women in combat

I’m doing some research on women in combat and will probably be doing some musing on the subject. An incredible resource has been the Center for Military Readiness, led by Elaine Donnelly. She is very well written, and in my opinion, is one of the champions of REAL women’s rights; the right to stay home and raise your children, and the right to just – be a girl, as opposed to the marxist philosophy that we all have to be toadys to the feminists line.

Feminism is something that I’ve been against since I was in High School. That is 30 years ago now, and at that time, my main concern was that if the ERA was passed, that women would be exposed; and forced into combat.

Now, because of activists like Schroeder, who went after the naval officers because of that groping incident in a Nevada hotel-because it was sexual harrassment against women, we now have the same people who complained about that and who demanded the heads of officers on a platter, cheer for women like Jessica Lynch, who was a little 19-year-old girl, tortured and brutalized by the enemy in a torture chamber. She ended up with her forward support company (FSC) in a combat zone, and she, nor her family, never imagined she’d wind up there, let alone captured.

But that’s what we have right now; since the military has accepted that women will be at risk for capture, while not notifying the women they’re recruiting and signing up.

Elaine Donnolly (correction: Donnelly) at the Center for Military Readiness:

All deployed soldiers, men and women, are serving “in harm’s way.” But even without a “front line,” the missions of direct ground combat units have not changed. Infantry, armor, and Special Operations Forces attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action under fire. These fighting battalions, and support units that “collocate” with them 100% of the time, are required by Defense Department regulations to be all male.

If the Army wants to change the “collocation rule,” the Secretary of Defense must approve and formally report the change to Congress approximately three months (30 legislative days) in advance. The law also requires an analysis of proposed changes on young women’s exemption from Selective Service obligations.

The more I research this issue, the more horrified I’ve become, not only as a woman, but as the mother of a soldier who has been to Iraq 3 times.

I’ve been going through a lot of articles, and several books on the subject of women in combat for a paper I’m writing for a class I’m in.

This is the chronology of events as I’ve been able to piece them together:

Prior to the integration of women into the military, women were separated altogether from men.

In the 70’s, purely because of political pressure from feminists, this began to turn around.

Then we went to an ‘all volunteer force’, and the feminists claimed they wouldn’t have enough men to fill the jobs. And that’s rather disingenuous if you know the numbers; we’ve never had a problem filling combat boots with male soldiers. But we’ve always had a problem with the numbers of women volunteering, and there have always been problems associated with that, whether it was in an integrated force, even when they were separate. At least when they were separate, our guys didn’t have to depend on women who would suddenly not be able to deploy because of pregnancy or family obligations, or have to go home because of pregnancy or family obligations.

you can witness the confused state of affairs in an integrated force with the disaster of those pictures of abu ghraib. lynndie england got pregnant, and during her trial for that fiasco, she was wearing a uniform outfitted for pregnant women. it’s distressing to me that we have gone this far with the women in uniform situation.

On January 13, 1994, then-Secretary of Defense abolished the DoD Risk Rule, which affected women in support units. Aspin also deleted “substantial risk of capture” as a factor in determining which positions would be open to women. The Aspin regulations, still in effect, permit the assignment of women “…to all positions for which they are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignments to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground…”

In May, 2005, they held the first Congressional debate on the issue since the 90’s.

On May 11 Chairman Duncan Hunter surprised his colleagues by co-sponsoring, with Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairman John McHugh (R-NY), an amendment to the 2006 Defense Authorization Bill that would specifically apply current DoD regulations regarding women to the Army’s new, modular land combat teams. The legislation would have prohibited female soldiers from serving in smaller forward support companies that “collocate” (operate 100% of the time) with land combat battalions such as the infantry. These “FSCs” differ from larger support units at the brigade level, which currently include women.

On May 18, 2005, following the first debate on women in land combat in more than a decade, the House Armed Services Committee approved legislation, co-sponsored by HASC Chairman Duncan Hunter and Personnel Subcommittee Chairman John McHugh, to codify current DoD regulations on women in combat. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld subsequently met with Chairman Hunter, and reportedly assured him that the DoD would review the assignments of women and provide a report to Congress by March 2006.

With that assurance and understanding, Chairman Hunter withdrew the legislation approved by the full HASC, and substituted language in the Defense Authorization Bill (HR 1815) mandating a full report by March 1—later extended to March 31, 2006. The House Report affirmed that Congress expected more “proactive control over assignment policies,” not less. Despite this reasonable expectation, an internal Army Staff directive indicates that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has appointed the RAND Corp to examine women in the military, with a report delayed until December 31, 2006. The directive to RAND added new language to that in the actual statute, signaling that the DoD expects the delegated report to come to predetermined conclusions. In 1997, RAND produced a report on women in the military that purged, paraphrased, or “scrubbed” negative comments and information before publication of the final report.

Source: Elaine Donnelly at The Center for Military Readiness

I’d like to know what the RAND report shows, and what it scrubs in favor of pushing the political goal of welcoming women to combat billets, which is what I fully expect from it, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere.