A Price in Blood

I haven't said anything about the Defense Department's decision to open all jobs to women because, as Ranger Up's Nick Palmisciano says, our opinions no longer matter. This is no longer a political question. The decision has been made, and we're going to pay the price in blood for it however high it happens to be. The best thing to do is to support those who have to undertake this mission as well as we can.

Still, we should probably warn young people considering a military career that it just got more dangerous -- especially if they are women.
Army women not only suffer more injuries than men during combat training, but the active-duty female soldiers also are stricken with significantly higher rates of mental health disorders.

The statistics come from a study conducted by the Army surgeon general last summer in conjunction with a bevy of analyses and experiments to judge women’s suitability for direct ground combat roles. It found, for example, that female soldiers suffer depression at more than double the rate of men and that one of the triggers is exposure to combat....

“This is a major scandal in the making,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “Here you have United States Army, with its own medical study pointing to the injury rates at least double compared to men. This is a consistent finding across the board. And they are proceeding anyway. And there is no indication that young women considering military service will be informed of the additional risk they will face over and above what men do. Once you sign up, they are going to be assigned to jobs beyond their strength anywhere the Army wants to send you.”
That it is dangerous isn't a reason not to do it -- the honor comes in large part from the danger. Best of luck.

8 comments:

raven said...


question- if women are supposed to be able to fulfill equally all the duties of the men, why are they exempt from draft registration?

Grim said...

For Heaven's sake, don't encourage them. The price will be high enough as it is.

raven said...

I am thinking of Mencken- re,-"....the idea that the public knows what it want's, and deserves to get it good and hard."

Sometimes I think blood is idiocies only known solvent.

Anonymous said...

There is no logical reason now not to draft females. Short of an existential threat to the US, however, I would not allow the state to take my daughter for service against her will. I say this as a father supporting his 18-year-old son's intentions to enlist in the Marines. Were he instead drafted, I would expect him to serve regardless of his intentions.

I do not understand how any father with a daughter could feel otherwise. There is a difference. It is a difference worth resorting to violence to maintain.

-Krag

douglas said...

I don't think it would take blood (though that's an outstanding line, Raven). Just imagine people who already aren't too keen on reminding their sons to sign up for selective service when they turn 18 being told they now have to tell their daughters that. That's a bit less abstract than someone else's daughter signing up for infantry. Take the issue, make it stark and unavoidable by almost everyone (either as a parent or sibling, or the girls themselves) and maybe then we get some common sense for a change. Too many people will simply sit aside when it's someone else's sons and daughters suffering the consequences, I'm afraid.

Ymar Sakar said...

"our opinions no longer matter."

Shrugs, as I said before, people will do as they are told. That is true in a democracy, a so called representative democracy, a fake republic, and an oligarchy that everyone calls the American democratic experiment, let alone the autocratic benevolent Dictatorship that is the Military Hierarchy.

They will do as they are told, even if the Order from above is "Be Defeated and Die in Afghanistan". They may not like it, they may retire their commission or go on inactive reserve, but the Order is an Order. It is something the Japanese understood, far better in the cultural matrix than the American counter parts.

Ymar Sakar said...

The reason Demoncrats brought up the draft again in Bush II's 2003 OIF and Iraq war post aftermath, and then tried to vote on it in Congress, is because they understood what 4th generational warfare can do to spike the morale of a civilian population at war, if only indirectly.

So long as people think the Left is some political party they can vote in or out, they will never be capable of using the war tactics necessary to destroy or defeat the Left. Yet, that doesn't prevent the Left from waging unceasing war against humanity or Americans.

People are blind, they don't want to see what they don't want to see.

MikeD said...

Frankly Grim, I'm with Raven on this one. They wanted it, they got it. Now they should get all that comes with it. Yes, there will be a toll in blood. But the only way to truly bury this idiocy is to demonstrate, beyond a doubt, how very wrong they were. And we cannot do that if we protect these people from their bad decisions.