The Vast Majority of Military Women Don’t Want to be Fully Integrated into the Combat Arms

By Jude Eden Published on December 22, 2015

Don’t confuse most military women with the tiny feminist cabal comprised of a few officers and a lot of political groups who’ve been pushing for complete integration of the combat arms.

There is a vindictive refrain accompanying Ashton Carter’s recent dictat that the combat arms be opened to women without exception. “You women asked for this,” some seem to be saying, “now suck it up.” No, most military women did not ask for it, but the few times they’ve been asked, their voices have been ignored in favor of a teeny tiny group dishonestly claiming, “This is equality.” Some 92.5% of enlisted women surveyed by the Army in 2014 said they didn’t want to be assigned to combat units. Surveys by the Army Research Institute have yielded similar results. This colossal majority matters because it is they who will pay the price for this asinine policy pushed by a small few.

That some men who join the military may also be unwilling is irrelevant. Men are uniquely suited to the demands of combat and we will always need them to fight. We don’t need women in direct ground combat and, in fact, evidence shows they hinder success and incur greater harm than men.

More than anyone, military women know how much harder the physical demands are on our bodies compared with men. Our military training makes us tougher, but it doesn’t make us interchangeable with male peers, let alone men at the infantry level.

There is zero evidence showing that women strengthen combat units and plenty of evidence to the contrary. That’s why the administration and its mouthpieces, Ray Mabus and Ashton Carter, ignored the Marine Corps’ 9-month integration study that showed all-male teams outperformed coed teams on 69% of combat tasks and women suffered over twice the injuries. The study was heavy on oversight and engaged the best personnel. Its results echoed what we already know from decades of testing and injury stats. In other words, the results were nothing new. After saying they would consider exemption requests upon serious review of data, the administration ignored all of it.

Many women who fail to make infantry standards think it’s only they individually who cannot prove to be the equal of infantrymen, but that some women out there might. But we never seem to see the amazon women materialize in real life. Women are finding they cannot overcome Nature but they’re being told it’s men’s attitudes holding them back. What cruelty.

Women want to serve their country with dignity and honor. They want to be successful where they serve. They don’t want the standards lowered, to be quota fillers or to hinder the units that require the best of the very best, the most skilled at direct violence on behalf of our national defense. The decision to fully integrate the combat arms without exception puts women in the worst place of all, at far greater risk than their male peers and on the receiving end of undeserved resentment.

When making military policy that has sweeping ramifications for all America’s women, responsible stewards would base the decision on the 99.9% who don’t volunteer for such service, not on the tiny feminist element of the tiny fraction who do volunteer.

The blame for soon-to-be lowered standards, weakened combat effectiveness, increased injuries, greater expense, lost battles and higher rates of attrition lies with the feminist harpies who’ve been pushing this for the better part of 45 years and the men who’ve surrendered to them without a fight. These men are spineless politicians in uniform who’ve stood up neither for combat readiness nor for the welfare of men and women alike serving in uniform, and spineless members of Congress who have been derelict in their oversight duties.

They’ve had all the facts on their side — a mountain of them — for both effectiveness in battle and troop welfare. Yet they have been unwilling to claim their responsibility or make the case. Our enlisted men and women will pay with heavier loses of life and limb, the country with weakened national defense.

The Obama administration has been undermining and dismantling the military since Obama took office. That he would impose a reckless and destructive policy on a group that has no choice but to obey orders is no surprise. That the supposed opposition would capitulate so abjectly is inexcusable.

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