Thursday, January 06, 2005
Cushy Staff Job
We set up a roadblock the other night and the cars were queuing up smartly when a pick up truck pull out of line and advanced toward the intersection. I raised my weapon, pointing it about ten feet in front of the vehicle. The truck then stopped and the driver got out. It didn’t take long to identify him as “friendly”.
Belligerent US Solider: Get that weapon off me!
Me: I don’t have my weapon on you, sir.
Belligerent US Solider: Well, you just about did. Next time you point a weapon at me, I’m going to take it away from you. You understand. I have to get chow to General so-and-so, a two star general. I know you are going to let me through.
Me: [having identified him as a staff sergeant] You’ll have to see my team leader, sergeant [pointing].
Belligerent US Solider: Where is he?
Me: [pointing more intently] He’s right over there, sergeant.
Belligerent US Solider: [walking over to my team leader and talking tough] Who’s in charge here?
In the end, the belligerent delivery guy - and the hungry two-star general - waited until we lifted the roadblock. Like in Dilbert, the ridiculous and sometimes black comedy in war movies is based on actual events. Speaking of roadblocks, guns, and food service, a reader had a question on the recent tire shooting:
Is this the first time you have shot at some one (while sober)?
Just because I worked at a combo Italian restaurant and red-neck-wanna-be sports bar – and, well, sometimes carried a gun – doesn’t mean I ever shot at anyone while unwinding after hours. I was shooting at dart boards with worn out corks. Hey, I had to be ready to pull the trigger and be on the target when I made those late night bank drops.
What is your stance on woman in combat? Worth it? Dangerous because they cannot be depended upon? Ineffective? Effective? Do you have personal experience of milops with females? What are your general impressions?
Women are excluded from “units whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.” This includes infantry, artillery, armor, and combat engineers, as well as special forces. I have no reason to believe that females cannot be depended upon in combat. As an ideal, I think females should be allowed to have any job they can handle, as should males. To make this work, three issues need to be addressed: standards, facilities, and the way our society views males and female roles.
Historically, introducing women into jobs which have required strength and speed, such as fire fighter or police officer has resulted in an erosion of physical requirements for both sexes. Before the integration of women, I think men tended to exclude themselves from jobs they could not handle physically. But, in order to reconcile affirmative action with the fact that women can not perform - physically - at the same level as men, something had to give. Employers, mostly governmental, decided to lower physical standards or focus on them less.
When I first joined the military, I believe a strength test was only required for prospective Air Force munitions handlers who had to show that they could raise their share of a guided missile above their heads. But many military occupational specialties (MOS) require strength. In armor and artillery, rounds must be loaded into cannons. In infantry, heavy equipment, such as mortars, machine guns, and ammunition, must be carried on foot.
The Army gives an aptitude test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), as part of its entrance process. Each MOS has a required ASVAB score, which serves as a predictor of a Soldier’s success in both their training and job performance. Though the body has a greater capacity for conditioning than the mind, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to use a physical fitness test during the entrance process to serve as a predictor of one’s physical performance.
There is one physical performance standard in the Army, the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). The standards, which are different for males and females, are too low for the Army as a whole, but would serve well as a minimum for clerical workers. From there, the more physical a job becomes, the higher the standards should be. And with combat arms, the standards for both males and females should be the same.
The height and weight requirements should also be MOS specific. We have an MP who is about 56" tall. Can an MP of this size perform all of the duties required? We have Soldiers that can't charge the .50, so instead they mount the SAW. These smaller Soldiers happen to be females, but they could just as well be males. Vehicle crew members, however, don’t need to be big people. It would be advantageous for them to be on the smaller side. I'm just over the 73” maximum height for a tanker, and it's cramped in there. We should put the small people in the vehicles and put the large people on the ground. Why try to accommodate big people in tanks, helicopters, and fighters? Because it’s a prestigious job and their daddy went to The Academy? Theoretically, smaller people mean smaller vehicles with lower profiles and lower costs.
In basic training, we had males and females together, on the same floor. And since we didn’t have doors on our rooms, we all had to change clothes in our respective latrines. That’s 24 Soldiers all trying to get dressed in five minutes in a facility which wasn’t built for that purpose. At medic school, there was one lavatory for our classroom. Since there were more males than females in the class, the instructors determined that the males would utilize the facilities during our ten minute break and the females would get to use it during the lat ten minutes of class time. That certainly wasn’t fair to them.
In a deployed area, is it worth it to build and maintain two sets of facilities? In Southern Baghdad, there were two latrines on our floor; one for the 120 males, and one for the 15 females. Was this reasonable or was there an undue burden placed on the unit as a whole? Where we are now, males and females share a latrine. Would the majority of Americans be comfortable sharing the restroom at work with the opposite sex? If not, is this something we should ask our military personnel to do? And with a ten to one male to female ratio, is it OK to leave the seat up?
People who believe that sexual orientation is determined genetically shouldn’t find it hard to accept that males and females have evolved into specialized roles. And though Joseph the kindergartner suggests it’s as simple as "Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina," there's more to it. The physiological stuff may be better described in “In Defense of the Caveman” than “Mars and Venus”, but I think it is instinctive for males to protect females. It is certainly a deeply rooted cultural belief which is constantly reinforced in our society.
A female and I went on an early morning, chow run together. It was dark and no one else was on the road. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but I said to myself that I would die before I let anything happen to her. As trivial as it was, this made me less focused on the mission. In the Gulf War, tight lipped male POWs started talking when the Iraqis started sexually assaulting female POWs. Is this surprising?
I think that women should be allowed in all female artillery and armor units and continue to be excluded from combat engineer, infantry, and special forces units. Perhaps some look to the day we enter a brave new world where beautiful young Star Ship Troopers of both sexes fight, die, and shower together, but I think it will be an unwelcome change that’s a long way off.
We set up a roadblock the other night and the cars were queuing up smartly when a pick up truck pull out of line and advanced toward the intersection. I raised my weapon, pointing it about ten feet in front of the vehicle. The truck then stopped and the driver got out. It didn’t take long to identify him as “friendly”.
Belligerent US Solider: Get that weapon off me!
Me: I don’t have my weapon on you, sir.
Belligerent US Solider: Well, you just about did. Next time you point a weapon at me, I’m going to take it away from you. You understand. I have to get chow to General so-and-so, a two star general. I know you are going to let me through.
Me: [having identified him as a staff sergeant] You’ll have to see my team leader, sergeant [pointing].
Belligerent US Solider: Where is he?
Me: [pointing more intently] He’s right over there, sergeant.
Belligerent US Solider: [walking over to my team leader and talking tough] Who’s in charge here?
In the end, the belligerent delivery guy - and the hungry two-star general - waited until we lifted the roadblock. Like in Dilbert, the ridiculous and sometimes black comedy in war movies is based on actual events. Speaking of roadblocks, guns, and food service, a reader had a question on the recent tire shooting:
Is this the first time you have shot at some one (while sober)?
Just because I worked at a combo Italian restaurant and red-neck-wanna-be sports bar – and, well, sometimes carried a gun – doesn’t mean I ever shot at anyone while unwinding after hours. I was shooting at dart boards with worn out corks. Hey, I had to be ready to pull the trigger and be on the target when I made those late night bank drops.
What is your stance on woman in combat? Worth it? Dangerous because they cannot be depended upon? Ineffective? Effective? Do you have personal experience of milops with females? What are your general impressions?
Women are excluded from “units whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.” This includes infantry, artillery, armor, and combat engineers, as well as special forces. I have no reason to believe that females cannot be depended upon in combat. As an ideal, I think females should be allowed to have any job they can handle, as should males. To make this work, three issues need to be addressed: standards, facilities, and the way our society views males and female roles.
Historically, introducing women into jobs which have required strength and speed, such as fire fighter or police officer has resulted in an erosion of physical requirements for both sexes. Before the integration of women, I think men tended to exclude themselves from jobs they could not handle physically. But, in order to reconcile affirmative action with the fact that women can not perform - physically - at the same level as men, something had to give. Employers, mostly governmental, decided to lower physical standards or focus on them less.
When I first joined the military, I believe a strength test was only required for prospective Air Force munitions handlers who had to show that they could raise their share of a guided missile above their heads. But many military occupational specialties (MOS) require strength. In armor and artillery, rounds must be loaded into cannons. In infantry, heavy equipment, such as mortars, machine guns, and ammunition, must be carried on foot.
The Army gives an aptitude test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), as part of its entrance process. Each MOS has a required ASVAB score, which serves as a predictor of a Soldier’s success in both their training and job performance. Though the body has a greater capacity for conditioning than the mind, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to use a physical fitness test during the entrance process to serve as a predictor of one’s physical performance.
There is one physical performance standard in the Army, the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). The standards, which are different for males and females, are too low for the Army as a whole, but would serve well as a minimum for clerical workers. From there, the more physical a job becomes, the higher the standards should be. And with combat arms, the standards for both males and females should be the same.
The height and weight requirements should also be MOS specific. We have an MP who is about 56" tall. Can an MP of this size perform all of the duties required? We have Soldiers that can't charge the .50, so instead they mount the SAW. These smaller Soldiers happen to be females, but they could just as well be males. Vehicle crew members, however, don’t need to be big people. It would be advantageous for them to be on the smaller side. I'm just over the 73” maximum height for a tanker, and it's cramped in there. We should put the small people in the vehicles and put the large people on the ground. Why try to accommodate big people in tanks, helicopters, and fighters? Because it’s a prestigious job and their daddy went to The Academy? Theoretically, smaller people mean smaller vehicles with lower profiles and lower costs.
In basic training, we had males and females together, on the same floor. And since we didn’t have doors on our rooms, we all had to change clothes in our respective latrines. That’s 24 Soldiers all trying to get dressed in five minutes in a facility which wasn’t built for that purpose. At medic school, there was one lavatory for our classroom. Since there were more males than females in the class, the instructors determined that the males would utilize the facilities during our ten minute break and the females would get to use it during the lat ten minutes of class time. That certainly wasn’t fair to them.
In a deployed area, is it worth it to build and maintain two sets of facilities? In Southern Baghdad, there were two latrines on our floor; one for the 120 males, and one for the 15 females. Was this reasonable or was there an undue burden placed on the unit as a whole? Where we are now, males and females share a latrine. Would the majority of Americans be comfortable sharing the restroom at work with the opposite sex? If not, is this something we should ask our military personnel to do? And with a ten to one male to female ratio, is it OK to leave the seat up?
People who believe that sexual orientation is determined genetically shouldn’t find it hard to accept that males and females have evolved into specialized roles. And though Joseph the kindergartner suggests it’s as simple as "Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina," there's more to it. The physiological stuff may be better described in “In Defense of the Caveman” than “Mars and Venus”, but I think it is instinctive for males to protect females. It is certainly a deeply rooted cultural belief which is constantly reinforced in our society.
A female and I went on an early morning, chow run together. It was dark and no one else was on the road. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but I said to myself that I would die before I let anything happen to her. As trivial as it was, this made me less focused on the mission. In the Gulf War, tight lipped male POWs started talking when the Iraqis started sexually assaulting female POWs. Is this surprising?
I think that women should be allowed in all female artillery and armor units and continue to be excluded from combat engineer, infantry, and special forces units. Perhaps some look to the day we enter a brave new world where beautiful young Star Ship Troopers of both sexes fight, die, and shower together, but I think it will be an unwelcome change that’s a long way off.
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