Like every guy else on this site who has served in a uniform, as a DOD or Service civilian, or in the US intelligence community, we’ve all served with women. And not just in support positions regardless of what the official designators were. In the wars we’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 20 and 18 years respectively, no matter where we put the phase lines on the map, there were no defined lines that indicated where the fighting would and wouldn’t be. Women Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, despite being designated in combat support roles for almost the entirety of these wars, often saw as much combat as their male counterparts. Every convoy of supplies, every Civil Affairs Team-Alpha mission, every Medical or Veterinary Operation could, at any moment, go from being a support or enabling mission to a combat one.
course, in iraq and afghanistan, women are absolutely being exposed to hostile fire everyday, whether or not they re in these units. womens roles have dramatically, radically changed on the battle feel. we have women everyday as translators, members of convoy operations, linguists, military police and so on, regularly being exposed to hostile fire and coming back with the same wounds of war as men. we also see that women are engaged in roles such as female engagement teams in the marine corps, lioness teams in the army, which is actually in direct violation of the combat exclusion policy. commanders on the ground know this. women are actually patrolling alongside infantry men day and night throughout afghanistan. isn t that one thing, though, the combat exclusion policy, has now been taken out, right, because of how we are seeing women getting involved in combat