Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[Tom Odom]

Women are not interested in warfighting for the most part, these are foolish ventures that would never happen if women were in charge, at least that is the world according to my wife.

Are women less competitive than men? Are they more interested in getting along than dominating? If true, does this translate into a problem solving methodology focused on co-opting rather than fighting? I haven't a clue, and of course if any us understood the psychology of a woman, we would a book on it and retire rich. Part of the beauty is the mystery.

In all seriousness I think women played an important role in Vietnam (on the other side), and in other conflicts in a variety of roles, but I'm not aware of any women who are or have been noted strategic military thinkers, are you guys?

I believe that if you look at the British queens of note--Elzabeth and Victoria--there you will find strategists of the first order. Interestingly enough some of the inner circle of the Rwandan Patriotic Front as rebels and later victors were women; they played key roles in aligning the RPF's agenda to build greater support. That became especially important after genocide when there was a fundamental shift forward for womens' roles in Rwandan society based on pure necessity.

I would also offer that the "Dark Queen" of the genocide and leader of the hardline faction most likely to have decided to shoot down the Rwandan President's aircraft was his wife, Madame Agathe. The leader of the organized rape campaign built into the genocide (250,000 rapes reported) was Pauline Nyiramasuhuko , the first woman charged with genocide and using rape as a crime against humanity. She was the former Rwandan Minister of Family and Womens Affairs.

She was not alone: women played an active role as scouts for the killers and sometimes did the killing. My ambassador's driver--a Tutsi--had his wife--A Hutu hardliner--go get the Presidential Guard to kill her husband and sons (because the Tutsis are patrilineal). Her husband and 2 boys escaped; she went into exile in Goma.

best

Tom

[Maximus]

Great discussion. Have been grappling with this topic for the past few months and would appreciate any feedback on some thoughts running through my head...

If the people are the center of gravity in Iraq and in COIN in general, how can we succeed if we almost never interact with the women, who are more than 50% of the Iraqi population? More specifically, if succeeding in COIN has historically taken 10 years or so, who do we need to believe in our and the host nation cause? I think part of the "who" are the children and teenagers, who while maybe age 15 now, will be the 20-25 year olds leading security forces, creating businesses, going into politics, etc. as the COIN campaign continues. How do you influence this group? I think the answer is in large measure through their mothers. I'm not an anthropologist or otherwise cultural expert on Islamic and/or Iraqi culture, but based on leading well over 500 patrols in Iraq, I think Iraqi mothers play just as important a role in raising their kids as do American mothers, IF NOT MORE (most don't work outside the home). For example, I'm a USMC infantry officer that's in the field or in another state training roughly 50% of the year (I'm 3000 miles from my family as I write this). When not in the field, I'm preparing for training, PTing, studying, etc. I'm probably home with my daughter and wife maybe 20-30% of their lives. My wife is with my daughter almost 100% of the time. The same will apply when our son is born within the next 3 weeks. That said, if you want to influence my daughter's views on the world, you'd better convince my wife of your cause. Using a similar train of thought for Iraq, if we're trying to sway 5-20 year old boys not to join the insurgency now or over the next 10 years, not to plant or dig holes for IEDs, not to wear suicide vests, not to serve as look-outs, not to tolerate insurgents, etc. I think we need to convince their mothers that this is a bad idea, or at least not in her family's long-term interest.

So then, how do we do this? Given that my Marines almost never spoke to female Iraqis (same applies for every Marine/Soldier that I know) how do we deal with this significant problem? I think the answer is that during COIN/IW/4GW/Small Wars/Whatever you want to call what we're doing in Iraq now, we need women on our patrols. These women must be specially trained in Iraqi culture, language, understand the role of women in Islam, etc. Their mission should not be to persuade Iraqi women to be like American women. They should simple focus their efforts on why our cause is good for the average Iraqi family. My gut says creating a cadre of women PsyOps Marines/Soldiers for this purpose would definitely help our cause, both short and long term.

I understand this idea opens a whole series of questions about integration in infantry units, training, manpower, etc. That said, if fighting an enemy whose center of gravity is a regiment of T-72s, would we simply ignore 100-150 of these tanks because we ran out of ammo?

Thoughts?