Transcripts For CSPAN3 Women In Military Combat 20160419 : v

CSPAN3 Women In Military Combat April 19, 2016

[ applause ] all kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. [ laughter ] for example, no, seriously, just recently in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice at the steakhouse the Mens Cooking Team did not impress the judges from omaha steaks and there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership and so ultimately you didnt blame lil jon or meatloaf, you fired gary busey. [ laughter ] and these are the kind of decision thats would keep me up at night. [ laughter ] and that a brief look at some of president obamas past remarks at the white house correspondents dinner. You can watch this years edition, president obamas last, on saturday april 30th at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Our live coverage of the president ial race continues tuesday night for the new york state primary. Join us at 9 00 eastern for election results, candidate speeches, and viewer reaction. Taking you on the road to the white house on cspan, cspan radio, and cspan. Org. A discussion now on women in military combat. The Defense Department recently lifted all restrictions on women serving in combat roles, including positions in the infantry, reconnaissance, and special operations units. A panel of current and former military officers debated the effects of the policy change as they discussed issues such as military standards, recruitment and training, unit cohesion, physiological differences between men and women, and the Lessons Learned from other countries that have sent women into combat. The event was hosted by y the n York City Bar Association from just last month. This is just under two hours. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for coming. Great night. I come from washington where think tank and Panel Discussions are a way of life. But some of them are not so good. I hope that we have a great one tonight. I think youre all aware that were here to talk about an issue that is extremely important to the military and i would argue as a reporter who covers the pentagon and covers the military important to the nation, the integration of women in all combat roles in all roles in the military, including in combat roles. What happened for those of you who may or may not be familiar with kind of the contours of this issue is that the current defense secretary, ash carter, announced in december after i think it was three years of study that all jobs would be open to women across the military. It was an interesting announcement, i found, sitting there because mr. Carter, whos been secretary since, i guess, last year, very interested in this issue made the announcement with little fanfare and kind of just standing alone at a podium in what we call the pentagon briefing room. It the optics of the announcement struck me and occurred to me that it kind of contributed to this idea that there is has been some debate about this issue. And what were here to talk about tonight is a lot about that debate. We have four panelists and weve kind of set this up a little bit as, you know, kind of for and against integration of women. Now, the timing of this panel is interesting really because the decision has been made so kind of move out on this decision and there will be integration of women so its not necessarily for or against but were at a point now where the pentagon is trying to figure out how to implement this decision. And so its i think this is a good, timely topic thats very timely for right now. So let me just quickly introduce the folks we have up here and then what i want to do is ask a few questions but basically ask each of the panelists to kind of stake out where they sit and explain kind of where their position is. Im not trying to make this kind a Point Counterpoint youre ignorant, youre stupid, just to kind of have like a substantive interesting conversation but also fast moving. I want to get to hopefully you guys have great questions. I have some questions but i hope that you guys have even better ones and well get to those questions very soon after. Lets just start real quick let me just explain and i carefully on the train rewrote these short little bios and then i realized that was too long and i dont want to, like, slow things down and read a bunch of bios. Take it from me that these guys are all interesting people with varied backgrounds, different opinions. They have strong opinions on these issues and i hope well get them out here. So in no particular order dan oshea is here to my left. Hes a combat veteran with more than 25 Years Service in the military. Im not going to read through this but hes a former navy s. E. A. L. Who i think had a lot of service and then returned after 9 11. Hes served in both afghanistan and iraq. I have here hes recognized as a subject Matter Expert otherwise known as an sme in military speak, or sme. In asymmetric warfare. And hes knowledgeable about counterinsurgency, terrorism, kidnapping and hostage rescue. Dan managed the interagency coordination of more than 300 kidnapping incidents and played a direct role in every Major International kidnapping incident in iraq from 2004 to 2006. Hes got a lot of stories. Kate germano here is an active duty Lieutenant Colonel in the marine corps. By the way, were very heavy on the navy but particularly the marine corps tonight. We have three marines, and dan is a former navy guy. Kate is still in service, at least for a little bit longer. Most recently as the commander of 4th recruit battalion in paris island which if youre not familiar is the only place where women are trained to be marines. And that was her last big command. She served also in a bunch of different roles over the years but most notably as a recruiter in various forms. So i think we can really yield some great answers about the thinking about how this integration thing happens not only from a standpoint of training women at paris island but also recruiting them because i think this is a factor. To her right is elliot ackerman, a former marine and infantry and specialty Operations Officer whos one of those cool guys whos become now a novelist. He is author of the critically acclaimed novel green on blue and then soon when does that come out . In january. In january dark at the crossing. He is here with us, but hes based in istanbul. Hes covered the Syrian Civil War since the last few years, 2013. His work, both fiction and essays, appear in a number of publications including the new yorker, the atlantic, the new republic and New York Times magazine. He got out of uniform in two thousand nine. Nine. And had served a number of tours of duty in the middle east and southwest asia. He served as an adviser for the afghan commandos, which as you know is one of the strongest effective fighting forces in afghanistan. And he also served in iraq where he led a rifle platoon in november 2004 in the battle of fallujah, where he earned a silver star and a number of other combat awards. Hes frequently interviewed and appears on tv, as a lot of these guys all have. Including hes been in my own paper, wall street journal. Jude to the left, jude eden say former enlisted marine sergeant who joined the corps after 9 11. In 2003 she served as a Data Communications specialist. She deployed for eight months between 2005 and 2006 to support camp fallujahs Computer Communications in iraqs western anbar province. And that was during the height of a lot of the tensions and the i mean, it was just a really dangerous time during that period. She also served as a photographer for her battalion. She is now a frequent contributor as a freelance writer to various publications, the New York Times, breitbart, stream. Org, the daily signal, western journalism and laura ing ingrahams life set. What we have here is a bit of a group here. These two are generally have concerns about the policy that has been decided upon. These two are generally in favor of the integration of women in combat. Now the title of this event tonight is a little bit racy but the idea is to kind of bring out some ideas about what the nation and military needs to think about as we integrate women in these combat roles. I think one of the theres a lot of different issues. I think to think about. But how its done, how its done to be successful, how its done to improve combat effectiveness, to or if its done in a way thats going to limit combat effectiveness i think all these various questions are ones that people have, whether theyre on one side of the issue or another. So im going to stop talking. I want to ask everybody to kind of give a quick maybe four or fiveminute intro to where they sit, how they think about this issue, who they are and then weve got a couple questions and then well jump to the audience. So you want to just start, elliot . Sure. I will not even jab for four or five minutes. I just view this as and even before the decision was made i wrote a little bit about it, is that it seemed very likely that this decision would be made, and all of my observations and conversations with folks that i knew who were somewhat close to the decision, to include serving officers who worked at the infantry offenser corps, which if you dont know thats the marine corps its infantry officers and was used sort of as a test bed for women going through that training. If they could pass. The attitude and the conversation was very much framed as we need to launch these multiyear studies to determine whether or not a womans body is even capable of the incredible rigors of combat. And to me that just really seemed like a smokescreen because that was not the issue. The issue was a cultural issue. You know, i when i served in the infantry i certainly had marines who were incredibly fit, but i also had marines in combat who were not incredibly fit. One of my collateral duties as a Second Lieutenant, which was one you could imagine any Second Lieutenant would like, was i was my companys body composition officer. So that meant that monthly 10 of the marines who were outside of the height and weight standards have to come to me and basically they would take their shirts off and i would wrap a tape measure around them and tell them they needed to lose weight. And those marines were outside of the standards. And they continued to serve and they continued to serve in combat. And many of them did fine. But i think sometimes to the outsider theres this view as if all marines are these sort of marines or soldiers or whoever are these sort of monolithic demigods who go through training and come out as supermen. Thats not the case. Theyre regular people. So this argument that this was a physical issue and that we, the corps as an organization needed to spend its energy doing studies that considereded the hipbone densities of women and that if we saw that there was maybe a 10 higher rate of shin splints in women that would disqualify them from all combat. Frankly, to me it just seemed kind of disingenuous and that issue was cultural and that in the preparation for the possibility of this decision that the leadership of the organization would be doing the organization a Greater Service by saying okay, we need to look at how we would reengineer what is at least specific to the infantry a hypermasculine culture and one that frankly works, it promotes ideas of brotherhood and camaraderie through a very masculine sentiment, and that inspires men to do incredibly brave things to save one another on the battlefield, but that was not the conversation and in the leadup to this i felt like that was concerning because it might set up the corps as an organization to fail. And i think thats what all of us regardless of our positions dont want to see happen to any of our services so now we here in a moment where that decision has been made and to me it seems the appropriate conversation is to say okay, how can we implement this the most effectively so that the organization is stronger . And in order for the organization to implement this effectively and to be strong and to change culturally as it needs to change, those conversations are going to need to be had and theyre going to need to be had under the leadership of the marine corps in my case. And so i think were sort of at a moment of truth where at the most senior levels of leadership, at the fourstar level there needs to be some very, very clear guidance given. And disappointingly, thus far what ive seen is theres just sort of there has at least the perception is sort of a Quiet Campaign that were not happy with this and were going to proceed begrudgingly. And having spent a lot of time down in infantry platoons with 19 and 20yearold privates and lance corporals they hear that message and so i would just call myself sort of a concerned alumni of the organization that would like to see in the next 15 or 20 years that its implemented, do it in a stellar manner that upholds the organizations highest values and not as a and with no incidents that serve as a black mark. And there have been incidents like that in the past if you go back to the corpss history, you know, the 50s, the 70s and times like that. But im looking forward to the conversation. Just for the sake of diversity here, why dont we go now to jude since shes kind of on the other side. And i dont want to make too much of this Point Counterpoint thing but we have different views here. So go ahead. Sure. In addition to gordons intro, part of why i have some credibility not just as an enlisted marine or the only enlisted person on this panel is i was also secondary duty that i had at camp fallujah was that i was pulled for entry checkpoint duty to frisk women for explosives, so that was convoying in and out of camp fallujah on a daily basis with the marine corps infantry and, you know, being on the street in the outskirts of five different checkpoints coming into fallujah. And im really glad that the new york Bar Association is putting this on because theyre doing something here that the administration and congress have failed to do, which is to hold an open debate and discussion on this subject and the reason the administration has suppressed debate on this is because the case for integrating women has been so weak and any time we would what elliot calls a smokescreen is empirical evidence that women suffer not just average civilian women but military women, active duty women average 2 to 10 times the injuries that men do in the military. Thats a liability, not an asset when you have that kind of additional risk, and these are very fit women. The argument for women in combat depends on ignoring that, depends on the provably false claim that women are interchangeable with military men and infantry men which, again, depends on ignoring decades worth of research. Sports medicine, military medicine, military experience. The marine corpss ninemonth integration study is only the latest in a series of studies that have been done over time and all finding the same conclusion because were talking about anatomy and no matter how culture changes or societal norms change, you cant change Human Anatomy and these are differences that cannot be ignored. It ignores the problems that coed combat units already face with rates of pregnancy, sexual assault, unit cohesion. These are things that cannot be ignored and are being ignored and ashton carter, secretary of the navy ray mavis just said well, i have a difference of opinion on that and they ignored the 36 million study on this. And the other big thing that the advocacy for women in combat depends on is a swallowing whole the big lie which is that this is an equal opportunity for women. With these kinds of rates of injury for women before theyre even on mens standards or infantry standards, thats unequal for women. Thats that doesnt do women any favors. Nobody is doubting that women serve honorably, we can serve in 98 of the jobs and be successful, but theres a difference between deploying to the combat units which many, especially general public is very detached from. The difference between deploying to a combat zone, working in a combat zone, doing a dangerous job such as what i did and being on these direct Ground Combat missions that are Kill Missions going door to door, cave to cave, often killing at point blank range hand to hand. Women are at a disadvantage physically against men who want to kill them. Another part of my background is many years of martial arts before the marine corps and then during the marine corps and ive trained with a lot of men, always made me better fighting against other women, but men who really want to kill you, when youre and this happens often. Technology and modernity have not mitigated the need for direct Ground Combat. And that handtohand fighting. And if you talk to anybody who has a lot of deployment experience, direct close combat experience, or you can read their accounts, a lot of the time theyre smashing heads. I mean, when the ammo runs out, when the gun jams. Okay . So this is not mitigated by were so technologically advanced that this doesnt happen anymore. Okay . So these are a lot of the points that i feel are being ignored by the administration. Its incredibly important that we bring these forward. You know, the Empirical Data on womens injuries, even fit women. I mean, 2 to 10 times twice the injuries, thats just your baseline. Okay . Its ten times the stress fractures. Six times the acl tears and hip injuries because womens gait tends to be smaller, it is smaller. And so they have to exert more effort when doing these long marches under load. Thats Empirical Data. And the fact that its being ignored in favor of of just pushing this through and saying its equal opportunity when, in fact, its really not i think is a disservice. And in terms of implementing, theres no successful way to implement a flawed plan. Ill leave it at that. Awesome. Thanks. Kate, i think that will go well with some of the stuff shes talking about. Because i am still in active duty i need to start with a disclaimer that my views are my own personal views and obviously not those of the marine corps. I want to start by saying one, i fully echo what elliot said about culture and this is sp

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