The Problems Of Women In Combat – From A Female Combat Vet
Dr. Bill Smith, Editor: I first noted the following article on The Western Center for Journalism which shares articles by numerous bloggers. I wanted to learn more about the author who had written such a forthright article on the topic of "women in combat." I located her original article on Political Animal and the links below are to her original two pat article. As a retired military officer and former staff sergeant, I and many other officers have similar views on this issue but from that of woman who has been in ground combat. Also, before reading the article, note that flying aircraft and operating ships is not the same as being in ground combat units. Jude Eden served in the Marine Corps from 2004-2008 and deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2005-2006. I was also hooked on her academic credentials when I saw that she graduated from Hillsdale College, a college that I both respect and encourage young conservatives to consider.
By Jude Eden, Political Animal: Part 1: It’s not all about qualification. I’m speaking as a female Marine Iraq war vet who did serve in the combat zone doing entry checkpoint duty in Fallujah, and we worked with the grunts daily for that time. All the branches still have different standards for females and males. Why? Because most women wouldn’t even qualify to be in the military if they didn’t have separate standards. Men and women are different, but those pushing women into combat don’t want to admit that truth. They huff and puff about how women can do whatever men can do, but it just ain’t so. We’re built differently, and it doesn’t matter that one particular woman could best one particular man. The best woman is still no match for the best man, and most of the men she’d be fireman-carrying off the battlefield will be at least 100 lbs heavier than her with their gear on.
Women are often great shooters but can’t run in 50-80 lbs of gear as long, hard, or fast as men. Military training is hard enough on men’s bodies; it’s harder on women’s. And until women stop menstruating, there will always be an uphill battle for staying level and strong at all times. No one wants to talk about the fact that in the days before a woman’s cycle, she loses half her strength, to say nothing of the emotional ups and downs that affect judgment. And how would you like fighting through PMS symptoms while clearing a town or going through a firefight? Then there are the logistics of making all the accommodations for women in the field, from stopping the convoy to pee or because her cycle started to stripping down to get hosed off after having to go into combat with full MOP gear when there’s a biological threat.
This is to say nothing of unit cohesion, which is imperative and paramount, especially in the combat fields. When preparing for battle, the last thing on your mind should be sex; but you put men and women in close quarters together, and human nature is what it is (this is also why the repeal of DADT is so damaging). It doesn’t matter what the rules are. The Navy proved that when they started allowing women on ship. What happened? They were having sex and getting pregnant, ruining unit cohesion (not to mention derailing the operations because they’d have to change course to get them off ship.)
When I deployed, we’d hardly been in the country a few weeks before one of our females had to be sent home because she’d gotten pregnant (nice waste of training, not to mention taxpayer money that paid for it). That’s your military readiness? Our enemies are laughing – “Thanks for giving us another vulnerability, USA!”
Then there are relationships. Whether it’s a consensual relationship, unwanted advances, or sexual assault, they all destroy unit cohesion. No one is talking about the physical and emotional stuff that goes along with men and women together. A good relationship can foment jealousy and the perception of favoritism. A relationship goes sour, and suddenly one loses faith in the very person who may need to drag one off the field of battle. A sexual assault happens, and a woman not only loses faith in her fellows, but may fear them. A vindictive man paints a woman as easy, and she loses the respect of her peers. A vindictive woman wants to destroy a man’s career with a false accusation (yes, folks, this happens too); and it’s poison to the unit. All this happens before the fighting even begins.
Yet another little-discussed issue is that some female military members are leaving their kids behind to advance their careers by deploying. I know of one divorced Marine who left her two sons, one of them autistic, with their grandparents while she deployed. She was wounded on base (not on the front lines) and is a purple heart recipient. What if she’d been killed, leaving behind her special needs child? Glory was more important than motherhood. Another case in my own unit was a married female who became angry when they wouldn’t let both her and her husband deploy at the same time. Career advancement was the greater concern.
I understand the will to fight. I joined the Marines in the hopes of deploying because I believe that fighting jihadists is right. And I care about the women and children in Islamic countries where they are denied their rights, subjugated, mutilated, and murdered with impunity; and where children are molested and raped with impunity (not to mention defending our own freedom against these hate-filled terrorists who want to destroy freedom-loving countries like America.) Joining the Marines was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m glad I got to deploy. It not only allowed me to witness the war, but to witness the problems with women in combat.
Women have many wonderful strengths, and there is certainly a lot of work for women to do in the military. But all the problems that come with men and women working together are compounded in the war zone, destroying the cohesion necessary to fight bloody, hellish war. We are at war; and if we want to win, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the top priority should be military readiness and WINNING wars, not political correctness and artificially imposed “equality” on the military.
Part 2: In continuing the discussion of opening combat roles to women, we have the argument that women are already there, deploying and fighting in hot zones. This is true, and it gives us a record of the problems we are already experiencing as a result.
Wasted: Valuable Time, Training, and Resources
I talk about several of the female-only issues for which extra accommodations have to be made in [Part 1]. We are not equal except in our rights under Constitutional Law. Nature has no regard for equality, and each one of us is born differently from each other. We are diverse and dissimilar in our talents, physical aspects, intellect, and emotions; and the sexes are inherently different. We know, for example, that women are much more prone to certain types of infections. For a woman on patrol, setting up an ambush (or, as the infantry do, living in abandoned buildings with no running water), hygiene is a constant problem. A urinary tract infection can quickly become a kidney infection (debilitating in itself) and then kidney failure if left unchecked. Suddenly, a woman needs to be evacuated for a problem that has nothing to do with combat and to which men are not susceptible.
Then there’s pregnancy. Margaret Wente writes: “One study of a brigade operating in Iraq found that female soldiers were evacuated at three times the rate of male soldiers – and that 74 percent of them were evacuated for pregnancy-related issues.”
It costs approximately a million dollars per individual to get trained through bootcamp and to be made ready for deployment. Those are taxpayer dollars spent on someone who has to turn around and leave the combat zone to have a baby (for which our tax dollars also pay), having nothing to do with combat.
Changing Our Best Instincts: Protecting Women, Mothering Children
We know that rape is a tool of torture for the already savage enemy we’re fighting. In one TV interview, a woman suggested that if women are willing to take that risk, we should let them. She also absurdly claimed that men are raped as much as women when captured, which is patently false. But the idea that men shouldn’t worry any more about women in battle goes against the very best primal male instinct. In every country from Canada to Israel where women are in combat (and in American units where women are in theater), the men will tell you they are more protective of the women. It’s different from men’s protection of each other, and it distracts from mission completion. The pro-WICs would have men thwart this wonderful and thoroughly ingrained instinct. A world in which men don’t feel a strong need to protect women when they’re in the most dangerous and hostile of environments would be a nightmare. We would rightly call those men brutes.
We’re also thwarting mothers’ nurturing instincts. Women are already training to kill and leaving their children to deploy, even when they are the sole caregiver (turning care over namely to grandparents). This sets a bad precedent and hurts children. There will always be war, and it’s bad enough for fathers to leave their children to fight necessarily; but to allow mothers to choose this path over motherhood is bad for everyone. There are many noble capacities in which women with children can fight for this country, such as administrative jobs stateside. We don’t need to deploy mothers to battle; we shouldn’t.
The Career-Hungry
A small handful of high-ranking females have instigated this policy change in order to advance their own careers. In this interview, Anu Bhagwati, a former Captain, complains about women not being able to be promoted to certain ranks, claims that women aren’t getting proper recognition for action in combat (a claim also made here), and claims that it’s harder for them to get combat-injury-related benefits from the VA. Regarding the latter, I know females who are receiving combat-injury-related benefits; so if there are some who are not receiving them but should, the bureaucratic, inefficient, fraud-riddled VA should be confronted. Administrative changes could certainly be considered to take care of veterans as we should – regardless of sex – for injuries sustained in battle thus far. As for recognition of action, this is also a bureaucratic aspect that can be addressed through the chain of command without changing the policies on women in combat units. And finally, as to rank, cry me a river. The military is about preparing for and executing war, not advancing your career at the cost of readiness for war.
The careerists are also on the hook for the double standard that we currently have for the sexes, which inherently lowers the standards overall. Even if one standard is imposed, it’s likely it will be an overall lower standard. As the Center for Military Readiness points out, “The same advocates who demand ‘equal opportunities’ in combat are the first to demand unequal, gender-normed standards to make it ‘fair.’” Enormous pressure from Washington is already on the military brass to fill quotas of race and sex; and the higher they get, the more politically motivated the brass’ decisions. Whereas imposing one higher standard would in fact result in fewer women serving in these roles, the political pressure to prove diversity will result in more unqualified women (and men) attaining positions for which men are more qualified. But go against the diversity status quo dictated by Washington, and you can kiss your rank and career goodbye. The purges have already begun.
The word “discriminate” has several meanings, including “to distinguish particular features, to be discerning; showing insight and understanding.” We should absolutely be discriminating in our criteria for war preparation, and the lives of our men in uniform depend on us taking an honest, discerning look at who adds to military readiness and who detracts from it. We should absolutely not open the combat units to the myriad problems we face already with women deploying to the theatre of war.
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Jude Eden is a graduate of Hillsdale College in Michigan and the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Massachusetts. She served in the Marine Corps from 2004-2008 and deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2005-20066. She is a cancer survivor and cellist now living in North Carolina with her Brazilian husband.
Tags: Women In Combat, female, combat vet, viewpoint, Jude Eden To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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| Image via author: Fallujah, Iraq (Dec 8, 2004) |
Women are often great shooters but can’t run in 50-80 lbs of gear as long, hard, or fast as men. Military training is hard enough on men’s bodies; it’s harder on women’s. And until women stop menstruating, there will always be an uphill battle for staying level and strong at all times. No one wants to talk about the fact that in the days before a woman’s cycle, she loses half her strength, to say nothing of the emotional ups and downs that affect judgment. And how would you like fighting through PMS symptoms while clearing a town or going through a firefight? Then there are the logistics of making all the accommodations for women in the field, from stopping the convoy to pee or because her cycle started to stripping down to get hosed off after having to go into combat with full MOP gear when there’s a biological threat.
This is to say nothing of unit cohesion, which is imperative and paramount, especially in the combat fields. When preparing for battle, the last thing on your mind should be sex; but you put men and women in close quarters together, and human nature is what it is (this is also why the repeal of DADT is so damaging). It doesn’t matter what the rules are. The Navy proved that when they started allowing women on ship. What happened? They were having sex and getting pregnant, ruining unit cohesion (not to mention derailing the operations because they’d have to change course to get them off ship.)
When I deployed, we’d hardly been in the country a few weeks before one of our females had to be sent home because she’d gotten pregnant (nice waste of training, not to mention taxpayer money that paid for it). That’s your military readiness? Our enemies are laughing – “Thanks for giving us another vulnerability, USA!”
Then there are relationships. Whether it’s a consensual relationship, unwanted advances, or sexual assault, they all destroy unit cohesion. No one is talking about the physical and emotional stuff that goes along with men and women together. A good relationship can foment jealousy and the perception of favoritism. A relationship goes sour, and suddenly one loses faith in the very person who may need to drag one off the field of battle. A sexual assault happens, and a woman not only loses faith in her fellows, but may fear them. A vindictive man paints a woman as easy, and she loses the respect of her peers. A vindictive woman wants to destroy a man’s career with a false accusation (yes, folks, this happens too); and it’s poison to the unit. All this happens before the fighting even begins.
Yet another little-discussed issue is that some female military members are leaving their kids behind to advance their careers by deploying. I know of one divorced Marine who left her two sons, one of them autistic, with their grandparents while she deployed. She was wounded on base (not on the front lines) and is a purple heart recipient. What if she’d been killed, leaving behind her special needs child? Glory was more important than motherhood. Another case in my own unit was a married female who became angry when they wouldn’t let both her and her husband deploy at the same time. Career advancement was the greater concern.
I understand the will to fight. I joined the Marines in the hopes of deploying because I believe that fighting jihadists is right. And I care about the women and children in Islamic countries where they are denied their rights, subjugated, mutilated, and murdered with impunity; and where children are molested and raped with impunity (not to mention defending our own freedom against these hate-filled terrorists who want to destroy freedom-loving countries like America.) Joining the Marines was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m glad I got to deploy. It not only allowed me to witness the war, but to witness the problems with women in combat.
Women have many wonderful strengths, and there is certainly a lot of work for women to do in the military. But all the problems that come with men and women working together are compounded in the war zone, destroying the cohesion necessary to fight bloody, hellish war. We are at war; and if we want to win, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the top priority should be military readiness and WINNING wars, not political correctness and artificially imposed “equality” on the military.
Part 2: In continuing the discussion of opening combat roles to women, we have the argument that women are already there, deploying and fighting in hot zones. This is true, and it gives us a record of the problems we are already experiencing as a result.
Wasted: Valuable Time, Training, and Resources
I talk about several of the female-only issues for which extra accommodations have to be made in [Part 1]. We are not equal except in our rights under Constitutional Law. Nature has no regard for equality, and each one of us is born differently from each other. We are diverse and dissimilar in our talents, physical aspects, intellect, and emotions; and the sexes are inherently different. We know, for example, that women are much more prone to certain types of infections. For a woman on patrol, setting up an ambush (or, as the infantry do, living in abandoned buildings with no running water), hygiene is a constant problem. A urinary tract infection can quickly become a kidney infection (debilitating in itself) and then kidney failure if left unchecked. Suddenly, a woman needs to be evacuated for a problem that has nothing to do with combat and to which men are not susceptible.
Then there’s pregnancy. Margaret Wente writes: “One study of a brigade operating in Iraq found that female soldiers were evacuated at three times the rate of male soldiers – and that 74 percent of them were evacuated for pregnancy-related issues.”
It costs approximately a million dollars per individual to get trained through bootcamp and to be made ready for deployment. Those are taxpayer dollars spent on someone who has to turn around and leave the combat zone to have a baby (for which our tax dollars also pay), having nothing to do with combat.
Changing Our Best Instincts: Protecting Women, Mothering Children
We know that rape is a tool of torture for the already savage enemy we’re fighting. In one TV interview, a woman suggested that if women are willing to take that risk, we should let them. She also absurdly claimed that men are raped as much as women when captured, which is patently false. But the idea that men shouldn’t worry any more about women in battle goes against the very best primal male instinct. In every country from Canada to Israel where women are in combat (and in American units where women are in theater), the men will tell you they are more protective of the women. It’s different from men’s protection of each other, and it distracts from mission completion. The pro-WICs would have men thwart this wonderful and thoroughly ingrained instinct. A world in which men don’t feel a strong need to protect women when they’re in the most dangerous and hostile of environments would be a nightmare. We would rightly call those men brutes.
We’re also thwarting mothers’ nurturing instincts. Women are already training to kill and leaving their children to deploy, even when they are the sole caregiver (turning care over namely to grandparents). This sets a bad precedent and hurts children. There will always be war, and it’s bad enough for fathers to leave their children to fight necessarily; but to allow mothers to choose this path over motherhood is bad for everyone. There are many noble capacities in which women with children can fight for this country, such as administrative jobs stateside. We don’t need to deploy mothers to battle; we shouldn’t.
The Career-Hungry
A small handful of high-ranking females have instigated this policy change in order to advance their own careers. In this interview, Anu Bhagwati, a former Captain, complains about women not being able to be promoted to certain ranks, claims that women aren’t getting proper recognition for action in combat (a claim also made here), and claims that it’s harder for them to get combat-injury-related benefits from the VA. Regarding the latter, I know females who are receiving combat-injury-related benefits; so if there are some who are not receiving them but should, the bureaucratic, inefficient, fraud-riddled VA should be confronted. Administrative changes could certainly be considered to take care of veterans as we should – regardless of sex – for injuries sustained in battle thus far. As for recognition of action, this is also a bureaucratic aspect that can be addressed through the chain of command without changing the policies on women in combat units. And finally, as to rank, cry me a river. The military is about preparing for and executing war, not advancing your career at the cost of readiness for war.
The careerists are also on the hook for the double standard that we currently have for the sexes, which inherently lowers the standards overall. Even if one standard is imposed, it’s likely it will be an overall lower standard. As the Center for Military Readiness points out, “The same advocates who demand ‘equal opportunities’ in combat are the first to demand unequal, gender-normed standards to make it ‘fair.’” Enormous pressure from Washington is already on the military brass to fill quotas of race and sex; and the higher they get, the more politically motivated the brass’ decisions. Whereas imposing one higher standard would in fact result in fewer women serving in these roles, the political pressure to prove diversity will result in more unqualified women (and men) attaining positions for which men are more qualified. But go against the diversity status quo dictated by Washington, and you can kiss your rank and career goodbye. The purges have already begun.
The word “discriminate” has several meanings, including “to distinguish particular features, to be discerning; showing insight and understanding.” We should absolutely be discriminating in our criteria for war preparation, and the lives of our men in uniform depend on us taking an honest, discerning look at who adds to military readiness and who detracts from it. We should absolutely not open the combat units to the myriad problems we face already with women deploying to the theatre of war.
--------------
Jude Eden is a graduate of Hillsdale College in Michigan and the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Massachusetts. She served in the Marine Corps from 2004-2008 and deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2005-20066. She is a cancer survivor and cellist now living in North Carolina with her Brazilian husband.
Tags: Women In Combat, female, combat vet, viewpoint, Jude Eden To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 7:03 PM - Post Link
2 Comments:
Wonderful, straight-forward, honest article.
Bill ,great website! thanks for letting me know about it ! Dan at the recycle center Mt. Home
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