Maggie's Farm

"Pentagon Cannot Justify Anti-Woman Policies"

It is insane to force the military to comply with the feel good PC rules in the face of obvious evidence that it will seriously harm our ability to defend ourselves. One simple fact that everyone probably knows but may not want to accept is that for multiple reasons men and teenage boys are considerably stronger then women and have a totally different attitude about physical tasks. One example of how this applies to the military is this: In the army manual the correct way to defend yourself if you are in a Humvee that is disabled by the enemy is to pull the top mounted 50 cal machine gun off the turret along with the ammo and the removable mount. This is about 110 lbs in total with the heaviest piece about 65 lbs. You then run to cover while dodging enemy fire and set up the gun to defend your position. For whatever reason even the skinniest 18 year old boy can do this. They may struggle and even cause themselves injury in the process but they can do it. None of the females tested can. This inability of women to correctly achieve strength based mission essential tasks includes almost everything in the book. This is more then simply not being able to do 3 chinups. Just carrying the standard pack that ground soldiers are required to carry and still be able to march 20 miles a day is literally impossible for women. Depending on the mission this pack varies from 40 lbs to well over 80 lbs. You will often hear someone make the simle and seemingly logical statement "if a woman CAN meet the standards then why shouldn't she be able to serve in combat". But in fact what actually happens is the standards are lowered incrementally until a desired percentage of women can meet the new standards and what never happens is that women are required to meet the real requirements of combat. This hamstrings the unit in multile ways: 1. you have fewer "able" combat members to achieve the mission goals because the female members cannot pull their own weight. 2. Someone has to pick up the slack so therefore some of the compentent soldiers are tasked to carry more or help the less able female soldiers. 3.General morale is harmed as the competent soldiers realize they will have to do more while the "protected" class will do less and no one is allowed to comment on this problem for fear of reprisals by the PC police. 4.In actual combat lives will be lost and missions will fail as a result of this fairy tale belief that women can equal men in combat.

Before we destroy our country's military effectiveness by continuing this mistake I suggest a simple public test that will effectively bring home the problem to everyone. Starting this fall half of the NFL's teams should be 100% female. They can select the best and strongest and then let the chips fall where they may out on the playng field. Ditto for basketball, hockey and baseball. We should extend this to MMA fights where in every fight one of the contenders must be female. Bring these measures to our police and firefighters as well by requiring half the cities in the U.S. to have all female police and fire departments. Obviously I'm kidding. No one really thinks that any women atheletes could compete in the NFL or that all female fire departments could fight fires and rescue people as effectively as the quite strong and capable male firefighters do. But that's the point. It should be just as obvious that with very few exceptions the military is not a suitable place for women.