ENGL2201 2012 C Unit 6

Assessment 2 - Critical Response

No Women in Combat
By Darren Graves, Union of Military Men, 2008 - http://www.unionofmilitarymen.com

Darren Graves is a retired military general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who was recommended for the Medal of Honor by his peers in 1994. He currently sits on the Board of Directors at the Union of Military Men, an organization which fights for the rights of men in the armed forces.

In today's society, with the equal rights movement having made great progress, there is finally a snag in the nylons of woman activists. The question of whether women should serve in combat is upon us. The answer is no. If you have kept up with the news in recent years, women have been fighting their way into the top military academies, the Citadel in America being the most recent case. These women have claimed being just as tough as men, which is scientifically incorrect. They have, through difficult court battles, made their way into the elite schools of our great military, where our best men have been serving us for generations. While claiming to be every bit as good as the men, they have for a most part failed once they got in. Women are just not mentally tough enough to survive in combat situations. Ms. Faulkner won a legal battle to be admitted to the Citadel, a famous American military academy, breaking a 152-year tradition of training men only. On her first day of military training, she collapsed from heat exhaustion. Within days, she unexpectedly quit, admitting that she could not withstand the rigors of "hell week," the first and most difficult week of training. Ms. Faulkner, fighting back tears, explained that two and a half years of stress had coming "crashing down" on her first few days there. After not being able to cope with the schools demands and the stress and trials of the training, she said that it is because the men were too hard on her. She claims she was teased, ridiculed, and tormented by male soldiers and officers constantly. This is not a valid attitude in the military; you are either tough enough or you fail (Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces 1992). Another reason women are unfit to serve in combat situations is that they are not physically strong enough. Chairman of the Department of Military Science at the University of Michigan, who conducted a test of Army officer candidates, found that the top 20% of women at West Point Military Academy achieved scores on the Army Physical Fitness Test equal to the bottom 20% of male soldiers. Only 7% of women met a score of 60 on the push-up test, while 78% of men exceeded it (Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces 1992). A 20-30-year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50-year-old man. In addition, only 1 woman out of 100 could meet a physical standard achieved by 60 out of 100 men. Woman, by nature, are smaller and slower, and have 40% less upper body strength, so they do not have the strength required of a soldier. A final reason to keep women out of combat situations is that they are accident prone in high-stress situations. With those statistics being fresh in your mind, I would like to give a few examples of women in combat from a government report on the subject. Army Maj. Marie Rossi was one of the first American women helicopter pilots to fly in a combat zone. In the heat of war, she could not handle the stress, and flew the helicopter into a 375-foot microwave tower in Northern Saudi Arabia, killing herself and the crew. In addition, Lt. Kara Green, who was the first woman to fly an F-14 fighter and one of two women who qualified for navy carrier operations, crashed into the sea and was killed in October 1994 while attempting a daylight landing on the carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Her navigator pilot ejected; he was fast enough, but she was not. Women may have a spot in the military, but, as we have seen, it is not in combat. References Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces 1992, Report to the President, November 15, pp. 24-27, 36-37.