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Women in Combat
The subject of women serving in combat roles has come up several times here in Ricoland. Here I started a conversation about Son #1, who spent a year training women for USMC Infantry and collected data, and the way the Secretary of the Navy is now impugning that data.
This week, I ran into an acquaintance whose daughter went to West Point. She was recruited thanks to her soccer skills. She did two years of military school prep before starting West Point, and had to avail herself of every tutoring opportunity available there.
God love her, she gutted it out and managed to graduate.
At a military academy, your chances of getting your preferred military occupational specialty are mostly based on your class rank. If you’re in the top 10 percent, you’re going to get that requested flight school or SEAL assignment. In the bottom 10 percent, you get what you get (your mileage may vary).
My acquaintance’s daughter was in the bottom 10 percent, and got stuck with an assignment to an artillery unit in Texas.
So they did what all American parents would do – they sued. After all, just because some women want to serve in a combat role doesn’t mean they should be required to.
They have since dropped the suit, because the daughter has decided she has two options: first, talking her Army Ranger boyfriend into marrying her, which would get her assigned to his Army base in Alaska. And if that doesn’t work out?
She’s going to get pregnant.
Blaspheme! Blaspheme and more blasphemes!!!!!
What.Is.Wrong.With.People???
She came out of the academy with a B.S. and is a 2nd Lt. She swore to serve for 5 years, so this officer wants out? She can’t work her way up to a higher grade or better position? Strange, but my granddaughter has committed 10 years so far to the AF, went in as an enlistee. My brother committed 20, and his daughter committed 20. Your friend’s daughter chose the infantry, and now will smear her good character to get out? Sorry, have no sympathy for her.
Stuff like this makes me angry. She’s suing? Over what?
Man or woman…if you sign up for military service, you should expect to be placed in any position that could see action and/or any assignment, even the cruddy ones in some god-forsaken area that no one should be stationed at. This is the army, honey, not the girl scouts.
The I’ll-just-get-pregnant thing makes my head explode.
Me neither Kay. While trying to keep my eyes from rolling out of my head I said: She realized it was the ARMY when she accepted the appointment to Westpoint; right?
There are certain differences between men and women which cannot easily be reconciled, such as strength, body shape, testosterone levels, etc. But there is one aspect of military service for which women are absolutely equally capable as men: taking responsibility and accepting one’s commitments.
It’s a well-known fact that the military often doesn’t give its members what those members want, but what the military needs. Part of service is subsuming your own ego to the needs of the force, and there is no inherent difference between women and men in this regard.
Yet we seem to hear frequent stories of women who volunteered for service not accepting their fates in the service. And I realize that these are only anecdotes, and having never served myself I am certainly throwing stones in a glass house.
But the fact that subservience in the military has become such a foreign concept in our society strikes me as a greater threat than having troops who can’t scale a wall or carry a heavy backpack.
TLDR: I agree with everything Kay and HoA said much more succinctly than I could.
Agreed. I am pretty sure they dropped the suit because somebody finally told them that just because you’re not happy about it doesn’t mean you have a case.
My head was coming so close to exploding I didn’t delve for details.
Someone at West Point forgot to teach her about honor. I thought that was one of the basics needed to graduate. It also sounds like her parents are encouraging her behavior, maybe they are the ones who need to learn honor.
The “somebody” was very likely every lawyer from whom they sought advice. “Dropping” a lawsuit, in lay terms, more often means “I couldn’t find a lawyer willing to file suit.”
Interesting story!
It’s a shame that this particular young woman received the spot at West Point, when there are so many young men and women more deserving. I gotta say though, that despite the many really fine officers with service academy backgrounds, my experience is that those schools graduate a disproportionately higher percentage of flakes as compared to ROTC and OCS/OTS. My sense is that these “failure to adapt” cases are more likely to drop out of an ROTC program and less likely to get into an OTS program (which largely commissions prior enlisted personnel).
Aside from the threatening to get pregnant thing, I would not necessarily link this to “women in the military.” As others have suggested, it probably has more to do with her family’s utter lack of experience or even comprehension of military service.
Cripes. Even a bottom 10 percenter at the Academies is assured of some success in life. Ask John McCain.
Or lasting fame. Ask George Armstrong Custer.
Nice!
Indeed, I thought being an academic underperformer was a prerequisite for most elected positions.
But I do wonder whether his initial selection into a prized job (pilot) was in any way helped by having an admiral as his father…
Yes—let’s teach this young woman to blink S.O.S. and endure torture?
Don’t laugh—when I was little, my father told me that story, and I taught myself how to do it, just in case I was ever interned at the Hanoi Hilton…
As a prior E, ROTC sourced person myself, I feel that the academies provide better good officers and worse bad ones.
USNA: 13 weeks of training crammed into 4 years.
So she is going to take the time honored method of becoming pregnant. I am sure she will find some honorable man to be her meal ticket. Or maybe the government will pick up the tab for her and her spawn. Such things are the way of the world.
They should recoup the cost of the education. They do that from time to time.
We had top officers in Germany. I was stationed in the same brigade as Elvis Presley, only twenty some years later, he was a tanker and I was an infantryman. No officer would have conducted themselves the way this female has. It would be unheard of, not to mention a career killer.
Come to think of it, all our O’s were ROTC.
Yeah, convince her boyfriend to marry her, which means divorce in two years.
I just posted about my kids’ experiences and opinions on women’s service in the IDF on a thread of Claire’s.
The Army, any army, makes its own choices, and having to live with that fact seems to be the most difficult challenge most young people have with military service.
The military does not have to care how “special” you are.
Uh this is also what happens when precious space at the Academies is given for sports rather then picking the best, smartest, most motivated to serve.
Re the bottom of the class, let’s not forget George Pickett.
Smilin’ Jack
Re the bottom of the class, let’s not forget George Pickett.
That charge wasn’t Pickett’s fault. It was top of the class Bobby Lee’s.
Pickett just executed the orders he received.
[hunkering into a defensive crouch against the inevitable brickbats]
When the warfighting “stuff” gets real, the females get pregnant. Units hobbled when they deploy because personnel they were counting on didn’t want to go and got pregnant. Or claim a hardship because their child care plan fell through. [accompanied by plenty of “Ain’t the military awful?” stories in the media]
As I posted on Claire’s comment, we will find out at a terrible time, in a terrible way, what a terrible idea this is.
Everyone ready for their daughters to register for Selective Service when they turn 18?
BTW, my daughter served 4 years in the Army, Signal Corps (25P). She thinks women in combat is a terrible idea also.
Brickbats? On the contrary: Nick, that might be my all-time favorite Ricochet quote!
Our brickbats are made of foam. No worries, Nick!
@kylez#20: given this lady’s character as described. I suspect that the “convincing” will be her getting pregnant any means necessary and pinning it on the man that gives her the Bigger Better Deal, heck it may even be the child’s father. If she stays married will depend entirely on if she can find a better BBD else where or not.
Brings to mind the case of Dan Choi. He claimed he knew he was gay in high school. He then accepted an appointment to West Point, got a full-ride education at a world-famous school at taxpayer expense.
By all accounts he served honorably. Then while still a member of the military (and as far as I can tell at a point where there was no further benefit he could milk from that system) he outed himself as gay and became a cause celebre (guaranteeing a future of speaking fees, book deals, etc.).
In an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s show, Choi kept coming back to the army values of honor, how he had to do the honorable thing and out himself instead of living a lie.
He was fully content to live the lie as long as it was to his advantage, taking a place that some other deserving student would otherwise have gotten. Then as soon as it no longer served his purpose he changed his story.
Feh, disgusting.
Imagine her leading a unit in a forward zone. Her soccer skills won’t be a benefit there but her attitude and leadership skills will be. I wouldn’t want my child in her unit.