Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion Focuses On Women In Combat Roles 20170329

P. M. E p. M. Eastern also on cspan3. Now a conversation on women in combat from the institute of World Politics. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. Okay, i guess we can get going. Welcome to everyone. My name is owens. We are an independent security school. We offer three masters degrees. We offer an executive and professional masters as well. In addition we have 18 certificates. Were very happy to cosponsor this event with mark moyar. We have a great speaker who is done a great deal of work in this area. Its a topical topic as you know. I think the department of redundancy department. But as i say we are cosponsoring this with the center for military and diplomatic history. And mark moyar, to say a couple words and i will introduce our moderator. Im dr. Mark moyar. I wanted to thank dr. Owens, and katie bridges and kevin dunne, you have done a wonderful job organizing this event. Thanks also to Lindsay Markell and daniel, the Foreign Policy initiative. We do events on history that have relevant to todays issues. Ive been hosting an average of one event per week since three months ago. And we like to bring in people who havent necessarily been heard inside the beltway. Theres a tendency as im sure a lot of you know to recycle the same speakers. So we were able to bring in our speaker from california and shes though shes well known has not spoken publicly in d. C. Before. This is the first event weve done on this subject. Certainly one i think that is very relevant to military affairs. Because its not just a cultural issue but i think one of military capabilities and readiness and people on both sides of the debate contend their policy is better in terms of maximizing u. S. Military capabilities. And we do see a lot of history involved in this discussion. Comparisons with things like bringing africanamericans into the military or women into other parts of the military or changing the policy on gay and lesbian service or the history of women in actual wars. So we very much look forward to a discussion of what we have learned, what we should learn from the past and what lessons of the past are not the ones to follow. Thank you. Thank you for having us. The introduces continue. Id like to introduce Elaine Donnelly who is the moderator today. Elaine and i go back aways working on this topic, not always together but for the most part we have been taking this issue seriously for a very long time. Elaine is the founder and president of the center for military readiness which is an independent nonpart Season Public policy organization that focuses on military readiness and social issues within the military. She has served on a Defense Advisory Committee on women in the services and the president ial commission on the assignment of women in the armed forces. Shes provide testimony to congress, published articles on military issues in a variety of publications. Which laid out many of the legal issues and a response to an article by madeleine morris. So she School Craft College and university of detroit and she lives in michigan. So elaine will now introduce our speaker. Mack owens and i go way back. The last time i saw you in person was at the Naval War College when you were a professor there. I always admired your writingance articles. And want to thank dr. Mark moyar for sponsoring this program and the institute for World Politics for hosting us here today. Ive also been a longtime admirer of dr. Anna simons on issues involving women in the military she has been chronicling women in history. This may be the first meeting of its kind a at a crucial time of change in the armed forces. This is, perhaps, the first opportunity that we will have to take stock and figure out where are we going with this . Is this a good idea for women or is it not . In 1992, professor anna simons earned a ph. D. In social anthropology at harvard university. Its an honor to introduce her. Since then she has been in the field of academia and teaching students common sense as well as everything she knows in the field of anthropology. Since 2007 she was in monterey, california and was an associate professor of anthropology at ucla and visiting instructor in anthropology in duke university. In 2011 she cowrote a common sense approach to global security. She has conducted Field Research in somalia and fort bragg and wrote a book called networks of disillusion, somalia undone in 1995. Her list of scholarly articles is six pages long. But she has been in all the major publications, new york times, washington post, boston globe and african news. She was also involved in politics for a while. She was an assistant to the governor of arizona, Bruce Babbitt and a speech writer for jimmy carter. I became aware of her when she wrote the company they keep life inside the u. S. Army special forces. She applied what she knew about anthropology to analyze that special culture of special operations. In that we have something in common because im a civilian but i have such enormous respect for the culture of people who serve, the rough men who defend our country. I think their interests, everything they believe needs to be given more study and more awareness and thats why were here tonight. Dr. Simons has brought insight into the community of warriors. There are some people who comment social justice warriors but they dont know what real warriors do. Dr. Simons does. I think the reality of civilian control of the military puts on all of us, civilian or former military, we all have a responsibility to watch what happens to the military. Theyre there to defend us and we need to be there to defend them. And with great pleasure, heres doctor professor simons. I should just go back to california now so as not to disappoint anyone after that introduction. But i want to thank idp and ipi for hosting and i want to thank mark for having inviting me. I think i want to thank mark. I think because while ive written about this topic off and on, publicly speaking out is always fraught and i would say if anyone in the room knows of anyone who is a young, aspiring graduate student in psychology there is no better topic to focus on than why people respond so emotionally to the issue of women in combat units. Im going to try to stay dispassionate and be provocative as i review what is missing from the women in combat unit debate. First i have to do the necessary disclaimer. Im not speaking on behalf of the Naval Post Graduate School on behalf of any entity in d. O. D. If only my views were d. O. D. s views there would be no debate. But of course meanwhile, others in the room, like elaine and other invitees have encyclopedic knowledge about the legislative and inside the beltway history of this issue and i know others have inside knowledge, the physiological realities of trying to meet certain physical standards. Im going to defer to them during question and answer during the questions and answers or discussion about injury rates, Readiness Challenges and so on. For the questions i want to raise they havent gone unasked as much as they have remained unanswered. Those who lobbied for lifting the combat exclusion ban have done a masterful job of putting opponents on the defensive. Just the fact i can use the words opponents and proponents signifies who has the political upper hand. Leon panetta was brilliant when he declared all Ground Combat units would be open to women in january 2016 unless the Service Chiefs could justify which specific units should remain closed. By putting the onus on the chiefs and civilian secretaries to defend the status quo he sandbagged any male in uniform who would found like a dinosaur if he argued for combat units to stay all male. They have also long engaged in clever sleight of hand. At this point only misogynists doubt womens capacity for courage under fire. Combat is not the issue, combat units are. Indeed, i dont know anyone who is more anxious for qualified women to be able to work with them on certain kinds of missions than special operators who some might say economicompr ultimate boys club. Women are an asset for reconnaissance work and other sensitive missions. Operators concern is how would womens presence help them close with and destroy the enemy more effectively. It cant. And wont unless you believe as some proponents do that women think sufficiently differently from men and without them combat units are missing womens unique approach. First, though, lets review why we have combat units in the first place. And why we should want them to be as single mindedly lethal and focused as possible. Unlike other payment units responsible for logistics, communications, intelligence and other functions, Ground Combat units exist to kill or destroy more of the enemy than they can kill of us no matter how long it takes, no matter how little support they receive and no matter how many casualties they suffer. Casualties, thats what the enemy seeks to inflict. Casualties or attrition is why combat units have to have interchangeability. When someone is wounded or killed someone else needs to take his place. It also brings me back to the idea that because women dont think like men they add value but if thats the case then women and men arent easily interchangeable, are they . A female casualty could only be replaced by another female which presents major logistical and other challenges. So which is it . Either men and women do think alike and are interchangeable so long as they meet the same physical standards in which case why add women . Or if men and women dont respond similarly and dont think alike and are excuse me well, then what does injecting females into small ten to 12man groups do to cohesion . Cohesion is a term i have come to despair of thanks to what academics have done to it. Forgot what you think it might mean. Academics have split it in two. Theres social cohesion which is how much people like each other and task cohesion which refers to the ability to do a job regardless of their differences and dislikes. Increasingly, academics have argued the only kind of cohesion that military units need is task cohesion. To remain effective no longer requires that individuals have anything more than the mission in common. But has anyone asked those in Ground Combat units or the sergeants major who oversee them how they define cohesion or whether academics may have gotten this wrong. And more significantly and what academics dont tackle at all is what wrecks cohesion. The study so common on gender integration didnt delve into this. Maybe thats because all sentient adults know what can wreck cohesion. But if you dont seek it, you dont have to find it. Men and women have been each others most consistent distraction since the beginning of time to. Pretend there wont be problems when message and women are together in emotionally intense situations, College Campuses anyone . Deface common sense. It also deface biology. Malemale competition and female choice. Cast back through history or literature, mens abiding interest in men and womens interest in having men be interested creates potential for rivalry, jealousy, favoritism, distrust and friction. Why would we want to interject any of this into combat units . Proponents of course say in the thick of combat no one is thinking about sex or gender. Okay, thats true but this is also a classic red herring argument. The potential for trouble lurks after or before the bullets are flying. Spend time around soldiers when day are coming down from adrenaline highs or are depressed or upset or bored or us fr frustrated they are prone to temptations. Red herring number two is that men voice the same obligations about blacks and gays and they got over those obligationjectio. They will get over this too. But attraction between the sexes is something altogether different from racism or bigotry which is at the end of the interest disinterest or like dislike spectrum. Number three is numerous allies have opened their combat units to women so we should too. Why have they done so . One aim is to model social justice. Theyre explicit about this, which of course, they can well afford to be. Why . Because who in the end do they know will come to theiresq resc . I dont mean disrespect but few of our allies can get anywhere without our help. Thus leaving our Ground Combat units is the only thin line between us and harm. So how, again, will injecting women into their midst make them more lethal in combat . And what havent proponents been made to answer this . Or maybe advocates here would tell us that our Ground Combat units, likewise need to serve purposes other than combat as well. For instance, maybe they need to do something beyond excelling at fighting and need to exemplify social justice or equity. But if equity is what proponents care about then why dont they lobby for a draft and universal service or for those who invoke patriotism, love of country and womens desire to defend the United States in the same way men do, why not argue for all female units or finance those concerned about Career Advancement which favors combat officers why not challenge the Promotion System overall since anyone, male or female who is not in a Ground Combat unit must be similarly disadvantaged. But more research does need to be done. Are there positions that would or could prepare a woman to compete for a shot at being able to be a wartime Combatant Commander without her having to lead an infantry squad, a platoon or special forces team first. Could a woman do other jobs and be able to lead a brigade or a division . Which rungs would combat soldiers say they need their commanders to have climbed . Pose these questions to enough men in uniform and it might turn out there is a way or several ways to finesse the issue of getting more women into senior military command positions without having to alter the makeup of Ground Combat units. Is it conceivable that a woman can lead in mens eyes without having been a grunt first. Maybe she doesnt have the speed, strength or stamina but if she is strategically smarter, why not . If this is one incomplete area of research, a second involves data that already exists. Tens of millions of dollars have been spend on studies. For obvious reasons to do with budgets, neither the army or marine corps will air their dirty laundry. How many hours have been lost to investigations and disciplinary actions related to sexual assaults and or allegations. Publicly everyone says glowing things about combat support and female engagement teams. And some officers i know are deeply grateful they were sent women who could search and interact with afghan women. Their teams have no problems with women who are in bat is support teams living on their fire bases. But some teams were torn apart. How many . Wheres the data . And why isnt this considered relevant . Of course, read the studies and they acknowledge between the lines that look too closely in this direction would prove devastating. Why . Because one conclusion reached prior to the lifting of the ban is that men and women should really be trained together. You shouldnt just thrust them together down range. When they train together they bond more familially. They become protective of rather than predatory of one another. Which is interesting since once again the real prospect of attrition is being ignored. But say one of these units that had bonded thanks to training together takes a gender casualty. Then what . Does the whole unit need to be pulled out so it can retrain together. The question is if training together from the outset is so critical what does that mean when there is attrition . For anyone not familiar with them, and as i hope im making clear, combat units have no civilian analog. No other entities are designed to be sent into harms way for such indefinite periods of time in order to inflict harm. Wildfire firefighters might come closest in terms of having to cope in a similarly unstable 24 7 environment. But every job you might think is comparable to combat involves shift work, employees dont only get to go home but they get a break from one another. They can decompress and regroup apart. Not so in Ground Combat units, although people then say, what about astronauts, surely theyre stuck together and have to get along. To which my first oneword response is attrition. Does nasa face attrition and interchangeability challenges once astronauts are in space . My second oneword response is aggressiveness. Even if we forget all the other differences between astronauts and combat soldiers in terms of age, presumed maturity levels and the screening astronauts receive, nasa doesnt need testosteronefilled fighters. Ground combat units do. What else is associated with testosterone . According to what advertisers keep bombarding us with, with testosterone comes an increasing interest in sex. Maybe that is marketing spin and maybe what we were taught in high school is wrong but its in all seriousness, for all the attention paid to cortisol and whether men and women handle stress similarly, what about testosterone. Who has canvassed the literature about that . And if they havent, why havent they and what does that suggest . Missing from the studies done before opening Ground Combat units to women and what has been avoided in the debate thus far suggests and confirms this topic has been too politicized for too long. The research is incomplete. At best, the studies done are insufficiently rigorous. At worst theyve been biassed. So if as seems to be the case we live in an era where social science is allowed to trump common sense, at a minimum social scientists need to be sent back to the drawing board on this topic. [ applause ] we have plenty of time for questions and answer. You have made some provocative statements and i really appreciate it. Just a couple that come to mind first and then of course wed like people in the audience to ask you some questions. The argument has been made we need women in the special Operations Forces because that would make them smarter. The women have more degrees and graduate degrees and this would increase the quality of special Operations Forces. This was stated in a special Operations Forces briefing. I have a print out here that someone in the army sent to me and ill also throw this out, too, in the same briefing, under the category myths, not facts, it says it is a myth that women are physically incapable of handling the rigors of combat arms even though the overwhelming evidence gathered by the university of pittsburgh for the marine corps show in 65 of combat tasks, the mixed gender groups could not compete with the allmale groups. But they are asking Army Special Operation forces to believe this. They also say its a myth that will be a distraction. What is this photo sharing thing all about . Women will destroy cohesion and bonding and thank you for explaining its about survival and trust. Whoever wrote this slide doesnt understand that. It says unqualified women will be pushed into combat arms to satisfy political requirements . We hear gender diversity metrics, quotas, 25 . Some have said we need a Critical Mass of 33 or 15 in the army. What is going on here . You touched on it with the social science taking precedence over common sense. But this stuff is official policy now and the military is being asked to believe it and act on it. Would you comment . Probably what i should say before turning this over to discussion from members of members in the audience is that Political Correctness how should i phrase this . Political correctness for quite some time has run amok and the people who should be most courageous because they have multiple stars on their shoulders, very often over the past decade or so have, i would say, been least courageous in terms of drilling down on this question of what it is that actually will help make combat units more lethal and more effective. Instead theyve allowed themselves to be thrown on the defensive, continuously and as a consequence, will do things like what you just showed everybody in terms of mass production sin sensitivity training as though that in itself does not create cognitive dissonance and who understand what reality is but are being told Something Different on the screen and that erodes trust in Senior Leadership making them sit through briefing after briefing after briefing in terms of sensitivity training when there are many more important things that people have to do. Questions . In the back . Hi. I served two decades on active duty with the marine corps. Its become an equal opportunity issue. Its not an equal opportunity issue. As long as women or men are pushing for this equality on the battlefield they will find out that isis doesnt chair what gender race you are. They only care if you can kill them or not. Isis fights on methamphetamine. They fight high and in a way. We have had knife fights on the battlefield and women cannot equally defend themselves. If a woman can do it, let her. We had 400 women go through infantry training in the marine corps. 35 graduated. How many lost their careers . How many are injured or disabled. I saw it when i was on active duty time and time again, women and disabled unable to reenlist. When the cost for the women start skyrocketing which i dare to say if the v. A. Were to release the stats we would find out that women pay a much higher price with this ideology that were going to go out there and kick some butt with the males. Were killing women and hurting women and disabling women. Thats all i wanted to add if you want to comment to that. You speak to the broader point of there is a lot of data, theres a ton of data and its not been released or people have chosen not to ask or present that data. So theres a very slanted view of not only whats appropriate but theres also a slanted view in terms of what the public understands when it comes to women making it through, for instance, Ranger School or the first graduates from any one of a number of other course. So i would just totally agree with you in terms of people need to speak up far more often, demanding that data actually be released and that all the data come out. I can tell you that of the women who made it through the marine enlisted infantry course, half of them had to drop out because of severe injuries. A small number did express an interest in joining infantry battalions. The last time i checked there are only three and one more just the other day, four out of that group. Its a myth to say these women were not prepared for the gender integrated task force test. This is the pool from which were drawing the three, the first three, and then the fourth one came in separately. These women were highly qualified for their tests. And their morale was high and the men were very supportive. The men were average. The women were known to be superior. Thats why they were there. At the end of the tests and tests in 2012 and 2013 not one of the tests showed any sign or evidence of superior performance on the part of a gendermixed unit. Now this is not in any way a criticism of women in the military. I hasten to add i have so many respect for women in the military and no one asks them what they think but the army did a major survey and they asked if combat positions were open, would you take them . 92. 5 of army women said no way. When people say we need a Critical Mass of 15 . How are you going a get to 15 . You are going to have involuntary order and Ashton Carter after he ignored the best professional advice of the marine corps, he said if this is going to be on an involuntary basis, same as men. No one should have illusions about this. What about recruiting . A survey was done thrown down the memory hole but weve written about it. If these options were open what would you do . 23 said they would leave or not join the military and 22 of the men said the same thing. Now what are we doing with this . Were pressing on anyway and its as if no one is paying attention to whether this will strengthen the combat units. There is no evidence to show it will but a lot to show it wont. I would hold accountable, not the women. I think part of the fact there is a lot of resentment on the internet right now and as far as im concerned, it something new. There is resentment welling up and it gives me no comfort to say that my organization predicted if you try to teach the men in these sides that black is white and false is true when you do that you cause men to be resentful of women and women would get resentment they do not deserve. These are questions, social questions, military questions, this program tonight may be just the beginning of research that needs to be done. I would say, just as a further response i needed to look at the numbers. Two of our students who since graduated crunched what numbers they could find. They were looking at what it means for women to be i say, injected other people would say integrated into a special forces teams. And they used what they could find in terms of the armys physical fitness test scores. And crunched the numbers and if you make some reasonable very reasonable calculations out of 76,694 women in the army at the time they did this, a couple years ago, maybe 145 of them would actually be able to meet the minimum apft score to try out for social forces. Because we have so politicized this issue, the scrutiny from the hill in terms of insuring that what happens, that women actually make it through, the community itself, the soft community is rife with rumors about what was done to get the two female rangers through Ranger School. I have no idea whether the rumors are correct or not. Ive heard a number of things second and third hand. The fact that there are rumors itself is extremely problematic in terms of guys assuming what . That there is all sorts of assistance. That there were all sorts of things that were done in order to ensure that at least, but ideally two women would pass. Thats not good. As i say, they very well may have been able to do it. They they very well may have done it totally on their own merits. I dont want to take anything away from them. But the fact that there is doubt and theres fact that theres suspicion that they didnt is very corrosive of trust and its very corrosive of confidence that d. O. D. Actually has soldiers best interests at heart. Another question . Question. Im a former paratrooper and worked as a war correspondent in iraq for four years. The plr at the type was a female captain. We had a mortar barrage come in and i looked at her and i said you do realize your not allowed to be here, dont you . She laughed. My point is this, its hypocrisy. At the bottom line its hypocrisy. If youre a cook, you are infantry. Everybody has to carry a weapon. Anybody can get shot at. The direct Ground Combat units are the ones that attack the enemy. Infantry, armor, artillery, special operations, navy seals. They attack the enemy. Some people are subject to incidental combat. They are fired on and have to fire back. That is not the same as the units that attack the enemy. Our subject today is the units that attack the enemy. Im sorry if im a little bit off topic. But from my viewpoint if youre being shot it youre being shot at the end of the day. I dont think that anybody doubts the fact that women can be as courageous and sometimes even more courageous than men. There is ample historical evidence of. That but being courageous in a fire fight or coming under fire and being courageous is its not a difference of degree its a different in kind from being out on your own for an indefinite period of time when its just 10 or 12 of you and youre basically stuck being and remember the mission the mission is to beat the enemy. Ive been around what is the hypocrisy is what . The fact that were talking about this, still, its like, which way is it going to go . Were not political footballing. Were serious about this. I dont think you are. The official line was no women in combat. I understand what youre saying, theyre not in active, outgoing units. But the fact of the matter remains if its raining bombs, its raining bombs. We know everybody is in danger. Thats a given. We know that. But the marine report asking for exceptions which they had ever right to file with the secretary of defense said if you integrate it would those are the keywords and the secretary of defense treated them like trash. He doesnt care about Mission Accomplishment or combat lethality. Its all about gender diversity metrics and quotas. Im going to call on professor owens if youd like to comment . Its a good point. If youre in a combat zone chances are youre going to get shot at. Thats one thing. But i think as elaine pointed out. The fact is when you are an infantry guy, a platoon, when you come under fire you turn and attack the enemy. If you are in a motor transport unit or convoy or Something Like that and you come into an area where youre under fire, the idea is to get out as quickly as possible it. Thats why the distinction is between being in a combat zone and being in a combat unit. The purpose is to close and destroy the enemy. If youre a paratrooper, that was your job. And by the way, amin the combat Service Support and combat support, combat engineers all these sorts of folks, clearly, come under fire. I mean, they are subject to being killed or wounded. And thats not what were talking about here. The issue is women in these combat units. And i, myself, was the marine corps did what they were supposed to do in the sense of saying, okay were going to try to test this. Were going to have some sexually integrated units here and have some allmale units and we will basically compare their performance and as elaine said about 65 of the time, the allmale units did better. Thats the difference between being in a combat unit and being in a combat zone. And i think that distinction is the most important one we need to make. By the way, if you think that women in a combat unit is a good idea, read two books. One is a novel. Its about my unit in vietnam. Its called matterhorn. Read that book and then read one million steps about a Marine Company deployed and you see the difference of being in a combat zone and being in infantry, the purpose of your unit is to close with and destroy the enemy. A book i would suggest is a book about what happened in afghanistan, the outlaw platoon and the fire fights they were engaged in. Combat is just being in danger and everybody is in danger. These guys had to go out over and over and over and attack the enemy. I wonder how the author got back to write the book. Thats how intense it was. Yes. Right there . Second row. Yes, i spent my youth active and reserve infantry and military intelligence. And i wrote a paper for command general staff in the mid 80s claiming that women should be any speciality as long as they met the standards which has always been my thing. When my infantry platoon we would go 15 days without showers and none of the women i knew thought that was a good idea. An i had a classmate of mine in iraq in 04 and his biggest problem was from ternization and it wasnt with the iraqis but in the medical units. And as a taxpayer im frosted with that west point graduate reserve major, took 180 days for a 60 day course. As taxpayer, i had to pay her three times longer than whats normal just so she could finish the course. And i think ive heard the same rumor. My classmate sent out emails and they were claiming that one of the generals became an assistant instructor as if an active duty guy was going the argue with the kg of benning. So anyway. The whole thing is i think just not going the have the numbers. When i did research in the 80s for my paper the canadians started out with 450 women to form an infantry unit and they had five graduates. What do you do with one qualified infantryman . Whats going to happen with the four women who have been qualified and applied to be in infantry battalions theyre going to be by themselves and the men in barracks will have to give up 50 of their la teen are to acome dcommodate the women. In the field they will be sleeping side by side. And they wont have mutual support. When they are in a unit where they are supposed to compete with the men. Even if they were the topnotch performers theyre going to be at the bottom of the ratings which is very frustrating. No one wants to be at the bottom of the ratings of why are we doing this . I respect the women who made it through ranger training. I really do. Im not impugning what they did. But two are in the infantry and one has left and all of that training went by the board. I do want to introduce someone in the audience i think brought up a refreshing aspect to this in an interview with president obama and it was moderated by jake tapper on cnn. And she is here as an individual and she said something. Im going to read to you what she said. A study of the marine corps revealed that mixed gender combat units performed notably worse and that women suffered higher rates of injury. One statistic showed that mixedgender units took up to 159 longer to evacuate a casualty. Again, this is where it gets real. As the wife of a marine who deploys to combat often. That added time can mean the difference between my husband living or dying. Who would have thought it . Why were these tangible negative consequences disregarded and how can the integration of women positively enhance the infantry mission and make me and my husband safer . The president rambled on. He didnt answer her question. The point is the concerns of this marine captain with a background in intelligence and writing awards because shes spoken out so very well. It doesnt seem to matter and thats really a shame. Other questions . Bob . I wonder, professor, whether youve concerned whether there is something far more deeper and ominous than the illogical social science or common sense or mysterious motivations. Some have said the declaration of the fungibility of male and female is anarchy. Its to deny what was the creative purpose of man and of woman. I suggest that the objective reality of the almighty god and all the military people swear their oath, so help me god. But it never attended to a serious moral compliment. One marine corps general suggested the issue is not a matter of military readiness but what kind of civilization do we want to build . So i know that this comes up in discussions very often. And i just should say if we allow women to willingly sacrifice themselves on the rest of us is not a question that i necessary its not a question im going to answer here, though i think lots of people agree with you because it certainly seems that they do. And i should say also when it comes to questions of physical standards ive always worried t standards and whether the physical standards will be changed, to what extent theyll be changed, when theyll be changed and all the rest of it, because there will be exceptional females who are going to be able to do whatever it is that many males are able to do. And the question that ive always grappled with has to do with small unit integrity and whether small unit integrity should be sacrificed in order to enable a few Exceptional Individuals to be granted some kind of set of rights. Its an issue, they might say, of equity. But one of the equity questions that never gets asked is there are lots of equities, there are lots of stakeholders. I know my husband would kill me that he left at retired officer. Hes actually nco. And very proud of that fact. And so i have a little bit of insight. Not as much as many wives these days whose husbands have deployed nonstop, but nobody ever bothers to ask dependents, which are wives of combat soldiers and combat marines, about how they would feel and what it would do to them and what it might do to their marriage in terms of the concern and the worry when there is a fully capable female on the team for prolonged periods of time with their husband. Whether its a rational fear or an irrational fear, its like these rumors that happened in Ranger School to the women that went to Ranger School. It almost doesnt matter if the rumors are true if enough people believe in them. It erodes and corrodes trust and it erodes and corrodes confidence. So i would submit, again, with all the other data that needs to be collected, somebody needs to do a genuine survey of dependents, and dependents dont just include wives. Dependents also include children. And i know the Army War College a number of years ago did a study because the chief of staff of the army was quite concerned about the effect of all these repeated deployments and the fact that fathers were away well, fathers and mothers in this case were away, the effects on children and adolescents in particular. So were talking about lots of implications, lots of ramifications. We can ask some very profound questions about what it will do to retention. Not just attracting, who youre going to attract into the military, because i dont doubt that lots of 18 to 20 to 22yearold males will still sign up. What i do worry about is what happens when that 15year veteran has to contend with all sorts of genderrelated questions when it comes to the Ground Combat unit hes on or the Ground Combat units hes commanding. Those headaches, those additional headaches, those additional concerns at home are just one more reason for that family team to collectively say, were done. 20 years were out. And then what does that do to retaining all sorts of experience, all sorts of knowledge . And what does that do to retaining people who have sensibilities about what it is that families actually worry about . So i think lots of implications, lots of ramifications. I totally dodged your question, so thank you. Not exactly. You raised the questions that havent really been asked, but i can tell you on the president ial commission, the subcommittee that i served on about families, we did a Conference Call with about 50 submarine wives. Submariners have a very high divorce rate. Its a very highstress environment. My father was a submariner. And the wives said they werent as concerned about the sexual issues as they were about safety, distractions that would cause certain things to be unseen and disasters to happen on a submarine which is the same as being in space. Its that hostile an environment. They knew what they were talking about. Of course, that was ignored, too. Its a big issue that needs to be discussed. Bill in the back . Hi, its good to see you. [ inaudible ] theres an old psychologist, stan hyman, who talked about the bond between mother and child. After desert storm, there is a photograph. The man is holding the infant, the mother has just come back. She extends her arms and the baby turns away from her. The bond was broken, that child will never trust anyone, and the Family Dynamics involved in this, the people who push this i think not only care, but would like to break up families. And two, when youve seen those who are horribly wounded, its bad enough if its a man. But if its a woman, she will either never get married or if she does get married or is married, she will be divorced. Because look what happens with women who have had breast cancer. I dont know, we know some severely wounded women, and its a challenge to lead a fairly good life, but i wouldnt say because their beauty is gone they arent still good people. But youre absolutely right about family separation and the theories that child psychologists have. My subcommittee looked into that very deeply, and there were at that time, 1992, there were some new studies starting and we havent heard anything about them. This topic has gone right down the memory hole. Nobody wants to talk about it. Instead they talk about gender diversity metrics and getting more women, 15 , 25 in the navy was the battle cry of secretary may ha mavis. And i do want to add something about the former joint chiefs of staff, robert dempsey. He said if the standard is too high and the women cant meet it, then we will question the standard. And why would you question the standard . Because you have to make it more women friendly. This can be done in various ways. You can take the toughest programs out of the toughest tasks. You can change the scoring systems. You can pass people through even if they didnt pass. You can pretend that reality doesnt matter. And that is, to a certain extent, what is happening now. The extent of it we have yet to see. I think the marines have held a lot as well as they can. But the army was way too compliant in going along with president obama and the special Operations Forces Community Also capitulated. They should have given in to the marine corps and the presentations they made which was also shoved down the memory hole. Enough for me. More questions . [ inaudible ] i was going to say, im darren sellers with social science. They have been reporting on cnn about the corruption in the military, and one of the things theyre reporting on is if you cant come out in the military with dont ask, dont tell and say i am a christian, muslim or jew, and thats leading to a corruption of civilian in terms of gender and social activity. What can be done to combat whats going on in the civil world or what the military is doing to promote life after death with all we went through with the crime going on around the country from a civilian perspective, but the military acting like we can live as if it is life after death and kind of shove that into reality. I think youre asking, is religious liberty being threatened by the new policy regarding lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders in the military . Is that what were talking about. Or christian, jews anyone that supports military values. The 1993 law regarding women in the military, some have been negative. The first one is attack on civil liberty. The second was attack on gay rights, both of which were denied by and the last one regarding retention, that will come later. If our economy gets stronger, were going to see some serious disruption. But on the t part of it, the transgender, doctors and nurses are facing a moral dilemma. Theyre being ordered to do something they consider a violation of medical ethics. Ive heard from two military doctors, and they said, how am i going to do this and teach to be an enemy when i know by changing a sentence on a paper, a man into a woman or a woman into a man . You cant do this. Its the ultimate theory thats falling apart. A lot of people will be affected. Lgbt, small number. Transgender affects everybody. Its a constant problem. Social genders are backing up against military readiness. And what theyre saying is the military is ready to sesh trve country. Its not there to serve social agendas. There is nothing there to benefit or strengthen the military. I come back to what i said before. Its up to civilians, including civilians in congress who voted to appeal that law, they need to be held accountable for the problems they caused and then we can see if theres some other way to proceed. Other questions . Yes. Art . My name is arthur schultz. What i bring to this discussion is 20 years as an armor officer. I was in vietnam. My troop led what was called the cambodian incursion. 60 days of constant maneuver fighting one time after another. I would never want to see any woman in that because it goes through at least pms cycles which nobody yet has talked about. When i ask that question, im told women lose 50 of their strength during that cycle. Weve talked about task cohesion. Task cohesion seems to me it has to be built on the ability to do the task. Im an armor officer, and armored is not just driving the tank. You have to change the track path, you have to change road wheels. Thats a lot of demanding work. And i cant imagine women having the ability to pick up a road wheel, pull out, do all the other things, or particularly to do it when youre under time constraints or youre dodging rounds down range. We all talk about combat. Well, you mentioned infantry. Well, a large part of the infantry draw has to be able to throw a grenade. There was a video making its way around the internet showing a woman marine trying to throw a grenade. She threw it three or four feet in front of the sandbags and everybody had to hit the ground. That is a physical reality that nobody yet has addressed. Are we going to take that off the list . That was automatically a communica communicater that that person is not able to do the job. So i dont get how you get t tax cohesion. I was commander as well of a troop. Going uphill in battle is strenuous and you get up and go again. Plus youre living in confined spaces. Im sorry, but its a bunch of whatever to say thats not hard. I was not with any unit that had women other than headquarters. This is the early 1970s who commanded the First Air Force defense unit in greece at that time. And he came back and said thats and he was one of the first units to integrate women. He said thats the worst job he had, he would never push it on anyone else. What he said was once a woman has sex with somebody in the unit, everybody else gets jealous. Thats a male thing, okay . And yet to say that doesnt happen, you look at all the reports of Sexual Harassment and yet here we are saying, oh, were going to push them together and expect that not to happen . Thank you, art. I appreciate your comments. What you just said reminds me of what an admiral told me when i visited the navy s. E. A. L. Community in coronado in 1992, and he said pretty much the same thing. He said because men have to live and deploy an intimate and i do mean skin to skin conditions in order to stay warm you introduce sexuality into that community, he had, youre going to have disruption like youve never seen before. It isnt the womans fault. It doesnt matter if theyre happily married and not interested at all, the men will compete. Why are we pretending these tack to factors dont matter . When we see strength tests, 31 of women couldnt do it. If your man is a navy s. E. A. L. Or army battalion, would you want your son on an aircraft doing highlevel entry thing knowing that 30 of those parachutes are not going to work . Why do we elevate risk like this . It really makes no sense. I think we have two more questions before we have to wrap up. I just want to interject and say i want us to be very careful and not do a disservice to young women, many of whom are extremely idealistic. And a few of whom will be able to do everything youre describing. If its living in the dirt. Ive spent a lot of time in villages all over africa where hygiene may not be exactly what it is that were used to. So i think we need to be extremely careful in terms of the kinds of arguments that actually get made in the 21st century about what it is that young women can or cannot do. And what we need to focus on again is, what is it that is going to make combat units more lethal and more effective . And somebody may actually be able to make a very cogent, very persuasive argument that there may be a need of an allfemale unit of direct action individuals who will be able to go in someplace unrecognized and do something. I dont think that we should automatically dismiss the idea that women arent capable. The question that we should be wrestling with is, what do we already know is likely to happen to small unit integrity when you introduce women into otherwise allmale units. Its not just sex that will rear its head. Yes, competition, but there are also emotional bonds that tend to be different very often between men and women than between just men or between just women. Especially when were talking about heterosexual males and females. So to only talk about sex is to also do a disservice to the very complicated effects or dynamics that result when men and women are together. Thank you so much for saying that. Because there are so many new issues right now, it doesnt help to stay in the past. I agree with you, women cope. They do things that you or i i dont know about you, but civilian women wouldnt dream of doing, and i admire them for doing that. But the empirical evidence cannot be denied and it is being denied. You have your hand up. I can kind of see where this argument goes when you have a central darwin theory which goes to a centralizing of male and female. Lets go to the crucial issue of social cohesion and a small group of people 10 to 12. The premise, as i understand it, is that youre saying its a darwinian principle that men will be sexually aggressive toward women. First of all, i think thats really dangerous to assume that all men in the service will have this compulsion if theyre heterosexual and they see a heterosexual female to want to engage her in a sexual liaison because theres a group of 10 to 12 women in a small unit. That does a disservice to our military and what the paratrooper said about having a Transgender Identity as a soldier. Could we let me finish, please. If we follow the argument that we need an allmale community because men, and i assume you mean sexual men, will work for comfortably. So my question is how does a gay man fit into the cohesion of a unit, first of all. And secondly, if we do adopt your darwinian thought, can you imagine a gay man and he heterosexual female . To say its based on testosterone and a chemical element that men cant control and therefore they would attack women in their unit . We need to wrap up. Women are too gentle to pick up a weapon and fight. You used the word four times that was not even said by anyone on this program. And then you exaggerated what was said in a way thats almost bizarre. But to deny that men and women are different, the countertheory is that we have to eliminate masculinism and masculinist tendencies in the military. The advocates of women in combat are serious about that, too, and they have been since the 1990s. So what are you suggesting, that masculinity is disease . Some people have said that. Some people believe that. What were saying is we need professional behavior between men and women, and we need to acknowledge that people are human. They make mistakes, theyre not perfect. Training doesnt solve all issues of personal character. If were going to have a strong military, we need to allow for that. We need to encourage discipline rather than indiscipline. Some people are stronger than others, i know that. But i think its unfair to try to put words in our mouth. We respect both men and women in the military. May i ask deanna the last word . I appreciate the dreeg to which you embroidered and rewrote most of what i said. I would just pitch back to you this question if you dont like the idea of centralizing, which is a classic term these days. How do you address the attrition interchangeability issue or challenge that will always be faced by combat units . If you do not consider people to be interchangeable, then what do you do in terms of attrition in a war . I would leave you with that to ponder and i would ask everybody else to thank you, again, for embroiderri inrin inring it and, more or less, into what i said. Would you join me in thanking diana. Theres plenty of time, i guess not plenty of time, but a little time to continue the discussion outside. Thank you very much for your attention. This weekend, cspan cities tour, with the help of our Comcast Cable partners, will explore the literary scene and history of chico, california saturday at noon eastern on booktv. Author Michael Maglieri talks about his book john bidwell in california. The most important time of the federal government starting with the congress is his close relationship with the department of agriculture. He was constantly being sent or constantly corresponding with officials in the usda ask wnd w constantly receiving from them different crops they wanted tested out in californias soil and climate. They really use rancho chico as one of their experimental farms before they actually owned and ran their own. At sunday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. We visit the California State University farm. It is the number one entry in california yet. Theres 23 krrk srk u campuses and only two have sanctions. We draw students from all over california to get experience in agriculture himself. Well also go inside the chico museum to see the historic halter. Watch the cities tour saturday at noon eastern, on cspan 3. Cspans washington journal. Live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning, new jersey democratic congressman bill pasquale discuss a resolution he initiated to provide the house with president trumps tax returns. Then republican concert. And hole breeley. Join the discussion. Announcer the Supreme Court ruled 53 that texas used outdated medical guidelines to determine whether an intellectually disabled person can be put to death. The Supreme Court ruled that charging a mentally disabled person was cruel punishment. He was killed after killing a Convenience Store owner and property. He was ineligible for the death penalty. The u. S. Court of criminal appeals cited that in defining intellectual. The Supreme Court justice reversed the Texas Court Ruling that he was not sexually disabled. Youll hear arguments this morning in