A friend and a former Marine sent me a link to a Marine Corps Times article today. I have provided the reader the link. In it, the Marine brass explain their rationale for beginning the process of allowing women to attend Marine Corps infantry training. Bravo! This is something I fully support. I am, and always have been, a proponent of allowing women to serve in combat roles. My bias in supporting that position comes from experience serving with women in the military and observing their capabilities first-hand.
First, a lighter note. Aside from the fact that most of the women I've ever met can't pee without an immaculately clean, porcelain toilet at hand, they are quite adept at field work. I do see some logistics problems in "manning" combat units with women. I can shit, shower in shave in about 6 minutes. My wife takes 45 minutes. That could be a problem when kicking a mixed gender infantry unit across the line of departure but I am sure that can be worked out. The "peeing" thing will never be worked out I am afraid. Ladies, you'll just have to deal with it. You can't hold it until the next exit! (My sister, a retired US Army colonel tells me women now carry portable pee bags to the field. OK, one up on me.)
I also think such a decision opens up a new pool of candidates to supplement the ranks of those who must bear the greatest burden in any war - the ones fighting in the trenches. Why not let women face the chatter of machine guns or the shriek of a mortar in flight? How about a rocket propelled grenade penetrating the side of your armored humvee or the roar of an IED going off feet from where you stand? More endearing sounds you've not heard. Regardless, women pay taxes, stimulate our economic engine and enjoy the blessings of liberty in our fair land. If they want to slug it out with the Taliban on a rocky mountain in the Hindu Kush to protect their property and province, count me in at the yellow ribbon party.
But, before NOW and other feminist groups start erecting the statue to me in the town square, allow me to pick apart the reported plan envisioned by the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps in facilitating placing ladies on the battlefield. I don't give what four star generals blurt to the media much credence in this regard. At that level of rank, they are just as slick as any politician you can name. To survive in the Marine Corps bureaucracy, one needs to be just as savvy as a Congressman or Senator running for re-election. We all know they say things they don't mean so I assume those quoted for this article took the same tack.
What I zeroed in on is what appears to be a renewed focus on "gender-neutrality" in Marine Corps physical fitness standards. An equal playing field leveled to to set the stage for women to take up arms right alongside their brethren jarheads. Details, reportedly, are scant. I should say so. The reason they are scant is because they are non-existent. Standards, traditionally honed and tested in practice, have always been the way those that train Marines could test them to see whether or not they meet an objective measure of what it takes to stay alive and be effective as a team member in war. As more and more women entered the ranks of the Marines, two sets of physical fitness standards were set for rather obvious reasons. The Marines, persistent cusses that they are, apparently are going to right that wrong.
Safely ensconced at the hallowed halls in Quantico, Marine staffers have been looking at this pressing matter for a year. I could have saved them the trouble. Why in heaven's name should the Marine Corps look at objective, gender-neutral physical fitness standards? The real people of relevance and who can provide a far more credible source of data are currently honing their physical prowess in the Iranian, Syrian or North Korean armies.
A question. What difference does it make, for example, if the Marine Corps sets a gender-neutral physical fitness standard of 5 pull-ups in one minute but 95% of the female candidates, who can readily meet that standard, can't haul a 95 pound artillery shell from the gun truck to the firing battery line? None, I suppose. Somebody who can carry the shell has to carry it, though. That unborn Chinese infantryman who may face our unborn, X-chromosomed Marine one day, could care less whether or not she passed the gender-neutral annual or semi-annual "exam." All he cares about is whether or not she can shoot her rifle or, if it gets to it, parry his bayonet thrust.
Possibly forgotten in all of this, is the chalkboard of history the Marines erected themselves. The leathernecks who waded ashore in their brothers' blood at Betio in the Tarawa Atoll in WWII were absolutely shocked to find out how tall and fit their Japanese Marine opponents were. They had been led to believe all Japanese were short, fat and blind. Surprise, surprise. Even after some fairly robust and taxing training in Australia in the months leading up to the invasion, six foot American boys found it rough going when they had to go toe-to-toe with some very tough hombres. The casualties on both sides tell one all one needs to know about gender-neutrality on the sandy, crimson beaches of the South Pacific.
One of the tried and true measures of physical fitness in the Marine Corps has been the overly praised ability to run fast, do a lot of sit-ups or pull-ups in a training setting. Great. Looks good to the IG. But, the rubber meets the road when determining whether or not the individual's fitness can meet the demands of the modern battlefield. Wearing body armor, a helmet and carrying your rifle, ammunition and combat gear, if tossed into a surf line on some foreign beach, do you pull your head above water and swim to shore or do you sink to the bottom and drown? Can any person, male or female, wearing the same cumbersome equipment, strike out on an unplanned, unanticipated twenty-five mile hike in the desert with limited logistic support to aid a fellow unit in distress? Can a man or woman haul a fellow Marine on their shoulders to the corpsman's fighting hole? These are the standards to which we should strive aren't they?
I fear a push towards gender-neutrality to meet a political end, may not address these fundamental questions but may result in a degradation of the fighting capability of the force as a whole. Lest you think my thoughts misogynistic, I implore you to believe the opposite of me. A bullet could care less whether or not its target is male or female and neither could I. But, as Patton once famously said, the objective is not to die for your country but to make some other poor son-of-a-bitch die for his. Therefore, no gender-neutral MARCORPS bulletin will render the result we need. If called on, a woman must kill without mercy.
I am heartened to see my Marine Corps, an organization in which I proudly served for almost a decade, continue to advance the principles on which our country leads the way in this otherwise regressive and dreary world. Yet, if I may be so bold as to offer advice and guidance to those that may seek to satiate the desires of a class of people untrained and unfamiliar with the rigors of armed combat, to lower any standard we may carelessly set so that a rather useless egalitarian metric is met is folly.
Beat the enrollment drum and let it not judge by sex. If it suits your taste, my dear, come one, come all to the brutality of combat. But, for your sake and that of your fellow Marines, when you show up armed and ready to fight, make sure you bring your best. You're gonna need it.
http://marinecorpstimes.com/news/2012/04/marine-corps-women-infantry-combat-dunford-amos-041812/
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