Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 48

“must make sure that there are a sufficient number of
females entering the career field and already assigned
to the related commands and leadership positions.”25
The decree demands that the testing and implementation are done simultaneously by January 2016. The
burden should be on supporters of women in combat to
prove women can make and maintain the infantry and
Special Forces standards as they are, and only after that
should they proceed to discuss the parameters in which
women might be effectively used in combat operations.
Instead, the Department of Defense has put the onus
on the units, who are also under pressure to prove
they are diverse and not sexist by having the correct
number of women. Next year’s budget may depend on
it. Moreover, what happens in this kind of climate as
military budgets are being slashed? The Army recently
cut 20,000 from its ranks. Where everything is measured against diversity and “equal career opportunity
for women” over mission readiness, we can assume
quotas of women will continue to be filled while more
qualified men are cut.

The Need for High Standards
Of the myriad of superb reasons to maintain the
combat exclusion—such as additional hygiene needs
and risks, sex, rape, risk of capture, pregnancy, unit
cohesion, broken homes, and abandoned children to
name a few—women’s inability to make the infantry
standards is simply the first and most obvious. It is the
wall women-in-combat activists cannot scale without a
step box, if you will.
Meanwhile, the argument to maintain the combat
exclusion makes itself easily in every aspect. Including
women in combat units is bad for combat, bad for
women, bad for men, bad for children, and bad for the
country. The argument for the combat exclusion is
provable all the time, every time. Political correctness
has no chance against Nature. Her victories are staring
us in the face at all times. The men just keep being able

to lift more and to run faster, harder, and longer with
more weight on their backs while suffering fewer injuries. They just keep never getting pregnant. The combat
units have needs that women cannot meet. Women
have needs that life in a combat unit cannot accommodate without accepting significant disadvantage and
much greater expense. Where 99 percent of men can
do the heavy-lifting tasks typical of gunners, but 85 percent of women cannot, there is no gap women need to
fill. Women are already utilized where they are needed
in the combat zone, such as for intelligence gathering,
or what I did, frisking women for explosives.
There is nothing going on in the infantry that men
cannot do and for which they need women. Panetta
said women are “serving in a growing number of critical
roles on and off the battlefield. The fact is that they
have become an integral part of our ability to perform
our mission.”26 Women have honorably served in the
combat zone, but not on the infantry’s standards, on
door-kicking missions. Let us be honest. Panetta’s words
are spin—not exactly the stuff combat commanders’
dreams are made of when it comes to building the tip
of the spear.
Military women are strong, tough, and dedicated
in their own right. Women do not need to be in the
combat units to prove they are important or to serve
honorably and well, and they do not need to be there to
gain career opportunities. Women have achieved some
of the highest levels of military leadership without
entering combat units. The United States is at war with
child-raping, honor-killing, suicide-bombing, amputation-happy savages that are beheading and raping their
way across Iraq and Afghanistan, not limited by rules
of engagement or diversity metrics. The high male standards of U.S. military forces exist so that the Nation
can be victorious against its enemies with the fewest
casualties possible. We should see attempts to jettison
high standards as detrimental to all, and we should
soundly reject them.

Jude Eden served in the Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008 as a data communications specialist and served on entry
checkpoint duty with the Marine Corps infantry on the outskirts of Fallujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom from
2005 to 2006. She holds a B.A. from Hillsdale College in English literature and political science and writes on various subjects, with a focus on women in combat, at politicalanimalblog.com. She is currently a datacenter administrator in Wilmington, N.C. Her Twitter handle is @Jude_Eden.
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March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW