About time we caught up with the rest of world. Now if we can only catch up with the world on cell phone plans, Internet speeds, health care, etc, etc.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said on Wednesday.
The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served.
Is that the new uniform?
Three years from now when the United States and China are at war in the Pacific (and probably the west coast of the United States) the thinking behind this decision will become perfectly clear.
If three years from now we are at war with China, women in the military will be the least of our worries.
People rioting in the streets because they can’t buy cheap crap from Walmart may be more pressing.
Who shops there? not me.
Republicans.
Yeah when the Bratz doll supply dries up because of the Chinese war embargo, americans will be rather peeved at not being able to buy cheap plastic crap.
The tip off of the war will be a massive down turn in the stock market. The Chinese Leadership has invested in America, not China.
You don’t rob (attack) your own bank. Especially when the bank’s landlords (USA) owe you money. The money that they owe you is the only kind that buys oil.
Ridiculously stupid decision that only a politician could make. There is a huge leap in logic that because some women get injured in logistics convoys or from mortar fire at a base camp that they should be now be allowed in a menuever element as riflemen and artillerymen. There are numerous studies showing women have significantly higher probabilities of skeletal-muscular injury than do men. On average, the ceiling for strength and endurance are much lower as well.
How strong do you have to be to pilot a drone?
War is not like it used to be.
The shipping containers full of communications gear and disgruntled Chuck Yeager wannabes are about to get a powder room installed.
Yeah sure, ask the members of the 8 active infantry regiments and 3 artillery regiments in the Marine Corps where all these cushy drone pilot jobs are.
Women have been unmanned (wonder if that word is changing) aerial vehicle, UAV, pilots for years.
And to illustrate how far the distribution for physical capability is shifted between the two groups, the Marine Corps has collected data from across the service and the top performing females fall within the bottom third of males.
My sister was in the military and said there were guys in her unit shorter and skinnier than her, and she could have pounded their dicks into the dirt easily.
So you sister is a bull-dyke heifer.
No, she was a military woman and probably could kick your ass too. I never picked a fight with her even though she’s shorter than me.
Oh and her M-16 marksmanship is better than mine.
Doesn’t bother me though, my manhood isn’t based on my need to exceed women’s physical ability.
You know? As soon as USA gets into another real bloody war like Vietnam, Korea or WWII and we start burying our front line women, I bet dollars to doughnuts that any women on those front(s) will be pulled out of active duty combat. Assuming they aren’t all shot to death on the first battle or something.
Only when we see the real violence of a real war and not this remote control video game crap will we as a society reconsider this “equality” fight that mother nature has pretty much made clear.
But since this remote control video game crap does seem to be the future of warfare then I say, why not? As long as both men and women are not required to do the things that a traditional soldier has required to do then I say let anyone serve in any way he or she can. Just because we now say it’s OK for women to fight on front lines doesn’t necessarily mean we should relax the standards of what a soldier should have to do.
So if old butch Betty decides to tie her crew cut up in a bunch of pretty pink bows once the bullets start flying or even think of saying something like she can’t fight because she’s a girl then I say shoot her for dereliction of duty or outright desertion! And if you’re not OK with shooting a woman for cowardice or any other reason that a man might be shot then you should fight this decision.
You might also like to ask this question: Does this now mean women will also be required to register for a military draft? Does THAT seem fair? You women talk about equality and all. So let’s be fair here. Let’s ALL all be equal or SHUT THE FUCK UP!
I also say, Bill Burr for President!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zr162OZ2Z0w
https://youtube.com/watch?v=imZ52DHBtug
Let’s amend the constitution first, pass the Equal Rights Amendment, then we can make demands on women.
I’m glad women now have the choice. So long as military conscription never extends to women.
A serious discussion in Congress on whether women will have to register with Selective Service will probably take place this session.
Well, since we are making policy changes because a handful of women have fantasies of being Rambo; yes the law should change.
Perhaps we should pass the Equal Rights Amendment first, so women actually have equal rights which they don’t right now due to the GOP bitterly opposing that constitutional amendment.
Coming from a culture with more than thousand years of accepting women as equal in military/war practice I say plausible but one must not forget that US culture just 4-5 decades ago kept women’s role in the kitchen only… That is the problem. Proclamations don’t change rooted-in cultural issues. So, as long as their combat participation for now is purely voluntary I say OK.
Yes, we too have women in combat forces in Afghanistan, only a few percent, but on equal terms with the boys down there. If that’s what they want and are good at it, would it be arrogant and foolish to deny them access.
Thank you , two term President Obama for helping the world free itself from those evil towel heads. Love and Kisses!
I look forward to all the coming news stories of how female POWs captured by muslims got gang raped by their captors. Much more specifically, I look forward to how all the islam atrocity excusers who have been excusing away every last atrocity committed by “muslim militants” on non-muslims try to spin that as not being proper muslim behavior or otherwise the fault of the women for being captured wearing anything less than a full burka garb, or something.
I first became aware of the professional muslim atrocity excusers during the Desert Shield or Desert Storm when CNN had some D-Bag from CAIR (I think it was) as an “expert” on muslim/arab culture, who essentially said in no uncertain terms that murdering innocent people (I forget who, probably palesinians vs israelies) was not, somehow, an act of reprehensible, murderous, terrorism. And I kept seeing these D-Bags on every news channek/show where they decided they needed a “muslim expert” for the audience. Even FOX News used them for years and all the news outlets to the Left of FOX News STILL use them without any qualms or questioning of their stance on muslim terrorist activities (which is said activities are not terrorism).
A bit more pertinently, western culture has traditionally taught males to look out for the safety of women (not a particularly strong teaching in some areas these days…). Many years ago, somebody pointed out that mixed gender military unit performance would probably suffer as the men reflexively tried to protect women from harm, at the expense of battlefield expense (and maybe their lives). I suspect that analysis probably still holds true.
Never mind the not so well kept secret that women serving shipboard in the US Navy tend to spend a lot of time on-shore being pregnant and new mothers from all the shipboard sex….
“at the expense of battlefield PERFORMANCE.”
Computer grammar checker, where art thou?
2/3 of your completely un-insightful babbling seems to think we are living in 1991.
Of course women get pregnant to “get out”, no different than John Kerry shooting himself in the hind-quarters to get out of ‘Nam.
Or a GOP senator claiming bad knees to get a deferment, then coached high school wrestling while others were dying overseas.
…all the news outlets to the Left of FOX “News”…
That would be all news outlets then.
I don’t qualify anything that comes out of FOX as news, anymore that I qualify anything that comes out of a Kansas student’s mouth as science.
Not sure if you heard…but our own officers and trainer’s at Lackland AFB were assulting our troops regularly. Young girls, new recruits. So the threat within their ranks is a million times more dangerous than the poor, shoeless, homeless taliban.
Give them some weapons so they can blow that creepy Master Sargent’s head clean off. He deserves it.
The officers at the academies were abusing their given authority over their female trainees.
The taliban is the enemy, women soldiers have no reason to submit to the authority of a bunch of bearded muslim freaks.
Women should be conscripted.
Deal with single-parent situations and medical conditions (pregnancy) separately. Either you are a citizen or you aren’t.
No more of this “some genders are more equal than others” crapola.
Around 2006, I heard that several thousand single mothers had served in Iraq. Was the number 10,000?
Anyone?
Info or link — or your Alzhemer’s matters in what in what way that anybody should give a crap about?
It may be rude, but meritocracy works only one way and either you can back your thoughts up with evidence or you can’t …
“… more than 30,000 single mothers have deployed to Iraq
and Afghanistan as of March 2009.”
source: Women Warriors: Supporting She ‘Who Has Borne the Battle’; Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America; Issue Report October 2009; p. 4
http://media.iava.org/IAVA_WomensReport_2009.pdf
A more recent statistic from 2009.
Hmeyers just got PWNED
And we’ll see a repeat of the Vietnam era campaigns of: “Would you feel safer with <name of celebrity> in the army?”
If you’re daddy can buy you an ad campaign, and a good plastic surgeon, then you’re safe as houses.
Wars are fought by poor bastards, not rich ones. (Prince whassname fought, but from a helicopter. Fighting is a lot safer then you’re surrounded by steel and kevlar©™® flying out of human luggable armament range. You are not likely to see princess wassname manning a tank turret anytime soon.)
This is very good news. The Air Force will be please to have more girls joined. They definitely can’t get enough of them already. Go Air Force!
Bad news for you, 99% of the jobs in the air force will be unaffected since most of the Air Force are not front line combat troops, but support troops. With the exception of the SP’s and Combat controllers pretty much every job in the Air Force was open to women already.
USAF definitely does get in the line of fire. I had a friend who served in the USAF during the 1st Gulf war. Those SCUD missiles could reach out and touch you even if you were way behind the front lines. He said that the moment you heard the sirens you dropped whatever you were doing and ran for the bunkers.
Modern warfare isn’t trenches and guys running at each other with bayonets anymore.
Double the fodder with no price increase for His Majesty Obama
Majesty Bush was sending women to the Iraqi front long before Barack.
This is wonderful news for women who aim for this job. I think there should really be no gender discrimination.
But their will be. And everyone knows it. Do you really think the standards will be the same between the men and women? Everyone knows what is going to happen. For a year the standards will be the same, but when the politicians don’t get the results they want (i.e. women rangers, seals, ect.) because they can’t pass the physical aspect, then they will change the standards for women, so they can get more to pass.
These politicians are not interested in equal opportunity, but equal results. In this case however, someone will get killed from it.
I for one was (yes, past tense) attracted to women because they WERE DIFFERENT from men, and in a good way. Not talking about the Beast with Two Backs but rather their empathy and nurturing ways. While its true than some women and more masculine than some males, there still used to be a difference that made for dreams and poetry. That difference should be recognized and championed.
ERGO–make military service available to women on a voluntary basis. Every transgender should make the most of whatever skills and fantasies they have.
Turn the page.
The whole transgender thing is the next issue awaiting the military which will eventually be forced upon it. I’ll just go out and say that having a physiological male who wants to be allowed to wear female uniforms is very likely to be deem prejudicial to good order and discipline. And even beyond that, if they are allowed to join, is the military healthcare system going to be required to then provide treatment for whatever transition they may desire? The idea that a warfighting organization should even have to deal with that nonsense is beyond absurd.
Hey SL–I almost gave you a Kudo for your first post above. Good thinking, writing, typing.
Of course, it will come to that. The military is treated as just another social institution. And the thing is, to a very large degree, things “are” as they “are treated.”
Are men and women different? Of course. Should they be treated differently? Of course. Are they equal? Of course. Are they the same? Of course not. And complicating all that, there are large exceptions to every mostly true or only “tending” reality. Hooman Beings are just that flexible. Only the biology of child birth and the darwinian challenge of raising kiddies makes the difference.
Good thing we are moving to economic warfare models and behind that the biggest enemy: Mother Earth.
The Barbarian in the Mist.
Ha, ha.
The article at the link from today’s WSJ sums up all the reason’s that women should not be in combat units.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578260132111473150.html
How do the Israeli’s do it?
Their pussies stink… that’s how.
Here is part of the answer.
“Gen. Robert Cone, who leads the Army’s training and doctrine command, said he looked to the Israeli military and its experience integrating its forces with women. Women, for instance, drive its armored vehicles. That might be a post for women in the U.S. Army, too, he said.”
WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns that idealogical toilet of a news channel Fox News.
Many longtime Wall Street Journal readers have bemoaned the acquisition by Murdoch, which has turned the newspaper from a well respected publication into nothing more than an opinon rag of Uncle Rupert’s mental droppings
I’m all for women going to battle if that’s something they want and are prepared to do. But let’s not forget that rape thing or the fact that women could potentially have babies in POW camps. Let’s also not turn a blind eye to the fact that those POW babies might even be killed! (Does anyone need reminding that “war is hell”?!)
Therefore, I don’t think anyone should be training to go to battle if they’re not PREPARED for it. That also means we shouldn’t be giving special considerations to anyone just because they have to sit down to pee either. Every person should be evaluated EQUALLY and approved to do the JOB of SOLDIER. So if any woman thinks she can do this job then let’s get her in a uniform.
But let’s also not bullshit ourselves either!
Whoever said, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” probably was never in any WAR!
I bet it was a woman or some “mangina” who said it too!
I agree. Let’s send everyone to die in the sand with the gays and brown people. Yay.
Women in combat might work for a normal war where the Geneva convention is followed, but when we are fighting these Muslim animals who would probably just rape and torture female POWs, then all bets are off.
When as it ever been a normal war… no such thing… douche bag!
(Nobody have every followed the Geneva Convention.)
And we were raping and torturing male POW’s in our military prisons, what does that say about the USA?
It is an unnecessary distraction in a hostile environment.
Or a necessary distraction.
In ten years no one will notice or care.
No, unlike letting homosexuals serve openly, there is a very real impact to opening up these field to a less physically capable segment of the population
We loose faster and come home earlier… These wars we are in are total BS. When was the last time a towel-head through a grenade at you. I say call out the B-52s and settle now!!!
So your bright idea is to carpet bomb a country we never declared war upon. Tell me who is the enemy and where are their bases. Oh, let’s not forget that the bombs would destroy all the poppy fields, isn’t that why we’re in Afghanistan?
Does this make the Selective Service System sexist now?
Selective Service was nothing more than the leftover program of a Cold War law created by Ronald Reagan, who thought it would scare the Soviets by making us look like we’re preparing for a war with them.
Its not like the government doesn’t already know your name and address, Selective Service is just a law that refuses to die, just like many other outdated laws.
Hay dumb-ass… the Selective Service was formed in the 1917. It’s a left-over from WWI.
Equality for men can’t be far behind!
How long before “sexy costumes” for men show up on Halloween websites.
Is this as far as earth’s civilization has come in all this time?
Shazbot!
That’s fair!
“About time we caught up with the rest of world….”
What??? Could you name some nations where women serve in the infantry? Don’t bother saying Israel, they tried that once years and years ag0. They don’t now. Think they might have learned something?
Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, a few others I can’t remember.
Iran also has women in its military but I don’t know if they serve in the infantry or its just a propaganda exercise on their part.
When was the last time these countries were in a conflict let-alone a war. My neighbors kids could kick butt compared to women.
Well lets see, most of those nations participated in some way in NATO operations in former Yugoslavia. Australia invaded East Timor to stop muslim militias, France is presently in Mali, Spain was in Afghanistan, as well as Germany.
The correct list is; Australia, Norway, Canada, Ceylon and now USA. The one that tried it and stopped is ; Israel
The other ones you mentioned never ever had combat positions for women.
Oh..and Nato Troops never have women in combat positions because many countries refuse to risk their troops on such action.
Yeah, I know the Israelis don’t do it any longer, just because women CAN NOT serve as well as men.
I can guarantee that France and Italy DO NOT have women serve in equal capacity. As for Norway…well cats could serve there. They never se action! A woman CAN NOT put a big guy over her shoulder and carry him in a fiiremans carry out of a kill box. Its impossible.
Women are simply not made for that! They are made for love and care!
Boy, this sure has the draft-dodging Republican chickenhawks in a tizzy.
Now this gives Republican women the opportunity to dodge the draft!
If you want TRUE equality and to exemplify equal pay for equal work, then there should only be one physical fitness standard.
The PFT is used to indicate that a particular person is fit for military duty (i.e. combat). To have two standards already overtly implies that one gender cannot do as much as the other. Why no screaming to have one unified standard? Because too many women would be found to not be fit for military duty while those men who previously weren’t are likely to now be fit enough.
This is nothing more than a social engineering experiment.
Yes, whoever can take a sharp kick in the groin wins
Guyver said: “… equal pay for equal work …”
As soon as I see any woman doing the equal work to a man in the same position I will agree with equal pay.
All of the whining, complaining they are having their period, more “sick days”, more time spent during office hours on facebook and social sites and the cell phone…
Any real statistics on women taking more days off sick as you claim?
The Equal Rights Amendment never passed, so women don’t even have equal rights under the law yet. Perhaps we should fix that first before we start demanding that women have to be equal to men in the military.
Wow, no end of bullshit from couch potatoes on this thread.
Lots of small dicked men feeling threatened, thats all I can see here.
A woman in active combat with PMS…
The enemy has no hope, may as well preemptively surrender right now.
Jokes aside, after all said and done, it will become a universally (USA-wise) accepted concept, just like any other profession.
And something we can be proud of.
“even though in reality women have found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan”
WTF does this mean? They have been subjected to enemy fire, IEDs, etc. but as far as I know none have been in a combat role. If they have what’s the beef?
Watch out what you ask for you may get it.
Right, there are no women involved in offensive combat operations.
The big thing the media likes to bring up are the female engagement teams pioneered by the Marine Corps, which were essentially a couple females being escorted around by a squad of infantrymen so they can talk to the the local women and children.
Pfc. Lori Pistiewa was attacked by iraqi soldiers in 2003 while escorting a truck convoy which went down the wrong road during the initial invasion.
She held off iraqi attackers until she ran out of ammo and was eventually shot dead.
Guess who she was protecting? Private Jessica Lynch, whose legs were crushed due to the truck running off the road and running into a ditch.
Thats really not an endorsement. Whats the point of that story?
That women have already served in combat. The military just sidesteps this fact. The thing about war is even though you may be a road engineer, a truck driver or a cook, if things are going badly you suddenly become a infantryman and the military requires you act as one, otherwise you wouldn’t have been taught to shoot in basic training.
Scores of women have come back from Iraq with major injuries, missing limbs and many have come back feet first as well.
I hear that they allow cross-dressers in now. “Make those boobs stand at attention!!!”
When I first saw this post I saw the picture beside it and was simply outraged. Pictures like this are what is wrong with the portrayal as women in combat today, and as objects of sexual appeal. fishnet leggings are really the new uniform, I suppose. I’m interested in seeing what the males say to that, when they wear them themselves. I can’t even express in words my feelings of disgust for this portrayal of service women.
Well, if that picture bothers them, then I really can’t see how well they will fare when tortured by the enemy.
The US, catching up with the rest of the world, should also mean *NOT* being the major supplier of arms and personnel, to fight wars and conflicts abroad. Even the total of European military involvement, doesn’t eclipse what the US supplies, at any one time. So if we’re gonna talk about involving female personnel in more than just supporting military rolls. Like the rest of some of the world (aka, Israel, Soviet Union, China-maybe). Then we also ought to talk about scaling back how much of its personnel, the US should be committed and sacrificed to foreign wars, conflicts, and oil pipeline defense. Not to mention, super-expensive weapons systems. That I doubt the US ever gets fully reimbursed for. More likely that’s written off as good sales promotion for Raytheon, and Lockheed.
Marvelous, what a web site it is! This weblog
presents valuable data to us, keep it up.