Friday, June 27, 2014

Well, that didn't take long

It's been less than three years since the Australian military decided to open up combat roles to women (for my protest see here).

It was never the case that the Australian military would stay the same but with female troops. Once the decision was made to fill the ranks with women, then fundamental changes would come about.

I was reminded of this by a recruitment advertisement that ran on Australian TV tonight. The advert has images of both young men and women in the military, though the women seem to feature more than the men. But what was most interesting were the graphics on display. As we saw the images of the soldiers, the first graphic said "warriors" but it was soon followed by another which said "nurturers".

Maybe someone thought that the first word "warriors" might not appeal to women as much as men, so the second word "nurturers" was added.

But is trying to recruit nurturing types to the army really such a good idea? If you are under fire, do you really want the person next to you to have nurturing qualities or fighting qualities?

Shouldn't the army stick to recruiting warriors?

4 comments:

  1. The left is certainly touchy about this subject and doesn't like any discussion that challenges the path political elites seem to have committed themselves to. But speaking out unapologetically against this policy and intentionally ruffling progressives' feathers can have some advantages for us in the 'sidestream': we are seen as the only real opposition to the liberal zeitgeist.

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  2. This argument can also be employed against current US policy of "nation-building." Anything that takes the focus of a campaign away from killing the enemy - even such benign things as building schools - likewise retards the combat effectiveness of the average soldier. This is something taught in US military schools, but not something widely discussed with the public.

    I don't think it's so much a matter of women being in combat roles that's doing this (although it certainly isn't helping), but rather, a nation unwilling to commit to the kind of violence traditionally associated with war. Humanitarian missions are now seen as essential to current US strategy, and it seems to be leaking out to our allies as well. The West, in general, is losing its will to fight. Women in combat roles is a symptom, not the cause.

    Although it will be interesting to see what happens in the next great conflict, when the women (and some men) who signed up for a kinder, gentler service find out that the nations of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have no intention of respecting such theories.

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    1. An occupation/peace-keeping/counter-insurgency/nation-building isn't really a 'war', and operates under different rules from conventional war. Victory comes mostly from persuading the potential enemy not to fight. If building a school does that effectively, then building a school is good tactics. If killing 5 insurgents generates 50 more, then that was a failure - bad tactics, no matter how effectively they were killed.

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    2. It only operates under those rules when the Left is in charge.

      When the Right is in charge, an occupation / counter-insurgency IS fought as an actual war -- and not coincidentally, that is why and how such wars are won. The enemy is persuaded not to fight by the certain knowledge that he will be killed if he does, and if that makes anyone he knows angry enough to take up arms, they are killed too.

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