Women in combat units: Iran’s Capture Of A Female American Sailor Reveals Feminism’s Foolish Double Standard…

Weasel Zippers

"Feminists avoid reality at all costs.

"Via NRO:

As cable news chewed over Iran’s capture of ten American sailors in the Persian Gulf just hours before President Obama’s final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pointedly observed that one of the captured Americans was female.

Now, perhaps Matthews was just being comprehensive in his reporting. But the all but unmistakable implication of this detail was: The situation was all the more urgent.

Now why should that be so? Feminists declare that men and women are equal in all respects. They petulantly decry any atavistic male courtesy towards females as a relic of a still oppressive patriarchal culture. According to that absolutist equality principle, it should be of no greater concern if a female soldier falls into enemy hands, including those of Islamic terrorists, than if a male does.

As the Pentagon moves inexorably to put females into combat units, let’s hope for the sake of our military capabilities that this abstract ideology holds firm. But it almost surely won’t. The enemy capture of female soldiers during a hot war will in fact provoke even greater than usual political pressure to quickly rescue them, if necessary overriding sounder but more time-consuming strategies. The prospect of a female soldier being raped by her captors or, say, “merely” being beheaded will sideline all other military considerations. If two platoons are captured, the one with females in it will undoubtedly take precedence in any rescue effort, thus jeopardizing unit morale and cohesiveness.

The Obama Pentagon’s Disastrous Decision on Women in Combat

. . . "A public and political class largely insulated from the realities of ground combat has become ignorant of its excruciating and unforgiving physical demands. Prolonged infantry operations — including operations common in the War on Terror — place immense strains on the mind and body. Unit cohesion is critical, and physical breakdowns can be costly both to combat power and to unit morale." . . .

"Moreover, given how beholden the administration is to the Left, there is no reason to believe that it will hold firm on physical standards if few women prove capable of joining and — crucially — thriving in the infantry environment. Experience with less demanding jobs in law enforcement and firefighting shows that the legal and political pressure to lower standards will be immense. Under the best of circumstances, combat effectiveness will be degraded."

Kurdish fighter Rehanna

 Obama’s Military Ignores the Facts in Its Eagerness to Put Women in Combat   . . . "It appears that the Army may have fixed its Ranger school to guarantee that at least some women would succeed. Reporter Susan Keating spoke to a number of sources who recalled a general declaring, “A woman will graduate Ranger school.” This bald admission allegedly “shocked” his subordinates and created a “ripple effect” that led to women receiving multiple forms of assistance not available to men." . . .
This Kurdish woman soldier will not be returning home to her family.