“They pushed these women down into these units as fast as they could,” says Mr. When Pentagon leaders decided to end the 1994 policy excluding women from combat, the Army began opening support jobs in combat units to women. Many male soldiers see women differently because the service itself sees women differently. But it was the product of more than a few months of Ranger School, they add. The male Rangers’ praise was welcomed by advocates for women in the military.
Then, it only mattered that women could do the job, and they did, the male Rangers added. The male graduates of Army Ranger School, widely considered one of the toughest in the military, praised their fellow female soldier graduates last month, declaring that they would be proud to fight beside them anytime, anywhere.īeyond that, they said, the matter of sexual dynamics was a moot point when they were exhausted and pushed to their physical limits in the midst of an ambush. “Newbold’s piece has a lot of the same tired old arguments that go back to the Carter administration.” The perpetuation of this exclusionary “band of brothers cohesion” argument “is perpetuated on the reliance on these retired old guys,” he adds. “What’s really frustrating about this is that there’s a whole network of retired generals that the Pentagon relies on for advice.” “It was disturbing to read his piece,” says Greg Jacob, who served as a Marine trainer.
Multiple Pentagon studies have found that the more experience men have working with women, the less likely they are to be concerned that they affect unit cohesion. The article was widely seen as being encouraged by Marine leadership to help pave the way for the Marine gender integration study released the following day.īut critics say it promotes and seeks to maintain a bygone era. Women would bring to units “sexual dynamics,” he adds, that would “degrade the nearly spiritual glue that enables the infantry to achieve the illogical and endure the unendurable.” “The characteristics that produce uncommon valor as a common virtue are not physical at all, but are derived from the mysterious chemistry that forms in an infantry unit that revels in the most crude and profane existence so that they may be more effective killers than their foe,” he writes in an entry titled “What tempers the steel of an infantry unit” in the online military magazine, “War on the Rocks.” “Polite company, private hygiene, and weakness all step aside.” Newbold argued that fighting in combat is something only men can understand. While conceding that women had impressively met the physical challenges of Army’s “very, very difficult” Ranger School, as he put it, Mr. Gregory Newbold put it in his opinion article, have “shared the duties of cleaning the urinals, the pleasures of a several nights of hilarious debauchery, and multiple near-death experiences.” Many of the Marine Corps’ adherents argue that, beyond any physical differences between men and women, combat is a savage pursuit that should remain the sole domain of men who, as retired Marine Corps Lt. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who has authority over the Marines, questioned this week’s study, saying the fact that it “started out with a fairly large component of the men thinking this is not a good idea, and women will not be able to do this” could quite possibly have impacted results. Within the halls of the Pentagon, the Marine Corps has widely been regarded as foot-dragging on the matter of women in its combat ranks. This week offered insight into how difficult that decision could be. The result is that the Marines largely remain where they were 20 years ago, while the rest of the military has shifted dramatically around them.Ĭome January, the Pentagon will have to decide whether the Marine Corps should open all its combat jobs to women, since it looks increasingly likely that the corps will request an exemption. That attitude, critics say, has prevented the Marines from taking steps toward integrating women more seamlessly into the force – steps the Army took long ago, such as opening support jobs in combat units to women. It’s a tough-guy culture cultivated by a force that prides itself on being the tip-of-the-spear – used by the US military to, say, take a beach from enemy forces by any means necessary. The force has long been associated with hard-drinking, hard-fighting “Great Santini”-style warriors, whose chest-thumping does – and by necessity should, supporters add – trump any nod to what is widely seen by many Marines as political correctness. So why, and who, are they still fighting?