The basic problem of putting women into combat is that, because they are far weaker than men along every dimension of athletic performance, it will result in mortality disproportionate to their numbers. The ratio of rates of casualty to rates of combat participation will be much worse for women than for men. Women in combat units will likewise suffer disproportionate rates of all the other hazards of military life: wounds, disease, injuries, and so forth.
It is for this same reason that we don’t allow athletic competition between men and women: the women would lose badly, every single time, and so would suffer grievously (not to mention wasting everyone’s time) in a quest for success over male competitors that the brute facts of biology render hopeless in principle, and ab initio.
Being by nature unsuited to combat with men, women are more disinclined to it, and in practice few women are likely to seek out real opportunities to serve in hot zones. The number of women who are interested in playing tackle football at any level of the sport gives a good indication of how many women are going to seek out combat opportunities.
The result will be that women will serve in combat units in numbers disproportionate to their numbers in the general population, and of those very few who do serve in combat, a disproportionately high number of them will be wounded or killed.
This whole situation being doubly “unfair,” what we are therefore bound to see, sooner or later, is an outcry against it, and a movement to eliminate these disparities. In effect, we will see measures proposed that are designed to reduce the proportion of men we field in combat units, and to shield women from the hazards of combat, while allowing them to continue to claim to have endured them, for purposes of career advancement in the military.
There will be real combat, which will devolve almost entirely to men – as Nature obviously intended that it should – and there will be fake combat – de jure or administrative equivalents to combat.
This situation will persist, and will grow more and more convoluted in its rococo administrative fictions, so long as the military takes its orders from politicians who are not themselves combat veterans. So long as that basic structure of the relation of the military to the rest of society is maintained, such absurdities are bound to multiply. All of them will have the same effects on the military:
- They will force the military to engage in activities other than war – e.g., nation building, diversity promotion, dam building, etc. – diluting the resources it has available to devote to the very function for which it exists in the first place.
- They will reduce the lethality and efficiency of such portions of the military as actually see action – by, e.g., promoting unqualified minorities to achieve diversity goals, ensuring that a certain number of bullets sold to the military were produced in a certain Congressman’s district, and so forth.
- They will involve the military in more inane, ill-defined missions, under constraints of crazy rules of engagement that meet the current standards of political correctness, and that prevent the destruction of the enemy, thereby preventing either victory or defeat, or peace.
- They will result in more casualties.
I am tempted to a generalization: liberal policies increase mortality or decrease fertility or both.
The Orthosphere 
Oh come on Kristor, I bet a WNBA team could beat a HS boys basketball team at least some of the time! </snark>
The real reason behind the WIC thing is that career paths peeter out early for officers who didn’t command in combat (and being a mere major or colonel is soooo dehumanizing). It’s the old glass ceiling only applied to military affairs. So there is this tiny fraction of women who are pissed off about this and want to help not so much themselves, because their window is passed, but their younger sisters so they won’t have to face this transparent “injustice”.
But the right to now to (rarely) command in combat and thus scale the true heights of the US Mil bureaucracy will have been purchased by the blood of the slightly larger (and still tiny) fraction of women who thought they could do it. It is said, not inaccurately, that there is no misogynist quite as mean as another woman.
You’re right.
1-4 have been happening anyway. The women are a coincidence, not cause. ROE – I was in Iraq [again] 06-07, the ROE has been growing since Bosnia in the 90s [there too]. That is lawyers, not women. Rules of Engagement. Thanks for having our back. NOT.
Women have already been in combat, not infantry combat. It will work itself out.
No the fantasy doesn’t come true, but reality will be adjusted to.
The Military’s policies towards gender integration have increased already our warrior stock, already martial women are breeding with other soldiers, married or not. This is already fact. It’s also a plus. That’s a cold statement, even callous. Accept that we are not actually boy scouts. More warrior stock breeds more warriors. That’s good for America, or its military at least.
As it affects readiness, there is some movement to force less deployment pregnancies, this may or may not be pushed. The inherently conservative and family oriented military will not like the last at all, so it’s not likely to get far. Yes we are very traditonal about matters such as family and kids, not so traditional about out of wedlock babies while serving – sexual mores amongst wartime miltary being what they always, always are and have been.
In sum, it’s not all bad news.
The Military’s policies towards gender integration have increased already our warrior stock, already martial women are breeding with other soldiers, married or not. This is already fact. It’s also a plus. That’s a cold statement, even callous. Accept that we are not actually boy scouts.
This is not clear or convincing.
Well I watched it for 13 years over 2 decades. I’m convinced. The Military is beginning to call itself the Family Business, it’s been noted. As far as us intermarrying that’s documented as well. As far as warrior stock…well..you’d better hope. However I can’t really boil it down more, so I guess that rules out clear. As far as convincing…most people who’ve served would agree. However it has been documented.
As a USMC POG with nought but a GWOTSM, I don’t agree with you at all. Women are a nuisance in the Marine Corps. Whether in the office or in an MP unit. Whether in the barracks or out in town on the weekend. They are a NUISANCE. As an NCO I put them in the liability column for anything, including field day. Ok- maybe a carwash in PT gear is an exception for a rare few WMs. America has done just fine breeding competent warriors for 200+ years. And I went in at age 22 thinking women were as strong as men, and my wife became very sexist first because she hated the women in my unit. Then I met several WMs who were honest about things, and saw other WMs go through rape battles with other Marines, altering everyone’s careers. Coming out, I have a totally different view on WMs now. Screw ’em! Put ’em in the Chairforce, or something. Give them their own units, completely segregated from men. Thank GOD I didn’t go to Parris Island- where they liked to have sex in the portables during field exercises, without having showered for days on end.
I think the far bigger error on the Marine Corps’ part was allowing an for someone to be promoted to NCO without any combat experience. Also, in case you’re unfamiliar with the workings of sex, it wasn’t only the female Marines having having sex during those field exercises – there were probably male Marines involved too.
The Military’s policies towards gender integration have increased already our warrior stock, already martial women are breeding with other soldiers, married or not. This is already fact.
It’s also not indicative of a change, as like is attracted to like. The women don’t have to be in the military to mate with military men. IQ, testosterone-levels, cortisol levels, visual-spatial abilities, and etc. tend to align with married couples already. This is, after all, why most soldiers are of a more conservative temperament.
I should add it’s also making us a family business, generational like firefighting or police work.
The basic problem of putting women into combat is that… they are far weaker than men
This is not the basic nor the biggest problem with women in combat, and I’m disappointed to see it so ubiquitously repeated. (It’s *a* problem, to be sure, but not the biggest one.) The chief problem with having women in combat, or indeed in any other branch of the military, is the problem of unit cohesion. Military forces thrive on the principle of close-knit brotherhood, and on possessing a certain self-image of toughness and fierceness – but the introduction of women erases both of these.
Once women are doing it too, it’s no longer possible for the men to subscribe to their own mythology (of being members of a warrior elite), and what was once an inspiring calling becomes just another job; comradeship crumbles as the men become more interested in scoring tail than in the mission; and mentorship breaks down as the men who are natural leaders begin to monopolize female attention, evoking feelings of jealousy amongst everyone else (whereas previously the weaker men looked up to these natural leaders as mentors in a mutually beneficial relationship).
In short, women are toxic to the esprit de corps that underlies every successful military force, and shouldn’t be amongst male units *anywhere*, “combat” or no.
All true. But all that stuff can be swept under the rug, or even celebrated, for the sake of diversity. What can’t be swept under the rug or celebrated is that if women are in combat their death rate is going to be far higher than that of the men.
The factors you adduce are problematic under any *traditional* understanding of the purpose and proper arrangement of military assets. But liberals reject those understandings. They *don’t want* an effective military; quite the opposite, they want an ineffective military, or no military at all. But failing that, they want a “fair” military. The inevitable disproportionate death rate of female combat soldiers is a problem under, and for, *their* understanding of proper military priorities. And in the nature of things, it is practically insuperable. It cannot be solved de facto except by a retreat from their ideal of fairness. In a way, relative female weakness is reality’s rebuke to their notions.
So they’ll save the appearances by administrative lies. Men will do the actual fighting; a few women will be given some of the credit.
It’s a fact we’ve been dealing with for decades. Frankly more warriors is the best result, in sum a net positive.
Sorry to intrude facts, but Israel has had women in the miltiary (combat included) since it was founded, and they seem to do OK militarily. Israel, unlike the US, is under genuine and immediate existential military threat, so it is pretty safe to assume that they would not have this policy if it resulted in severe weakening of their forces.
Wikipedia: “Apart from during the 1948 Palestine War, when manpower shortages saw many Palmach and IDF women taking active part in land battles, women were historically barred from battle in the IDF, serving in a variety of technical and administrative support roles. Soon after the establishment of the IDF, the removal of all women from front-line positions was decreed.”
Israeli law since 2000 has opened all military roles to women. Whether this has reduced the lethality of the IDF is an open question, as Israel has not engaged in any major wars since then; but it is a question that answers itself. When push comes to shove, and other than in cases of dire national emergency, as in 1948, Israel will push the women back from the front and shove the men forward.
All that being said, even if it were true that the IDF had put women into combat regularly since 1948, that would not at all diminish the force of the argument that I make in the post. All that it would tell us is that Israel’s near enemies are *so deeply pathetic* as warrior cultures that, despite their overwhelming numerical and geographical advantages over Israel, she repeatedly and totally defeated them, *even though many of their men were fighting women.*
The Gedanken Policy Test is useful here, as usually. Take two nations completely the same except in respect to whether they admit women to combat units, and pit them against each other. Mutatis mutandis, which will win? I defy you to argue that the nation that puts its women into combat against equivalently armed and supported men will prevail.
Excellent, Kristor. Looks like onecertain likes to bleat more than actually read up on his history.
“so it is pretty safe to assume that they would not have this policy if it resulted in severe weakening of their forces.”
Stupid premise.
Israel has one of the most segregated fighting forces I’ve ever studied. That includes units segreated for women only. If that was what America was doing, I would be OK with that.
Oh you’re right. I’m just pointing out a positive side to it. You may rest assured if we found ourselves against an enemy of the caliber we faced in WW2 or Korea, or certain NVA units in Vietnam we’d reverse policies as fast as practical.
However this does not approach our main problem, which far pre-dates Obama and has nothing to do with girls. We have lost the stomach for slaughter, and our leaders are scared witless of jail and ruin. I watched this begin in Bosnia in the 90s – that’s when Rules of Engagement morphed into Lawyers micromanaging combat – and paralyze us in Iraq. Under Bush. Abu Gharib changed the war. Frankly if any of it is too ugly for you, better avoid it altogether. That however has naught to do with the girls.
So it doesn’t matter if women degrade our combat power, it’s very degraded already for we cannot stomach using it. This government as Constituted will win no more wars.
I could go on at length. However as I get older I fail to see the point of talk.
Action is what gets things done.
It’s Lent so I’m trying to be positive. Boy Soldier + Girl Soldier = more soldiers. Now this is well established in the US military. It’s been happening for more than 2 decades. My service of 13 years begins in 1986. Wiki all you want. I’ll trust my eyes. However there is documentation around to support it.
Hmm. No onecertain. That’s largely myth. Read The Sword and The Olive by Martin Van Crevald.
They’re an inferior combat platform. That doesn’t mean they can’t fight.
However it puts more skin in the game.
And brings us more warriors, tied to us by blood.
Government involves me submitting to society some of my rights and desires (money) in order to attain social benefits, including the protection of my loved ones. Now that women will be registering for the selective service (and they will) I do not see the governments end of the social contract being upheld. Some countries drive their women in the backseats, others chop off their genitals, ours drafts them for combat. I have 3 daughters. Forget it. It’s their country now.
It’s Lent so I’m trying to be positive. Boy Soldier + Girl Soldier = more soldiers.
I don’t see your equation existing to solve any problem. This looks like a post hoc solution to something that is not a problem. In my experience, outside of the air force, female service members are butt ugly. Perhaps, in agreement with your line of argument, their offspring would best be used to make the grass grow. Sorry, morbid humor.
Well perhaps Earl. That never stopped mother nature. And BTW if they doll themselves up it’s a new woman.
Oh and deployment pregnancies are most certainly a problem. One which a certain sinister Army doctor just wrote his PME equivalent of thesis on his final solution to…
@Brendan Dorian: Thanks for mentioning Creveld. His discussion of women in combat in The Transformation of War was impressive, interesting, and not obviously partisan, and also came together well with what I already knew as far as sociology is concerned.
The top brass don’t expect to fight another conventional war like World War II or even a fluid campaign like the war in Vietnam. They believe the next war will be fought by remote control – drones, smart bombs, inter-continental missiles, etc. Front line soldiering is coming to an end as technology takes over.
Since there will be no more Normandy landings or battles of attrition like Iwo Jima, which required masculine virtues of the first order, it’s ‘safe’ for the military, in peacetime, to play social engineering games. Women, for the time being, can be showcased as make-believe infantry, carrier plane pilots, submariners etc. It’s all an egregious imposture.
Not really imposture. Tragically. And it’s going to take many Greek Tragedies on a large scale to reverse this, if at all. But in the meantime they are literally making us family. That’s something to fight for. Hard. Blood trades are the instance when nepotism and blood ties are best practice, see every Aristocracy prior to our present degenerates. Who are on their way out…
Mr. Doran,
Maybe I’m late to realize this, and everyone already knows what you’re on about, but are your positions (centering on warriors breeding with one another contributing to the creation of a family-focused fighting force) looking forward to a new military class to lead America into the next era? Are you insinuating that this a source of hope for you?
Women have served honorably in the military without the current rules and without the present epidemic of rape. What is new is integrating them into combat units. A group of women serving together can fairly easily fend off a predatory man. An isolated woman surrounded by predatory men (either the enemy or her “comrades”) is in an entirely different situation.
A female soldier in a combat zone is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The Obama administration hasn’t been able to prevent that.
A captured female solider is often raped. A captured male is rarely raped. The Obama administration has little power to change that.
Why won’t anyone talk about the fact that one in three women who serve in the US military are raped or sexually assaulted, or has that become acceptable.
Our own US troops are raping women in and out of the military but we call them hero’s?
I am disappointed in anyone who believes in God and finds this acceptable.
Pass this site on that shows a heinous crime that is going ignored.
Evil exists when good men/women do nothing!
theusmarinesrapecom
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justiceday,
“raped or sexually assaulted”
The former term is clear; the latter is not. In fact, it is so broad as to be almost meaningless, so the “one in three” figure is hopelessly vague.
But all this misses the point. There is no need for women in the military. We have never faced a threat so dire that we needed women in the armed forces. We would be far better off with military (and fire and police) forces that are exclusively male.
To the extent that women serve in the military, they should only be there to free men up for fighting, which was what obtained in WWII. However, the decline into “equality” leads ineluctably into our current situation, so it is best to keep women out in the first place. If, during wartime, women are needed to free men up for fighting, then it should be done, whenever possible, by private contractors (some of whom would be men anyway); any women actually serving in the military itself should be segregated, limited in scope of duties (e.g., nurses), and allowed in only for as long as the war continues.
Both Lawrence Auster and Laura Wood have written on this topic. Their analyses are well worth consideration.
“Which do we think right for watch-dogs: should the females guard the flock and hunt with the males and take a share in all they do, or should they be kept within doors as fit for no more than bearing and feeding their puppies, while all the hard work of looking after the flock is left to the males?
“They are expected to take their full share, except that we treat them as not quite so strong.”
Plato hath spoken.
To the extent that direct ground combat will be needed in the future, the demand will be met by off-budget outside-the-org-chart ad-hoc nameless amalgamations of men (just men) from all of the services, the intelligence community, etc. These task forces will be used to do the dirty work like killing Osama, getting Zarqawi, and so on. The overt public face of the military will be integrated, feminized, homosexualized, hyped, lied about, overpraised, and in the end, unused. If you hear about a unit with a name and a history being used in some operation, that will mean the end of that unit as a fighting force. From the moment the press and public become aware of its existence, it will be brought into the public military Family Business, which means women and gays and minorities will be forced upon it…and it will from then on no longer effectively exist. Meanwhile, the men in that unit who are effective soldiers and warriors will be seconded, re-assigned, “invited” into these shadowy off-book units to do what they do best: fighting. Ironically, by attempting to gain complete control of the prestige units in the military (because they are the most effective), feminists will destroy the prestige and effectiveness of those very units, and guarantee the creation of new shadow forces over which the feminists and homosexualizers have precisely no control or oversight at all. Including budgetary.
If fighting needs to be done, America will find the men to do it. By hook or by crook.
Indeed. The situation is analogous to what we have seen happening with higher education. Today’s bachelor’s degree is the equivalent of the high school diploma of 1965; to get someone educated as well as the average college graduate circa 1965, you need to hire someone with at least a master’s degree (thus the popularity of the MBA). This *had* to happen, once the Feds got into subsidizing college education so that every young person could get an upper middle class white collar sinecure. College education was instantly dumbed down so that the new wave of applicants could hope to graduate; and college degrees were inflated right along with the fluffy course offerings and the grades.
There were knock-on effects in the labor force, too. The supply of college “educated” youngsters was exploding, so their price of employment went down, and so the bureaucracy expanded everywhere. But there are only so many administrative jobs out there. So, now you need a BS to pour coffee at Starbucks.
Not that I’m patting myself on the back. The High School diploma I received in the 70’s was the result of educational attainment equivalent to what kids got in elementary school in 1920.
College admissions people have seen applications from men fall off a cliff. Where are the men going? Directly into the technical jobs that don’t require a knowledge of feminist history or gay lit, but do require lots of attentive, thoughtful hands on work, and that – being under-supplied by the educational system – now pay extremely well. Like the black ops units you notice, these men have dropped out of the system, and out of view.
I dropped my car off at the shop this morning to get a window replaced. It is a vast shop, employing about 30 mechanics. Looking out across the shop floor, I realized: there were no women. And, of course, no women are applying to be mechanics, or welders, or anything of the sort. The women all work in the office.
2+3 = 4+1
Are they the same? No.
Are they equal? Why, yes.
To assume equality means sameness is fallacious reasoning and dangerous policy.
Enough said.
Quote:
The top brass don’t expect to fight another conventional war like World War II or even a fluid campaign like the war in Vietnam. They believe the next war will be fought by remote control – drones, smart bombs, inter-continental missiles, etc. Front line soldiering is coming to an end as technology takes over.
end
And I’m sure our would-be enemies are counting on this ideologically-based perspective being rigidly held for years.
Our national self-deceptions and the ability of our enemies to perceive and exploit them will sink us in the next war. Front line soldiering will be precisely the thing we will need, and precisely the thing we won’t have.
Count on it.
“Front line soldiering will be precisely the thing we will need, and precisely the thing we won’t have.”
True.
It seems the military has swapped extremes on this matter. Many “top brass”, in the early part of last century, believed aerial power would play a limited role in future conflicts until the advent of WWII proved otherwise. Then, as fighter technology advanced, it was believed that dog-fighting was a thing of the past until we took losses over Vietnam. But, as important as air supremacy is(and its good that technology in this area keeps improving), there is simply no replacing a well-trained and well-equipped army of men on the ground.
There is this terrible tendency within the reactionary right to ascribe to a radical female liberationist doing her “best” to self-annihilate the title of “woman.”
“Women” soldiers is a gross and false interpretation of what is really taking place.
The opening up of frontline combat roles to radical females with de facto dyke “natures” represents both the desire to stunt and destroy an immature female’s growth towards womanhood and also satisfy the radical female liberationist’s desire for the “right” to self-annihilation.
In addition, the military like ALL entities within the West is under the influence of radical autonomy. The act itself – introducing females to frontline combat – is the evidence of a mercenary military seeking maximum autonomy to conduct its affairs. This will always include the “right” to seek as much cannon fodder as needed.
This is a symbiotic relationship going on here. Dyke “nature” seeks out another mechanism for self-annihilation and US military willfully obliges and gladly accepts our own kind of “jihadist.”
What will be next? The right of children to the front lines and a mutual extension of radical autonomy for both child and US military?