A Lovely Parting Gift - Mr. Panetta To Authorize Women For Combat Roles

The peace symbol (also known as the "footprint of the American chicken") has made its comeback, in case you hadn't noticed. One of our young relatives was wearing it on a necklace and I realized she knew nothing about its history. I told her gently how that symbol was once sported proudly by people looking much like today's "Occupiers" who spit on our troops returning from Vietnam. One could tell she was hurt as she removed it and it has not been seen since.
Now the children and students of those same people are filling the Democrat Party's ranks and the offices of the Obama Administration, making laws that govern both American businesses and our armed forces. They generally know nothing about either institution and I suggest they hold contempt for both.
Read below the consequences that happen from putting these people in charge of America's valued institutions. Peace, brothers.  TD

A Lovely Parting Gift - Mr. Panetta To Authorize Women For Combat Roles

... (He will lift) the military's ban on women serving in combat, a move that will allow women into hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando units, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.

...."6) I remember watching Restrepo and wondering how all the "grab-ass" and the like would work in a mixed unit.   I concluded it would probably go bad at some point."

It will not be simply letting women choose to be in a combat unit; it will come to requirements that certain numbers of women must be in a unit. I pity the poor commander of a unit that is under heavy combat stress when he now will have to be concerned about some sort of sexual discrimination charge.
I worry that excellent leaders will no longer choose the military because of all this.

From Blackfive; Needs Of The Service....

"I am most tired of being told that just because liberals say that women will be great warriors in the combat arms and that we should let them try.  Just saying it over and over does not mean it will be so.  I have watched them and lead them and I have seen how with only a few very notable exceptions, they are unable to carry the same loads that male soldiers carry, I have watched them struggle to do some of the most basic tasks that male soldiers have no problems completing.  I have seen them use their gender to avoid work and their plumbing to avoid deployment, and unfortunately for the women; the few bad apples taints the whole bushel when it comes to this career field."

Laughing Wolf disagrees with me  If these words were not in Blackfive, I would not take them seriously.

Even American Thinker writes of women now in combat, which is true enough. The big issue for me is not that women shouldn't be in harm's way, but how disruptive their presence will be in an actual combat unit such as a rifle platoon.
With the presence of  women and the openly gay in combat units, there is now a sexual element where it has no business being.
 However the article linked to does make some excellent points that go along with my own thoughts: 
"If criticism is to be made, it should be directed at why this is being done. Is it just one more example of using the military as a social science lab? Is the ban being lifted purely out of a perceived need for "gender equality? "Will the military lower it's qualification standards so that women can serve as special operators? They may eventually try it, but I doubt whether team members in the SEALs or other special op outfits would accept any female applicant who didn't have to endure what they did. "Those men depend on each other completely as their missions are the hairiest in the military. Not being able to implicitly trust a team member would vastly reduce the effectiveness of the team."

Allen West rips call for women in combat  He is a combat leader who should know and I respect him highly.
"He called the strategy a “social experiment” and said that given the challenges facing the country, now is not the time to try it.
" “Unless the Obama administration has not noticed, we are fighting against a brutal enemy and now is not the time to play a social experiment with our ground combat forces,” he wrote. “President Obama, as Commander-in-Chief, should be focused on sequestration and the failure of his policies in the Middle East. This is the misconceived liberal progressive vision of fairness and equality which could potentially lead to the demise of our military.” "

If this story was a fictional TV movie, Basilone would be a gorgeous woman: