Colonel Batcheller Agrees Women Don’t Belong In Combat

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Colonel Gordon D. Batcheller, United States Marine Corps retired was interviewed by Crusade Magazine over this very issue.  I found two of the answers he gave when he was asked about this dovetail with what I said.  I am happy to have the discussion about the physicality, the physiology of the females versus the males.  To me, the issue is far beyond whether or not someone is physically able to discharge his duty.  It’s about who we are as a people and as a culture. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Mike is in Connecticut next on the Mike Church Show.  Mike, how are you?

Caller Mike:  Good, Mike, how you doing?

Mike:  Fantastic, thank you.

Caller Mike:  I’ve been listening to your show for a while.  I’m impressed and I’m trying to join your online website now.

Mike:  Thank you.

Caller Mike:  I have three children in the military.  I have a daughter who’s a captain in the Army.  I have a son who’s a corpsman with the Marines, he works with combat arms units.  I have a son in the National Guard in an infantry unit.  This whole idea about women in the infantry is, to me, crazy.  I enlisted in ’75 as an infantryman.  I spent about 16 years in combat units and the last few years of service was in service support.  In my small experience, it’s rigorous, it’s brutal.  The training, what you’re doing is hard physically, mentally.  I’m going to say something politically incorrect.  I don’t think women can take it as a group.  There are a few women out there, definitely.  I’ve been beaten many times in marathons by women.

Mike:  [laughing]

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Caller Mike:  I’ve had 60-year-old women run by me when I was in my prime.  Then again, they couldn’t, in my opinion and what I’ve seen, have carried 80 pounds for days and then go into combat and survive.  It’s brutal.  It’s not an easy job.  I’m scared for my children.  When you’re out there, if you have a weak leak in your unit, especially at the tactical level in an infantry squad where everyone depends on everyone else’s life, when you have that one weak link, why chance it?  Why chance it for political correctness, putting someone in that position, for whatever reason they want to be there?  I don’t know why, quite frankly, a woman would want to be in the infantry and put themselves in that environment.

Mike:  It’s a jobs program, that’s why.  Mike, Colonel Gordon D. Batcheller, United States Marine Corps retired was interviewed by Crusade Magazine over this very issue.  I found two of the answers he gave when he was asked about this dovetail with what I said.  I am happy to have the discussion about the physicality, the physiology of the females versus the males.  To me, the issue is far beyond whether or not someone is physically able to discharge his duty.  It’s about who we are as a people and as a culture.  Let me just read this to you, Mike.  Crusade Magazine:

[reading]

Crusade Magazine: Do you think that the current operational effectiveness of our military is lacking because we refuse to allow women in combat?

Colonel Gordon Batcheller: For the last forty years we have deliberately increased the involvement of women in combat. They fly combat airplanes and helicopters, man navy ships, including nuclear submarines, and fill combat support and service positions that expose them to close combat. Just recently 14,000 positions in the combat zone were opened to women. Civilians are pressuring the military, primarily the Army and Marine Corps, to open the infantry and other combat arms positions to women.

The process started when the All Volunteer Force discovered it wasn’t getting enough men; rudely put, women weren’t better than men, but they were better than nothing, at least when restricted to assignments where their associated friction could be best managed. As their presence increased, so did substantial evidence of the difficulties the mix created. No one has sought more women to better the combat force or claimed that our current mixed force is more effective than an all male force would be; and no historian has held that a coed force would have fought any of our wars more effectively than they were fought. If women improved the force’s combat effectiveness, you would expect the military to pressure its civilian master to give it more women without restrictions. The pressure today is in the other direction; civilians are trying to impose a less effective force on the military.

Crusade: Should we want our women to fight? Why not?

Colonel Batcheller: The values of our major religions, Western Civilization, and our culture say “no.” The values that sustain our military say “no.” Our idea of manhood says it would be shameful. The thought of sending wives, mothers, and daughters to fight our wars while their men drive the children to soccer practice is contemptible. It is not that women cannot fight and kill and help us repel an attack or invasion in a “last stand.” But our culture objects to enlisting them in a “first call” case, and operational effectiveness resists their involvement in any case. Ideally, the military would be a male operation. In our world the challenge is to find a sensible, cost-effective use of women in the military while keeping them where they would not have to fight, or be able to distract or disrupt those fighting.

[end reading]

End Mike Church Show Transcript