William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[Fuchs]

Let's exclude the non-combat and non-reconnaissance troops, the air force and navy for a while.

For line-of-sight-to-threat army troops the special requirement is military discipline.

Historical German army experiences stress that the need for discipline has its roots in the extraordinary demands of combat itself.
The German keyword here is Gefechtsdisziplin - "combat discipline". It's the compound of obedience with thinking and comradeship.
A (small) unit cannot withstand the stress of battle without discipline, thus discipline needs to become natural for army soldiers. (...)

Other than that there are some slightly special requirements (firearms safety, explosives safety, secrecy, psychological stress), which have equivalents in select civilian jobs.
Gefechtsdisziplin has only remote equivalents in civilian jobs, such as some professional divers (doing welding works underwater in teams, for example), some firefighters (I wouldn't add police raid and hostage rescue teams).


note: Combat does not demand that you don't cheat on your wife. It may demand that no ill-controlled long hair creates gaps in your NBC protection, though.

[former_0302]

Let's exclude the non-combat and non-reconnaissance troops, the air force and navy for a while.

For line-of-sight-to-threat army troops the special requirement is military discipline.



Other than that there are some slightly special requirements (firearms safety, explosives safety, secrecy, psychological stress), which have equivalents in select civilian jobs.
Gefechtsdisziplin has only remote equivalents in civilian jobs, such as some professional divers (doing welding works underwater in teams, for example), some firefighters (I wouldn't add police raid and hostage rescue teams).


note: Combat does not demand that you don't cheat on your wife. It may demand that no ill-controlled long hair creates gaps in your NBC protection, though.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

1) Everyone who carries a gun in combat is by necessity privy to a large amount of sensitive information.

2) The miracle of satellite phones and satellite internet make the transfer of information from personnel engaged in combat operations to the outside world much easier than ever before.

3) The combination of the above two circumstances makes soldiers in combat accessible to enemy intelligence in a way they never have been before.

If you don't consider the above to be a big deal... we'll have to disagree. If you don't think that the above necessitates an interest in the moral character of the people you put into that role... again, we'll have to disagree.

[Fuchs]

Diplomats, businessmen, engineers, policemen - they all are burdened with secrets and are having mobile phones. The consequences of a leak can be huge, even lethal.

The military isn't special for what exists in it, but (if at all) for what exists ONLY in it.

[JMA]

Depends on the enemy.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

1) Everyone who carries a gun in combat is by necessity privy to a large amount of sensitive information.

2) The miracle of satellite phones and satellite internet make the transfer of information from personnel engaged in combat operations to the outside world much easier than ever before.

3) The combination of the above two circumstances makes soldiers in combat accessible to enemy intelligence in a way they never have been before.

If you don't consider the above to be a big deal... we'll have to disagree. If you don't think that the above necessitates an interest in the moral character of the people you put into that role... again, we'll have to disagree.

[former_0302]

Depends on the enemy.

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Agree, but at the same time, I'd say you need to plan for the worst case, wouldn't you?

[AmericanPride]

Compost,

Your points were already addressed by an research paper I provided earlier in the thread and quoted extensively for carl.

So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

[former_0302]

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

If you aspire to lead people in combat, you don't quit. Period. And since the article didn't say anything about how she had to go to the emergency room to get care for heat stroke (which is something I've seen Marines push themselves to, even in training), I can only assume that she did, in fact, have something left in her tank when she quit.

Lost in her article is the fact that the men don't get any special preparation for IOC while at TBS either. The differing standards for men and women are, in fact, irrelevant in terms of the first event at IOC. The standards are actually exactly the same for all Marines at TBS in the stuff that matters as prep for IOC--the forced marches are the same and have the same requirement. All Marines have to do the double obstacle course and the E-course; I believe that the time standards for those are different between the sexes, but that's irrelevant; there's nothing stopping the women from trying to achieve a time on par with the men in those events. The PFT score differences are, as I previously stated, not a metric which really means anything in terms of IOC.

If you want to do well at IOC, you need to walk into the school mentally prepared to do without an awful lot that you'd really like to have for 13 weeks. Nobody gets prep for that at TBS. Most nights, you sleep in the equivalent of a dorm room, can eat and sleep quite a bit most of the time, and are generally not screwed around with too much.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

Edited to add: At least, that's what it was like when I went through the two schools several years ago. I doubt things have changed substantively, but they may have.

[AmericanPride]

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

Did she quit because she was a woman?

[carl]

Thank you for finally admitting that the problem is social and therefore subject to change by policy.

No, I said among the reasons, and some I consider the most important are social. Even those reasons are matters of social construct that were created to deal with the fact that women in general are smaller and weaker than men.

Your remaining points are humorous at best and very paternalistic. Women shouldn't be allowed into combat arms because female deserters will get pregnant to avoid getting shot? And because people shouldn't pick on girls? So therefore we should exclude all women from combat arms? I thought we were talking about war, not grade school.

AP, if you can't follow the arguments I made just don't reply. Replies to arguments I didn't make are too tiresome to refute.

[former_0302]

It seems to me from her article, and my understanding of the dozen or so women who have attempted IOC, that she accepts that answer. But that 12 women failed one course is not indicative of all women failing all combat arms courses for all time.

Haha. Well, she should accept that answer, because it's the truth. It is also why, IMO, you're much better off fighting your crusade in a younger demographic of women. Stipulating that the various research you've posted in this thread has any real merit at all (of which I'm somewhat dubious), the way to correct the problem is not when the women are already adults; it's too late by then. Their formative years have been spent in less competitive environments, so they haven't mentally and physically developed to be on an even playing field. If they had... I'd still argue that it would take generations to "fix," but they would certainly be in a better position to be on a level playing field by the time they were adults.

As for the 12 failures (I think it's actually 14), no, it's not indicative of that. However, it's not encouraging that it's a 100% failure rate on the first day of a 13 week-long school, in an event which is not among the five toughest events at said school.

Did she quit because she was a woman?

Since the only reason I can think of for you asking me this question, in context of what you quoted, is that you're trolling me, I'm going to bid you farewell AP. It's not all you; I've got a deadline for something coming up anyway.

Thanks all for the banter, it's been interesting...

[JMA]

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

In reading this article there are some key issues of interest IMHO:

I was one of four women in the group, bringing the number to 14 female officers who had attempted the course since it was opened to women in the fall of 2012. All the women so far had failed — all but one of them on the first day.

and

I reflected: Why did I fail?

and

Female lieutenants aren’t as prepared as male lieutenants for the Infantry Officer Course’s tests of strength and endurance because they’ve been encouraged to train to lesser standards.

and finally

I also would have liked to have had the opportunity to try the course again. The Marine leadership has said it doesn’t want female lieutenants taking the course multiple times, at least until combat positions are available to women, because it doesn’t want to delay the rest of their training. Yet many of the men who failed alongside me in January are back at Quantico, training to retake the course in April.

Firstly, where I come from if a soldier takes a service related problem to the media there would have been consequences. Secondly, whoever drafted the regulations with different rules for females in being allowed to take the course again should be fired (just like the incompetents who were unable to draft hair regulations for African-American females should have been drummed out of the service).

She knew that all but one of the females who had attempted the course before had failed on the first day yet she arrived in boots that gave her a bloodblister on day one. This is not a smart person we are dealing with here.

When she fails she looks elsewhere for blame thereby refusing to take personal responsibility for her actions. How did she get commissioned with this fatal character flaw? Is there some sort of quota system for females on the officers course?

Baseball is an American game. Make it three strikes and you are out. If she or any other male or female fails three times they get booted out of the service - and not 'dumped' elsewhere. Better still make it two strikes.

It is of interest to me that people get commissioned before their MoS or corps has been decided. The British have followed this crazy idea as well where you do your Platoon Commanders training after having been commissioned. The problem comes that you end up with a bunch of 2Lt running around looking for a job. If they don't make it in the Infantry they get 'dumped' somewhere else. In this case she wants to be a pilot. My question would be why would entry to pilot training be less arduous than for the Infantry?

Fire this whining failure, fix the regulations and move on.

[carl]

JMA:

The reason this type of thing happens is twofold. The progressives, liberals, chattering class elites, superzips or whatever you want to call them are very enthusiastic about using the military as a laboratory for social experimentation and engineering. Who can blame them for being so excited? They get into a position of political power and when they tell soldiers what to do, they have to obey them. "What a trip dude, we don't have to cajole them they just have to obey." Civilians are so bothersome in that respect, so many of them have opinions of their own and insist on thinking for themselves, but the military has to obey. The superzips don't concern themselves about the effect these things will have on US ability to fight and win wars because they believe wars won't happen again especially since wars are our nasty fault anyway and if we are nice enough they won't occur.

This is stupid but the 'zips are civilians too so they get to have dopey ideas. The real problem is the most important thing Lind mentioned, the moral rot at the heart of the American officer corps. That rot manifests itself in a general officer corps that will not provide a counterweight to the dangerous enthusiasms of the superzips. They will not because honest, principled opposition would be dangerous to their careers. And their careers are the most important thing because they do not view the military as thing that is there to defend the country by fighting when needed, they view the military as a vehicle to advance their careers. To them that is why the Army exists, the Navy exist, the USMC exists and the USAF exists; to provide opportunities for one stars to be two stars to be three stars and if the stars align properly and Gen. Massingale plays his cards right, to be four stars. These guys aren't stupid, just morally corrupt. They pose a mortal danger to the nation, one that when the next big war comes, the good officers of moral fibre, and there are a lot, who haven't been weeded out yet may not have time to overcome before defeat comes.

(Great point about the boots. I never thought of that.)

[TheCurmudgeon]

Let's exclude the non-combat and non-reconnaissance troops, the air force and navy for a while.

For line-of-sight-to-threat army troops the special requirement is military discipline.



Other than that there are some slightly special requirements (firearms safety, explosives safety, secrecy, psychological stress), which have equivalents in select civilian jobs.
Gefechtsdisziplin has only remote equivalents in civilian jobs, such as some professional divers (doing welding works underwater in teams, for example), some firefighters (I wouldn't add police raid and hostage rescue teams).


note: Combat does not demand that you don't cheat on your wife. It may demand that no ill-controlled long hair creates gaps in your NBC protection, though.

You sound like the Army trying to justify why combat awards should only be given to Soldiers in combat positions. Sorry, but my clerks ran to the bunkers from the same rockets that landed in my FOB every week. You need to go downrange.

Don't think those engineers, mechanics, and cooks in all those civilian equivalents had to put up with indirect fire on a regular basis.

[JMA]

You sound like the Army trying to justify why combat awards should only be given to Soldiers in combat positions. Sorry, but my clerks ran to the bunkers from the same rockets that landed in my FOB every week. You need to go downrange.

Don't think those engineers, mechanics, and cooks in all those civilian equivalents had to put up with indirect fire on a regular basis.

I thought the US differentiated between those who qualified for the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Combat Action Badge?

The infantry demanded (not in my army) that there be a difference between those who ran for cover and those who ran at (assualted) a defended active enemy position under fire IMHO quite rightly so. I was also a paratrooper with a number of 'operations jumps' under the belt and never got paid an allowance for that either - IMHO quite rightly so as parachuting was merely a means of transport and delivery into combat of my choice.

One understands and tolerates the adolescent macho strutting of young soldiers to prove who is more badass than the next. This should not extend to senior NCOs and officers, however.

But your essential point as I seem to understand it is that yes, the risk to soldiers in time of war is in a different league than those in even the most hazzardous civilian jobs. In a hazzardous job you get a big pay check commensurate with the risk. A troopie is down there near the minimum wage. What do you make of that? You look out for #1 and you do OK but if you lay it all on the line for your country you get diddly ....

[AmericanPride]

Fuchs,

As you are aware, mythologizing military service is often a right-wing form of political correctness. This is true to an extent in the United States, and certainly within the ranks, which is to be expected as most institutions have self-reinforcing norms.

JMA,

It's not true, at least in the United States, that people are paid in accordance to the risks they take on the job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 10 most dangerous jobs (by fatalities per 100,000) and their average hourly wages are:

1. Fishers ($13)
2. Loggers ($13)
3. Pilots
4. Iron and steel workers ($19)
5. Farmers/ranchers
6. Roofers ($16)
7. Electrical line workers ($22)
8. Drivers ($12)
9. Refuse collectors ($17)
10. Police officers

Firefighters and construction workers are in the top 15.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I thought the US differentiated between those who qualified for the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Combat Action Badge?

The infantry demanded (not in my army) that there be a difference between those who ran for cover and those who ran at (assualted) a defended active enemy position under fire IMHO quite rightly so. I was also a paratrooper with a number of 'operations jumps' under the belt and never got paid an allowance for that either - IMHO quite rightly so as parachuting was merely a means of transport and delivery into combat of my choice.

One understands and tolerates the adolescent macho strutting of young soldiers to prove who is more badass than the next. This should not extend to senior NCOs and officers, however.

But your essential point as I seem to understand it is that yes, the risk to soldiers in time of war is in a different league than those in even the most hazzardous civilian jobs. In a hazzardous job you get a big pay check commensurate with the risk. A troopie is down there near the minimum wage. What do you make of that? You look out for #1 and you do OK but if you lay it all on the line for your country you get diddly ....

When first proposed, the Combat Action Badge was the Close Combat Badge and you had to be in an armor, cav, or artillery MOS to recieve it. Rumsfeld changed that after he was confronted at a Town Hall by a female MP who had engaged the enemy several times on convoys but would not be elligable for the award because of her MOS.

As far as running for cover, I am not sure what else you want a Soldier who is not involved in identifing the POO and engaged in counterbattery fire to do in a rocket attack. I suppose they could stand in the open and look up. Not sure that is the wisest choice. You don't get a CAB for indirect fire attacks unless you are within the blast radius of the munition fired at you. I led a recon that was attacked by a command detonated IED, but the only people who got the award were the people in the vehicle that was hit.

But yes, you get my point. I don't think you can compare the two on any level. The only civilian jobs that come close are Police, Fire, and EMT personnel. It is the difference between having a duty and having a job. Hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.

On a seperate note, that female MP who stood up to the SecDef and asked a question that all the Army brass did not want asked demonstrates a level of intestinal fortitude that was quite impressinve. Reminds me of the old joke about the Marine, Army, and Air Force General standing around the flag pole talking about their subordinates courage.

[AmericanPride]

The only civilian jobs that come close are Police, Fire, and EMT personnel. It is the difference between having a duty and having a job. Hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.

Statistically, that's not true. No job comes close to OEF/OIF but several jobs are more dangerous than military service during peace-time. That said, does the level of hazard in an occupation indicate that occupation's value to society or its importance? Police and firefighters are generally more praised, at least post-9/11, than fisherman and loggers, even though the former two are more dangerous. So it also appears that the kind of work, not the level of hazard, is more important in determining social value.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Statistically, that's not true. No job comes close to OEF/OIF but several jobs are more dangerous than military service during peace-time. That said, does the level of hazard in an occupation indicate that occupation's value to society or its importance? Police and firefighters are generally more praised, at least post-9/11, than fisherman and loggers, even though the former two are more dangerous. So it also appears that the kind of work, not the level of hazard, is more important in determining social value.

It's not the level of hazard that distinguishes the jobs.

[AmericanPride]

It's not the level of hazard that distinguishes the jobs.

But it's the level of hazard that's used to justify compensation, benefits, and social privilege.