standards should be set differently depending on the sex. Either the standard accurately reflects the physical requirements for the job, or it doesn’t.
Very few gals will have the upper body strength to be cannon-cockers, moving around 155mm shells and charge bags.
Note this works both ways : for OPFOR training using obsolete soviet-pattern equiopment, there should be far more women than men, simply because of the size issue. It matters – smaller is better, and many guys just won’t fit in some tanks, apcs and even fighters.
In some damage control scenarios, Brute Force and Ignorance are the only things that will save the ship. In other scenarios, only a 4ft 8inch 90lb sopping wet gal has the agility and physical dimensions to get to some valves when the steel is twisted and torn around it.
When it comes to psychological issues, very often the very best Men will get severely affected by seeing women die messily. It’s bad enough when it’s their buddies, but there’s an instinctive reaction for the “Birkenhead Drill”. And the better the soldier, the stronger this can be, it stresses the guys out overcoming it.
On no account should women be put in charge of male prisoners. Guys have a “surrender reflex”, they are good at competitions, at games, and at sports where the beaten loser is allowed to survive. Look in any schoolyard, you’ll see boys doing standard male pecking-order stuff, as do stags, rams etc. It’s hard-wired into them, and those who “kick a man while he’s down” or fight unchivalrously not in accordance with machismo, they are often looked on as psychos and shunned as dangerously insane. In paleolithic times, men could fight with fists and kicks, bruising and even breaking bones, but even a broken rib was rarely fatal.
A single human bite though was almost guaranteed to be, from infection. Girls don’t fight very well without training, lacking the strength and size, but they do fight dirty and for keeps. Or they become property and rape victims.
This attitude can be an advantage in many military areas, but it us a grave disadvantage when dealing with helpless prisoners.
Gals who wish to join the military are unusual. They self-select for higher aggression, higher intelligence, and are generally far better volunteers compared to the general female population than male volunteers are compared to the male population. There is a question of Human Rights here – the right to serve one’s country, to protect one’s children. This must not be allowed to compromise military effectiveness though. Just don’t try arguing with some of the Female Midshipmen I’ve taught – not if you know what’s good for you. Especially the sneaky ones who are going into submarines.
Overall, I’d say the disadvantages in general *slightly* outweigh the advantages. Except for one thing.
We, the western world, are at a crisis. We don’t have enough male volunteers, we genuinely cannot afford to waste the talents of the females that are begging to join up, simply because of the physical attributes of some of them.
You know the last time I write on this subject was before The Great Change in May 2005? I was called Alan then. Alan Brain, one of the main contributors to The Command Post.
Great post, Zoe! *Applause!*