Panetta’s decision overturns a 1994 rule and opens up thousands of front-line positions for women.
The Associated Press reports senior defense officials have said Pentagon chief Leon Panetta has decided to remove the military ban on women serving on the front lines in combat situations. This decision,
[Opens] hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.
This groundbreaking decision, which was recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will overturn a 1994 rule that banned women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta has given all branches of the Armed Forces until January 2016 to request special exceptions for specific positions they feel should remain closed to women.
What do you think? Should women be on the front lines of combat? If so, should women have to register with Selective Service for the draft at age 18, as men do?
Photo: AP/File
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Lets all enjoy our little gendernormative feel good games. The reality is that the bad guys don’t play by those rules. Put too many women in front line units and sooner or later a significant number of them are going to get captured. Then guess what, you get to have 24/7 live streaming access to sexual abuse. Middle eastern or African warlords will make the circumstances you all like to call the rape culture a true long term reality. They will use abuse of female detainees to break down male detainees, They will use gender to extract information, disrupt prisoner unity, and make a hellish situation orders of magnitude worse. I think this little equality exercise will cost our nation greatly, in many ways, in the long run.
Only if we cling to outdated notions of chivalry and woman-protection that should have been abandoned decades ago.
Yes, the bad guys will torture our female soldiers. They already torture our male soldiers; what’s the difference? In an egalitarian society, the answer is “none.”
Unfortunately,19 and 20 year old POWs won’t be residing in your mythical egalitarian prison camp.
There comes a point when reality has to take a seat in front of the way we wish things were, and in my opinion this is just such a time.
I’m all for equality of opportunity in all but the most drastic of cases, but Geneva Convention, much less egalitarianism, simply does not apply to any opponent we have faced since WWII. I hope American is ready to handle seeing their daughters (and sons) being abused via YouTube. Adding significant male/female integration into this situation will result in more prisoner deaths, suicides, and abuse.
The incremental tick up in the egalitarian policy wish list is just not worth it.
So, you’re saying that you’re OK with our male soldiers being tortured… but allowing it to happen to our female soldiers is suddenly a problem?
No, I’m not trying to imply that its OK to torture male POWs. What I’m saying is that female POWs will be subjected to sexual as well as physical abuse at a much greater rate than male prisoners. Male POWs will move to physically intervene on the behalf of these females prisoners being singled out and get killed, where if it were only males prisoners were present all receiving the same abuse a survival attitude would usually prevail. Enemy forces will use the presence of female POWs to extract information and concessions from male POWs, increasing the frequency of suicide among prisoners from the perceived loss of honor and reduces sense of unity among the group.
Historically the only way a female POW can minimize her sexual abuse is to in effect become a concubine of a senior prison official. Garnering that sort of favor (if you can all it that) would also break down unity of resistance and make the whole situation worse.
That’s not to say it will never happen this way without the change in policy but putting large numbers of females into front line units almost ensures it happening in instances where even a few troops are captured where it is an extremely rare event to date.
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Since the end of WW II, the most important military terrain in the world has been the six inches between the ears of the American voter. Hence the lefties in the peace movement, the fake civilian casualties from American action, or the drooling glee with real civllian casualties for use to impugn the US effort. Or the flat lies….but you know all this.
The US effort will be in even more danger if we see viral footage of women being tortured than men being tortured. Which puts a premium on torturing women for fun and propaganda.
Now, if you think no American military action can ever be justified, this is the thing for you. OTOH, if it might be that the bad guys are actually approaching your door, and you decide to put a nineteen-year-old soldier between you and danger, and thus approve of the military action….metaphor. I mean something, somehow, that an enemy of the US doesn’t like might still be something of which you approve could be in even greater risk of being opposed by your friends.
That said, the bad guys can get American women practically anywhere… missionaries, medical teams, teachers in dicey areas, even tourists. So we don’t actually need women soldiers for this to work. Just sayin’.
But,, anyway, has anybody here who supports the idea mentioned even in passing the antiquated concept of combat efficiency?