Women in the military

Women serve a vital role in our Army. And recently there have been talks about banning women from combat situations. Currently, women are not allowed to join combat occupations, such as infantry, artillery and cavalry. But as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, all military jobs see a fair share of combat. As a result, there have been several women killed in action. Now, some legislators want to restrict women from joining MOS’s that they’re traditionally allowed to join because of the occupation’s potential risk. The jobs include but are not limited to combat camera, military police and civil affairs.

I am against this movement. For one, I think our military should allow women to serve in combat arms units. I mean, I know women who could kick the butts of nine out of 10 men. With that being said, I understand the fears of the American public. It’s not exactly easy to stomach a mother or daughter being killed in combat. But I am here to tell you that women bring balance and a sense feminine compassion to our ranks.

What’s more is women are absolutely vital to our missions in Muslim countries. It’s considered an insult for a man to search a woman. Therefore, when we conduct raids or random searches, a woman must search a woman. If a man searches a woman, it could cause animosity and cause problems in the particular community.

Speaking from my own experiences, I have seen female soldiers accomplish great feats and I know my unit would not have been successful if it were not for females. I had one soldier who was tough as nails when she was on a mission. She captured combat through the lens of her camera and experienced more combat than 80 percent of the combat arms soldiers. Time and time again, the leadership from other units told me that they had never worked with a female before. But after working with her, they realized female soldiers are soldiers too, and that she was just as good, if not better, than any soldier they had worked with.

See, there is no problem with the performance of females in combat. They react the same as males when somebody shoots at them. The real problem is much deeper and I don’t think the military has or ever will fully address the issue. As you can imagine, women receive a lot of attention from male soldiers. On our camp, there were maybe 30 females mixed in with hundreds of males. You do the math and think about all the possible scenarios.

Most female soldiers will encounter dozens of sexual harassment situations. And the majority of females suffering from PTSD were sexually harassed or worse, raped. While the Army does a good job of warning soldiers not to harass females, they do not do an adequate job prosecuting sexual predators in combat situations. I have a friend who was taken advantage of, and although she filed a report, nothing was ever done until she contacted a legislator six months after she returned from deployment.

The mindset of a lot of male soldiers is that women bring the situation on to themselves. While I believe that women need to take responsibility and be a “bitch” at times, there is no excuse for taking advantage of or saying something inappropriate to a woman. I was like a dad to my soldiers, always on the lookout for soldiers staring at them. On more than one occasion, I told a horny soldier to not stare at my females.

So, rather than banning women from potential combat MOS’s, we should look at the real problem. Women who want to serve their country should be able to. In my opinion, gays should be allowed in the military as well. I believe that anybody who wants to risk their life to preserve our country’s freedom should be honored. These issues shouldn’t be considered distractions. Rather, they should be looked at as diversity, which is always a good thing.