Women in Combat

[Aaron]

How much do you get paid to be a pubic affairs officer

[Precocity]

For the DIA? I'm sure it's not minimum wage. I wouldn't be surprised if it was into the 6 figures.

[John Galt]

i don't know that it's "highly inappropriate", it's more of just a humorous happenstance. dressing for success is a good thing. the people that dress like slackers? they don't get promoted. no one likes it when you dress like shit. we have casual at work. some people take it to extremes. i wish i had power to fire them all

[Sandman]

Late to the party, but I haven't had much time to be online lately. I'll throw my two pennies in on this one real quick, though.

Women already find themselves in combat situations, have been for a long time. The problem they were facing is that being in combat is a career-booster, but not if you're technically not "allowed" to be in combat in the first place, and therefore cannot be recognized for it. So female soldiers and marines were getting screwed for years, out of awards and combat action designations. Their careers suffered, and this was pretty widespread, as there are obviously tons of women down range in all capacities, and combat tends to find it's way to you, no matter how "inside the wire" you think you are.

So on a pure policy level, I think this is a great thing. It doesn't really change the immediate dynamics of any combat units, but it will allow a ton of female soldiers the due recognition they deserve. Which is cool.

That being said, there have been absurd double standards in place in ALL branches for physical standards for women for years and years, long before any talk of combat MOSs opening up. This is the main problem I have. The military has become so politicized over the last 2 decades that we are already at a place where healthy young women only have to do 10-20 pushups to pass a serious physical fitness test to join and remain in the military. It's a joke. It's been a joke for a long time. I'm not a beleiver in this biological voodoo that I'm sure has been espoused somewhere in the previous 30 pages that I didn't read, implying that ALL women are less physically capable than ALL men to do certain heavy lifting, etc. Well, that argument pretty much goes straight out the window when you see some of the puny, scrawny weirdos in army uniforms, or god forbid the opposite end of the spectrum, the obese whales that somehow don't have a massive coronary everytime they tie their boots. Trust me, there are TONS of females out there who are more than capable of holding their own alongside the boys on the battlefield. As long as they can carry 40-70 extra pounds of "battle rattle", and drag someone out of a firefight (which is incredibly hard for anyone of any gender, no matter what anyone says), then hey................who cares what gender they are? The problem arises when you already have dirt low standards for women across the board in all branches because you need to keep percentages up for the bean counters, how do you then turn around and enforce different standards for "combat units", which as I previously alluded to, ANY unit down range can conceivably become in a moment's notice? You can't. You just can't. So the standards will remain unbalanced, and combat units will end up suffering for it. Not because "women are weak", but because politically correct bureaucrats are weak.

I'm not too worried about it, though. The thing is, real no-sh#t combat units are pretty good at self-regulating (take that however you want to), so in the end I think this is all semantics for the political class to hash out while the actual troops keep doing the job in a professional manner no matter what. The tip of the spear type units have always found ways to exist outside the rules, whether it be drug-testing or uniform regs or whatever. I think unworthy women will find an invisible wall standing in their way to those units, and they'll end up in army combat MP units and the like instead. We'll see.

[jimmyz]

[exploited]

Everytime Sandman logs on, he leaves some sort of epic well-rounded post that blows everything else out of the water. Unreal.

[spacemonkey]

I guess it takes alot of courage to sit safely behind a desk and give others permission to get THEIR asses shot off,lol.