DoD lifts ban on women in combat

[Deberg_1990]

Does this mean that women will now have to register with the Selective Service as well?



http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/art...ds-4218940.php






In a historic action, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today will remove the ban on women in combat that has excluded them from jobs ranging from infantry squad leaders and tank gunners to commandoes.

The decision, praised by women's advocates but denounced by the conservative Family Research Council, ends a 1994 Pentagon policy that barred women from high-risk ground combat jobs.

Women often have seen combat anyway over the past decade, as 283,000 of them went to Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a Congressional Research Service report, with 144 killed and 855 wounded.

“I remember in 1990 when we went into the first Gulf War, there was an uproar about women going to the front lines and talking about women being taken away from their children and having to go to war, having to go into combat,” said Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau, a retired Air Force major general.

“Then when we went into the Iraqi war (in 2003), there were no longer those kinds of issues,” she said. “Those issues weren't raised because people were recognizing that we've done this for a long time, women are trained to do this.”

Military officials said Panetta would unveil details in a news conference this afternoon.

An implementation period is expected, though details of how the service branches will phase in the policy weren't clear.

Anu Bhagwati, executive director of Service Women's Action Network, which joined three officers and an Army staff sergeant in lawsuit led by the ACLU to overturn the policy, called the decision a historic moment.

The policy, and laws before it, were rooted in a military long segregated by color, ethnicity and gender. But barriers to women had fallen over the decades, especially after the Women's Army Corps was disbanded in 1978.

The combat exclusion policy had barred women from serving in around 238,000 jobs, said Bhagwati, who noted that many of those positions set the stage for higher-ranking assignments. Giving women the chance to compete for combat roles, she predicted, would improve retention and recruiting.

Women make up 14 percent of the 1.4 million troops in the armed forces



Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/art...#ixzz2IuPbDodW

[Dave Lane]

Good about time.

Women deserve equal rights to be shot and maimed

[notorious]

Yay, I guess.

[BucEyedPea]

Bad

[FishingRod]

Was listening to a talk show on the way home last night and most of the women were very much against it. Something to the affect of “well what if we have a draft again and they don’t want to go but now they don’t have a choice.” I found it annoying. Welcome to the adult table.

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by FishingRod

Was listening to a talk show on the way home last night and most of the women were very much against it. Something to the affect of “well what if we have a draft again and they don’t want to go but now they don’t have a choice.” I found it annoying. Welcome to the adult table.

Cake and eat it too. IMO it's not a good idea for a myriad of reasons, but don't let that stop anyone...maybe we can form a PC Battalion...but hell yeah, draft them too if we're going this route.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by FishingRod

Was listening to a talk show on the way home last night and most of the women were very much against it. Something to the affect of “well what if we have a draft again and they don’t want to go but now they don’t have a choice.” I found it annoying. Welcome to the adult table.

heh, yea it will be interesting to see in a few years if this drops recruiting numbers for women.

[FishingRod]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

Cake and eat it too. IMO it's not a good idea for a myriad of reasons, but don't let that stop anyone...maybe we can form a PC Battalion...but hell yeah, draft them too if we're going this route.

It will be a problem when they lower the physical standards so woman can qualify. The nature of the conflicts we seem to be in these days women are already getting shot at and returning fire. To exempt/ban over 50% of our population due to their gender just isn’t cricket. The fact that women are not required to register for the draft (just like men do) is sexual discrimination against the minority class known as men. If they are not strong enough to be a grunt reassign them to a task they are capable of. For what it is worth I never want to see the day the draft is reinstated in this country.

[frazod]

Horrible, stupid idea, considering the types of ****ing animals we're fighting right now.

The stupidity of the people running our government never ceases to amaze me.

[listopencil]

I hate it.

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by FishingRod

It will be a problem when they lower the physical standards so woman can qualify.

You mean like they've done in many of the fire and police departments?

There are always exceptions to the rule, but there are physical differences between men and women and it seems ridiculous to ignore them...and that's only ONE aspect of this whole thing.

[Direckshun]

http://theweek.com/article/index/239...omen-in-combat

5 silliest reactions to women in combat
Marc Ambinder
January 24, 2013, at 1:30 AM

It's going to take a while before the Defense Department truly integrates women into the hundreds of thousands of combat positions that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opened to them Wednesday. Each service and combatant command will have the opportunity to assess the social and financial costs of the policy change, and it's safe to say that a number of jobs will remain closed to women in the United States. But given that the change was endorsed uniformly by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same body (with different chiefs) that had trouble staying on the same page on the lifting of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell, ban, the reaction from some has been, to borrow a sexist phrase, hysterical.

1. Tucker Carlson tweeted: "The latest feminist victory: The right to get your limbs blown off in war." Note to Tucker: 130 American women have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And of the several hundred who are injured, one now serves quite ably in Congress. (Rep. Tammy Duckworth flew helicopters.) I suspect that many feminists might well agree with Carlson: Women ought to have the right to get their limbs blown off if they're as qualified as men are. Duckworth, whose limbs were, well, blown off, was as good a pilot as the many more men who were injured by IEDs too. This is quaint and false chivalry.

2. It will be hard to integrate women in the special forces. I heard this argument on the radio, and it can be dismissed. There are many women who serve with distinction in the Special Operations Command. The Army Compartmented Element fields highly trained female interrogators and intelligence collectors who are forward-deployed with the Army's special forces and national missions forces. (Some actually helped with the Sensitive Site Exploitation analysis for the pocket litter collected by the SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden.) Similarly, the CIA's Global Response Staff, which provides security and does counter-intelligence for case officers, and many case officers from the agency's Special Activities Division are women. They serve side-by-side with their male colleagues, scouring Libya for militias who have stolen MANPADs, among other tasks. Most SF and SOF and NSW direct action combat roles will not be integrated, by the way.

3. It's an "untested social experiment." As opposed to what? Actually, it's been tested in plenty of countries and worked in most cases, particularly when the integration, the training, the housing, benefit schedules and other factors are duly considered. Women don't want the jobs or the risk, according to the "Center for Military Readiness," which does not speak for women. Then the argument goes: There is too much sexual assault in the military already, too much sexual misconduct; more women will only increase these pathologies. That's not necessarily so, especially if one of the causes of such misconduct is a lack of strong female role models in general/flag or command officer/NCO positions. Also, I have a feeling that most of the women who will volunteer for infantry units are going to be badass. In a good way.

4. Women are biologically different than men in significant ways, and so absolute equality of outcome is neither realistic nor desirable. This is Heather MacDonald's argument. As a statement, it is true, but it has no bearing on the decision made yesterday, which will take into account those differences and still restrict women from a range of roles that require the average upper body strength of a man. That such standards could have been influenced by social conditions rather than be a brute reflection of biological essentials is not part of MacDonald's equation. The worry that standards will be relaxed for women is more appropriately expressed as a desire to make sure that the standards for the job are exacting and right; that means that some may be relaxed, and some may be tightened. Equality of condition in the military for men and women is not a goal of this policy. An end to discriminatory policies that have no rational basis while preserving military readiness — a readiness that still does incorporate a recognition of gender differences — is.

5. This is just like wanting gender-integrated football teams! Or: Obama wants to take guns away from women to help them protect their homes but he wants to give them guns to use on the battlefield! He wants to get them killed. These are analogies in search of a common bridge. War is different than football. (And women in the military are already issued weapons.)

[FishingRod]

Originally Posted by fan4ever

You mean like they've done in many of the fire and police departments?

yes that is exactly what I mean

[fan4ever]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

4. Women are biologically different than men in significant ways, and so absolute equality of outcome is neither realistic nor desirable. This is Heather MacDonald's argument. As a statement, it is true, but it has no bearing on the decision made yesterday, which will take into account those differences and still restrict women from a range of roles that require the average upper body strength of a man. That such standards could have been influenced by social conditions rather than be a brute reflection of biological essentials is not part of MacDonald's equation. The worry that standards will be relaxed for women is more appropriately expressed as a desire to make sure that the standards for the job are exacting and right; that means that some may be relaxed, and some may be tightened. Equality of condition in the military for men and women is not a goal of this policy. An end to discriminatory policies that have no rational basis while preserving military readiness — a readiness that still does incorporate a recognition of gender differences — is.

Uh huh.

[InChiefsHell]

Jeez...so we are so strained in our Military that we have to have women in combat? I mean, why is this needed, other than to make some women feel better?

Call me a sexist bastard, I don't care. But I have a problem sending women into combat. I just don't like it. It's a man's job. Not because a woman can't do it, but because a woman shouldn't have to do it.

Meh.