Two number's: 35, 280. About 35 women have died in Iraq, about 280 have been wounded.

This lead to a Republican move to restrict the role women can play in the military. The change would have eliminated some 20,000 jobs that women can currently hold. After a massive, negative response, the proposal had to be withdrawn. The new proposal is that the Pentagon has to give 20 working days advance before moving women into combat positions. This is tantamount to the same thing, because a) Republicans would block any such move and b) four weeks, a month, is way too long for tactical purposes.

When I first heard this story (NPR's All Things Considered), my initial response was somewhat pugnacious. "What? Women aren't allowed to serve in combat? Screw that! We're EQUAL! Send 'em up! 1000 to 35 ain't equal!"

Then I wondered, what exactly are the rules, and why are they in place? The what is pretty easy to find.

http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r600_13.pdf

This is a 12 page document on the army's procedures for assigning female soldiers. The key paragraph is on page 5 of the PDF.



This applies to the active army, the national guard, and the reserve, and is in fact US military policy across the board because of Congress.

From this article:


The Pentagon's stand on this is essentially, "We need those soldier's, man, no matter what. Take them away and we can't fight this war. Oh, and there's almost no place in Iraq that's all that safe anyway becase of all them terrorist/freedom fighters. New wars call for new rules."


As seems to be the case with everything nowadays, the lines on this issue largely follow the parties. Conservatives don't want the delicate flowers of our fighting forces exposed to danger. Liberals and women's groups say it's an insult to female soldiers.


I say, toss 'em in there. Hell hath no fury and all that. They want to serve, let them serve in any capacity men can. Make them meet the same requirements and let them do the same work!

What do you think?

Assuming they pass all the same physical requirement tests and are trained to be equally skilled, why not? They signed up to serve, after all, and I don't really see any reason that they couldn't fight just as well as any guy. The "delicate flower" argument really doesn't hold that much weight with me. Other than hand to hand combat, where they might be at a slight disadvantage due to a lower average size and weight, there's really no difference between the two sexes that could be relavent in combat. Heck, if I raised the "women can't fight hand to hand" point in my Tae Kwon Do class, my instructor (A fairly small girl) would undoubtedly be quite willing to offer a very painful counterargument.

I'm still a tad peeved that only guys have to sign up for selective service when they turn eighteen. If any war gets desperate enough to require a draft, I can think of no concievable reason not to draft women. Even taken seperately from the women-in-direct-combat thing, they could fill positions behind the lines and free up more guys to do the actual fighting.

I'm in favor of women in the military for two reasons:

1 (good reason). I don't see any reason they shouldn't be allowed to serve with men.
2 (selfish reason). The more people that want to serve, the less chance there is that I'll have to.

I just can't see the controversy of having women in the military.

I was raised in a somewhat conservative home (just a hint of southern flavor).

The more conservative view (not all conservatives, I don't think, but it's NOT a liberal view) is that the woman stays at home and the man goes out to earn sustenance. Further, the man is not just the provider, he's the protector (I don't know that the similarity in words is a coincidence). Think of the movie cliché; something happens to the woman and the man blames himself (often when there was nothing he could have done) because he should have protected her. To a degree, even Pete succumbed to this idea when he put Torg in the role of alt-Zoë's protector.

Remember that the conservatives claim to be the protector's of the "family", a fuzzy term which they then fail to define. However, you can gather an inductive definition by what they say is not family. Their ideal would be the 1950's television family; an ideal that didn't exist even then.

And remember, women didn't join the military then.

For my upbringing, "Boys don't hit girls" evolved into "Boys should protect girls." This is all the more powerful in that it isn't explicitly codified, but rather is reinforced in daily life, conversation, movies, books, etc.

If boys should protect girls, it follows that allowing women to take jobs where they might be hurt or killed is immoral.

Really?

I always thought the reason they didn't want women in the military was because they didn't want soldiers schdoinking each other.

That's an ancillary sinefit.

I can see that as a reason not to have mixed-sex units, but not to exclude them altogether.

Ideologically, there's not any real reason not to let women into combat units. I think it's part of having the vote- you get to decide the future of our country, so your butt gets to fight for it. Maybe minimum physical requirements should be established for entry into some of the tougher jobs, so a 90-pound Barbie lookalike isn't being asked to haul a 100lb rucksack over 50 miles of rough terrain at a fast pace, performing complicated maneuvers along the way. Nothing that'd block out the majority, mind you, just enough to make sure that somebody could handle the routine stresses of infantry life.

And now, reality. Mixed-sex units are a disaster waiting to happen. There's a lot of borderline socio-/psycopaths in the infantry corps. I'm not pulling this out of my butt, here. I mean I've met quite a few of them that honestly claim they only joined so they could legally kill people. Not the majority by far, of course, but a lot. So why is this important? Because the sexual assault rate is already high on a lot of bases in peacetime. Imagine the potential of putting one or two women in a group of basically unsupervised (while on missions), young, keyed-up men who haven't seen their wives or girlfriends (if they even have one) in over a year. It won't happen to all of them, or even a lot of them, but it will happen, at likely at a pretty horrific rate.

For the oversensitive: I'm not calling any of the armed services rapists. I'm just saying that the qualities in a rapist and the qualities of some infantrymen overlap in some ways- anger, enjoying violence, lowered moral responsibility. I think that, from an intellectual point of view, there's no reason a woman couldn't do just as good of a job as a man. From a practical point of view, it could be disastrous.

Just ma' 2 cents.

If you've got no unit cohesion worth mentioning, then that could happen. I'd go so far as to say that rape within a unit should be a career killer for the CO; because it proof that that individual is not doing their job. Still, I suspect the real fear (for the military) isn't rape; it's consensual sex. Pair bonding among the unit could be rather bad for the above mentioned unit cohesion.

I doubt that it would be a problem for most infantry units, though. Some women are physically capable of being MPs, and so can clearly handle being riflemen; but most aren't. Not unless we define down the requirements for the infantry. No problem; they're better suited physically to other combat jobs (vehicle crews, pilots, that sort of thing); where being physically smaller and having greater endurance are advantages. So if we want to integrate women into the combat arms without playing games with the requirements; then make them tank and IFV crew, or put them in choppers and fixed wing aircraft. If they are large enough; put them in the artillery. We can always put the men into the infantry.

As to the rape issue; sex and violence have a long and distinguished history. It has long been an issue. Attack a city, pillage the city, rape orgy.

There are quite a large number of sexual assaults on female soldiers deployed to Iraq. I cannot cite source right now, and so won't attempt to toss numbers out, but numbers and incident details are held pretty quiet.

The army, as stands, does a pretty poor job of preparing its female troops. This effects everything from uniform and boot sizes, to mandated self-defense courses. The Marines seem to do a much better job. Air Force and Navy have a totally different mentality than ground troops, so they would be the apples if Army/Navy are oranges.

I'm in a unit which is primarily closed to female soldiers, though there are a few in the support company. My wife, who got out of the army last fall, was an intelligence specialist (not in the same unit as I am now). My POV is the close-up one, not the broader perspective.

In the current environment of Army culture and background of ongoing war, I'd opt for the status quo rather than sweeping change of policy dictated from above. Mind, I'd like to see a day of strict meritocracy in regards to unit and job speciality assignments; we just ain't there yet.

Pregnancy is a real issue. The army cannot mandate that its soldiers be on birth control, any more than they can enforce condom-usage on the male soldier populace. A pregnant soldier is placed on light-duty, typically away from the usual soldier's work environment. Not only will she not deploy, but she cannot work in the motorpool, get certain vaccinations, or do regular physical fitness training with her team members. A pregnant soldier still counts against that unit's strength, however. At any time during or for some months after having the child, the female soldier can choose to be chaptered (discharged) from the Army and retain all benefits.

I agree that rape should never ever be an issue in a unit with solid leadership and good cohesion. Sad to say, most units aren't in that kind of shape these days. Those that are tend to be all-male combat action units which have spent a great deal of time together.

The standards are not the same for male and female soldiers, not in physical terms or command expectation. If the army followed the lead of the Marines a bit more, we'd be better off for it. The culture of the Army, however, wouldn't consider it. Wounded, misplaced pride.

It can't mandate birth control usage... I wonder if it should be allowed to do so. It would make sense.

Can't tell you which candidate to vote for either, though it seems army and marines vote conservative, AF liberal. I can't guess at the navy.

Yes, mandated BC does make sense on several levels, but it would be tantamount to denying soldiers families, and the Army, at least, has been very vocal about how supportive they are of families. (mind you, telling isn't the same as doing)

The Marine Corp strongly encouraged its membership to stay single, and considered limiting marriage priviledges. There was an outcry.

That's part of the cost of having citizen soldiers instead of legionnaires. There are are only so many limits you can get away with imposing; and banning reproduction isn't one of them.

If the issue is that pregnancy and war do not go together well, what about just mandating birth control while deployed in a war zone?