Category Archives: combat

Know your enemy: a brief history or Iraq

Sun Tzu wrote that “not only must we have worthy goals to be successful, but our methods, the last of his five factors, must be honorable as well. … Sun Tzu teaches that leaders must be honest.” Source: Frugal Marketing.com

How honest was America’s political leaders when it came to starting the war in Iraq?

“Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the Bush White House’s case on Iraq’s alleged biological-and chemical-weapon stockpile in a dramatic Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council.” Source: USA Today.com

More than a decade after President George W. Bush started the war in Iraq, those weapons of mass destruction have not been found and no one is looking for them because they didn’t exist.

Instead of going into detail starting with 3500 BC when Mesopotamia became the world’s first known civilization in South Eastern Iraq, I want to focus on several elements that are eerily similar to Afghanistan.

332 BC: Alexander the Great conquers the Persians and the area we know of as Iraq becomes part of his empire.

In 633 AD, Muslims conquer the region that is Iraq today.

Mongol invaders led by the grandson of Genghis Khan destroy the Muslim Arab Empire that includes Iraq in 1258 AD.

The British—militarily and politically—become involved in the region in the 19th century to protect their trade routes with India and the East. In 1917, British troops occupy Baghdad and in 1920, the League of Nations gives Great Britain a mandate to rule over Mesopotamia. The British then set up King Faisal the 1st as the monarch of Iraq.

Then in 1932, Iraq becomes Independent and during World War II—wanting to get rid of British influence in the region—allies with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Great Britain defeats Iraq in 1941. In 1945, Iraq helps form the Arab League that declares war on the newly formed nation of Israel.

King Faisal the 2nd becomes Iraq’s leader in 1953. But in 1958, there is a military coup and the monarchy is destroyed. In 1979, Saddam Hussein becomes the Iraqi President and in 1980, Iraq invades Iran starting the Iran-Iraq war. In 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait. In 1991, a coalition of 39 countries starts the First Persian Gulf War and liberates Kuwait. Iraq accepts a ceasefire. Source: Dates and Events.org: Iraq-Timeline

In July 2012, Con Coughlin writing for the Uk’s Telegraph reported, “The modern-day states of Iraq and Syria once formed the ancient kingdom of Mesopotamia. They share the same tribal culture, heritage and a lengthy border.”

What does that tribal culture look like?

The Council on Foreign Relations says, “There is … a consensus among experts that tribal traditions remain culturally important to many Iraqis. … Tribes are regional power-holders, and tribal sheiks are often respected members of Iraqi communities.

“Among Iraq’s Shiite majority, [Islamic} religious leaders appear to be a more potent political force, … That said, religious leaders … appear to derive some of their strength from tribal connections. …

“Some tribes pre-date Mohammed, the prophet of Islam … For centuries, the tribes were the primary form of social organization through much of the region. While their influence has diminished through the years, the Ottoman Turks, the British, the British-backed monarchy, and the Baathists all sought their cooperation.”

Do you see the similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan? Both regions were conquered by Alexander the Great and ruled over by the Greeks. Both have tribal influences that have been around for centuries.

The Islamic religion swept over both regions about the same time. The Mongols rolled over both regions. Then the British arrived followed by the American military.

You may have noticed that there has been no mention of Russia yet, but starting July of 1979, Saddam Hussein “used the Soviets to support his program of military expansion and to strengthen his regime. Baghdad acquired arms and advisors from the USSR; the KGB and East German Stasi also trained the Baathist secret police apparatus.”  After Saddam argued with the Soviets, France became Iraq’s second biggest source of military aid after the USSR as Iraq’s dictator-for-life played the West off against the Communists in Russia. Source: History in Focus: The Cold War

Remember how the Mujahedeen were supported by the United States and some of her allies as they fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Later, the same Islamic, Mujahedeen warriors that the US trained and supplied with weapons become the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Do you think it is possible to build a democratic nation in Iraq where all of the different religious, political and tribal factions will learn to cooperate sort of like the very honest and moral [tongue-in-cheek] Republican and Democratic Parties do in the United States?

Continued on August 16, 2013 in A brief history of Vietnam or start with Know your enemy: a brief history or Afghanistan

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Know your enemy: a brief history of Afghanistan

Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War (lived in China during the 6th century BC), wrote, “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

About 330 BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region we now know of as Afghanistan after he defeated the Persians. Even after his conquest, Afghan tribes rebelled while others watched to see what would happen. Alexander, who was on his way to India, turned his army around. The tribe that rebelled was eradicated from the face of the earth (every person).

In the 7th century AD, Arab army’s brought Islam to the region. Then in 1219 AD, the Mongols led by Genghis Khan rolled over the region destroying almost everything in their path.

Three centuries later in 1504, Babur, a descendent of Genghis Khan, established the Moghul Empire with Kabul as its capital. Two hundred years later, that empire shattered into several tribal groups.

In 1746, the modern state of Afghanistan was established with Kandahar as the capital.

Then in 1826, at the urging of the British, a Sikh army invades from the south, and in 1838, The British start the First Anglo-Afghan War to place their man on the throne in Kabul. The British stay until 1842 before they withdraw through the Khyber Pass. In the last year of the war, a combined British and Raj force of more than 16,000 troops and camp followers is massacred after leaving Kabul in route to British controlled India.

In 1878, the British start the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Two years later, the British withdraw after achieving their goals.

In 1919, Afghanistan gains its independence from Britain’s influence after a third war.


Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires, special guest Steven Tanner—History Counts and In Context are produced by MDR Productions, Inc.

Starting in 1933, after centuries of war, there is stability, but this ends in 1973 followed an invasion in 1979 from the Soviet Communist Empire—this is where the balance of power between the Afghan tribes becomes unstable.

The Mujahedin—with financial backing and modern weapons—drives the Soviet out in 1989.

A few years later in 1996, the Taliban seize control and Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda arrive soon afterward.

On September 11, 2001, four US airliners are hijacked and two are flown into the World Trade Center. The Taliban is Al Qaeda’s friend and that makes them our enemy.  After the Taliban refuse to hand over Bin Laden, the US and Britain launched air strikes in Afghanistan. Source: TimeLine: Afghanistan’s turbulent history—abc.net.au

Afghanistan is a region of tribes. The Afghan National Anthem mentions a total of 14 ethnic tribal groups. The largest is the Pashtun. In 2004, it was estimated that the Pashtuns make up 41 – 60% of Afghanistan’s population. In Pakistan, the Pashtuns are the second largest ethnic/tribal group. Since 1840, the tribes have not united behind a single leader.

In 1939—before Britain’s first war in Afghanistan—a British spymaster, Sir Claude Wade, warned that “such interference will always lead to acrimonious disputes, if not to a violent reaction.”

Since Soviet meddling in Afghanistan’s politics and its invasion, “Afghanistan has also lost all its vital institutions, the structure of the state and the historical consensus that the country once had. … Afghanistan is ethnically a very diverse country that has been dominated by the Pashtun majority at the top level as all the kings came from this group. However, ethnicity was never a very strong factor in Afghan politics before the Saur revolution of 1978.  The war in Afghanistan has vastly changed the traditional balance of power among the ethnic groups. Non-Pashtun minorities are more powerful today than they were 20 years back. Three factors have contributed to their empowerment …” Source: Conflict in Afghanistan: Ethnicity, Religion and Neighbours by Rasul Bakhsh Rais

What have you discovered about waging a long war in Afghanistan and meddling in her politics from this brief history?

This series will continued on August 14, 2013 with A brief history or Iraq

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Wounded Warriors Returning from the Abyss

Dawn Halfaker graduated from West Point as a 1st lieutenant and led a platoon in Iraq in 2004. A few weeks into her deployment, her platoon was ambushed, she was hit and when she woke up in the hospital days later, her right arm was gone.

With her military career over, she decided to help fellow wounded veterans. The Huffington Post interviewed Halfaker, and asked, “What happened on the day you got wounded?”

Halfaker replied, “It was a routine, 3-hour patrol mission looking for enemy activity on a relatively quiet night until, after about two and a half hours, we drove right into an ambush. I was in the first vehicle of the convoy, and one of the rocket-propelled grenades hit me and one of my squad leaders, severely injuring both of us.”

She launched Halfaker and Associates, and today it is an award winning professional services and technology solutions firm. She also is involved as the president of the Wounded Warrior Project that has a vision “to foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation’s history.”

Serving her country, she lost an arm and was awarded a Bronze Star Medal along with a Purple Heart for her wounds in combat. But her success since that fateful day doesn’t mean she doesn’t have days where she doesn’t hate her life. In 2005, in a New York Times interview, she said, “Some days when I’m holding a cup of coffee, my ID, carrying a bag, trying to open the door at work, I spill coffee on myself. Those are the days I say, ‘I hate my life.’ I cry and think, Why do I have to be this way?”

But no matter how she feels on down days, she always rebounds and wonders how her life turned out so great.

If we learn anything from this retired Army captain, it is that there is no excuse to give up on life.

Why is it that some combat veterans become homeless alcoholics and drug users stricken with severe PTSD and others—for example Halfaker—end up becoming the successful CEO of her own business with 150 employees and a positive role model for the rest of us?

Discover A Prisoner of War for Life

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

A Review of “World War Z”

If you are into violent stories about war and destruction—suspense-thrillers/horror—and you haven’t read World War Z, you may want to think about it.

I saw the film before I listened to the book and the two are as different as night is to day. The only thing in common is the struggle between humans and zombies that hunger for human flesh due to a virus worse than EBOLA, MARBURG, HANTAVIRUS, LASSA, RABIES, SMALLPOX, DENGUE, SARS or HIV will ever be. A few always survive exposure to these viruses but no one survives exposure to the Zombie Virus. Once bit, you are doomed.

The Zombie Virus is our worst nightmare.

I enjoyed the film but reading the book left me admiring the author’s creative and vividly detailed imagination as the main character moves around the world interviewing survivors of the global war against the infected, hunger driven zombies.

Although the story is told through these interviews, the individual stories are attention grabbing—some more than others.

A number of themes run through the novel: one points out how governments are often incompetent; corrupt and how many of the people panic and make disastrous mistakes as a mob. Another theme focuses on survivalist and disaster preparation.

I bought and listened to the audio book and the cast of characters is incredible. I found the listening experience to be more powerful than watching the film and possibly more powerful than reading the book on paper. The cast of characters is long and their talent adds to the novel.

If you have a fascination with war, I don’t see how you can resist this novel.  The stories shared in this oral history of World War Z are as violent as they get.  World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan cannot compete with the combat that you will witness as a reader/listener of this novel.  Imagine an enemy that can’t die unless you cut off its head or blow apart its brain.  And all it wants to do is chew on living humans infecting them. Viruses find ways to spread and replicate just as the Zombie Virus does in this novel.

I awarded this novel 5-stars on Amazon because of the amazing imagination of the author that never failed to impress me. If there were awards for imagination, Max Brooks deserves one. In fact, the audio book—that I highly recommend—won an Audie Award in 2007 for the performance of a cast of more than forty that includes, for example, Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl Reiner, Bruce Boxleitner,  Rob Reiner, Jon Turturro, Masayori Oka [NBC’s Heroes], and Martin Scorsese [the award-winning film director].

I couldn’t find the complete edition Audio Book I bought of World War Z on Amazon. My copy had 10 compact discs running 12 hours, and I bought it at Costco.

Discover “The Hurt Locker” and IEDs in Vietnam

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Forgetting basic training and jumping in the fire: Part 2 of 2

Adrenalin and our training kicked in—at least for three of us—and without realizing we had moved, we found ourselves a heartbeat later prone behind telephone poles positioned about thirty feet inside the wire to offer some form of protection in the sort of situation we had just found ourselves in—as exposed, easy to hit targets.

But one of us was missing. Once the flare floated to earth and fizzled out plunging us back into darkness, we went in search of our missing Marine and found him trapped inside the barbed-concertina wire stuck to the barbs.  He was lucky that when he jumped in the wrong direction, he didn’t land on one of the mines. We plucked him off the barbs and off we went to the medic.

The third incident was on another all-night patrol as the sun’s early light was sneaking over the horizon and spilling across the rice paddies. We were on our way back to the base camp moving along a dirt road through the hills. There was the sound of a grenade spoon popping and the thud of a grenade hitting the ground.

The patrol—except for one—reacted as trained.  One instant we were on the road spread out in the proper formation, and what felt like a heartbeat later I found myself in a ditch twenty feet away. And I still don’t know how I got there.

Looking up, I saw only one member of the patrol in sight as he stood frozen staring at the grenade sitting in the dirt in front of his feet. The rest of the patrol, like me, had vanished into the terrain on either side of the dirt road, and I couldn’t see anyone else.

Fortunate for that human Popsicle, the grenade turned out to be a dud and whoever threw it was in no mood to start a firefight with the patrol—he could have been a ten-year-old boy who had no other weapon but that one grenade. You see, in most of the world outside of the developed West, children are often not children—not as we think of children in the United States. They are just smaller people and just as dangerous as adults.

Why did these three Marines forget their training? Was it the parents, environment and lifestyle they had come from? Was it something genetic? Or were they just fortunate, klutzy dingbats?

Return to or start with Forgetting basic training and jumping in the fire: Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Forgetting basic training and jumping in the fire: Part 1 of 2

Through intense training, U.S. Marines learn how to react in combat without taking time to think. Then why—for example—while I was in Vietnam in 1966, did other Marines I depended on literally jump in the fire ignoring all of the training designed to mold boys in to a fighting, killing machine?

“Without doubt, Marine boot camp is more challenging—both physically and mentally—than the basic training programs of any of the other military services. Not only are the physical requirements much higher, but recruits are required to learn and memorize a startling amount of information. There are more than 70 training days in a period a little longer than 12 weeks …” then after boot camp, there’s training at the School of Infantry—another 51 days. Source: Surviving Marine Corps Basic Training

But in Vietnam, that training failed for more than one Marine putting others on their combat team at risk.

The first incident: I was on a night patrol, and the patrol leader—without telling the rest of us—took off through the rice paddies in the inky darkness. He thought he heard the enemy and without much thought decided he wanted to be a John Wayne.

After he vanished without a sound, the rest of the patrol—including me—set up a defensive position thinking we were going to get hit hard, and we almost shot our sergeant when he returned after chasing his imagined enemy that turned out to be a panicked duck and her chicks as they fled this manic Marine.

The second incident took place on Hill 50-something [hills were named by their elevation]. Four of us were out inspecting the barbed-concertina wire along the camp perimeter. Under the wire were landmines and in front of the wire, outside the defensive perimeter, were trip flares.

We were inside the wire thinking we were safe in the darkness—it was midnight, cloudy and raining and visibility was a few feet—when one of those trip flares outside the wire went off and lit us up as if we were in Law Vegas on a sidewalk.

Continued on July 31, 2013 in Forgetting basic training and jumping in the fire: Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Controlling the Warrior Gene: Part 2/2

To discover more about the triggers that activate the warrior gene, scientists should study the history of berserkers to learn about the right environment and lifestyle.

Britannica.com says the “berserker in pre-medieval and medieval Norse and Germanic history and folklore, [was] a member of unruly warrior gangs that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity, and attached themselves to royal and noble courts as bodyguards and shock troops. … The berserkers were in the habit of raping and murdering at will in their host communities (thus going “berserk”).”

The word “berserker” today applies to anyone who fights with reckless abandon and disregard to even his own life, a concept used during the Vietnam War and in Vietnam-inspired literature (Michael Herr’s Dispatches) and film (Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder). “Going berserk” in this context refers to an overdose of adrenaline-induced opioids (or military-issued amphetamine for long missions) in the human body and brain leading a soldier to fight with fearless rage and indifference, a state strikingly similar to that of the 9th century berserkers.

“Going berserk” is also used colloquially to describe a person who is acting in a wild rage or in an uncontrolled and irrational manner.

And in When You Hear the Bugle Call by Peter S. Griffin, he says, “Homer [8th century BC] related incidents of some soldiers going berserk, fighting in an enraged, reckless manner, the same as some warriors of the modern age, who participated in intense, frequent and prolonged combat and lost it in battle.”

If true, what would happen if a government had the ability to control this warrior gene in its elite troops with the ability to turn it on at will sort of like controlling a drone from a remote location resulting in super soldiers in combat situations?

Return to or start with Controlling the Warrior Gene: Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Controlling the Warrior Gene: Part 1/2

Up to 20% of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD, and research says that emotions and family settings—meaning environment and lifestyle—may all play rolls that trigger genes that lead to some troops coming down with PTSD while others in the same combat situations don’t. Sources:  U.S. National Library of Medicine and the L.A. Times

Therefore—under the right circumstances that may trigger a response through certain genes—are some people wired to be warriors?

In 2009, Science Daily reported on research co-authored by Rose McDermott, professor of political science at Brown University. “Several studies have found a correlation between the low-activity form of MAOA—a gene that regulates an enzyme that breaks down important neurotransmitters in the brain— and aggression in observational and survey-based studies. Only about a third of people in Western populations have the low-activity form of MAOA. By comparison, low-activity MAOA has been reported to be much more frequent (approaching two-thirds of people) in some populations that had a history of warfare. This led to a controversy over MAOA being dubbed the warrior gene.”

We already know that certain genetic triggers are activated because of environmental and lifestyle factors. These factors are called triggers. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that “Heredity plays an important part in determining who is likely to develop type 1 diabetes. Genes are passed down from biological parent to child.  … Some theories suggest that environmental factors trigger the autoimmune destruction of beta cells in people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes. Other theories suggest that environmental factors play an ongoing role in diabetes, even after diagnosis. … Physical inactivity and obesity are strongly associated with the development of type 2 diabetes. People who are genetically susceptible to type 2 diabetes are more vulnerable when these risk factors are present.”

Other genes have been identified that protect against heart damage from chemotherapy. Source: ScienceCodex.com

In addition, CNNHealth.com reported that “Some people have all the luck. A new study shows that certain individuals with a gene mutation can slurp down milk shakes or other high-fat food and drink without a nasty jump in cholesterol.”

Continued on July 24, 2013 in Controlling the Warrior Gene: Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Is the U.S. too Fat to Fight?

In 2012, fifteen times more troops were discharged from the US Army due to obesity than five years prior, and over the last 15 years, the numbers of obese people actively serving in the US military more than tripled. Source: rt.com

And The Hill.com says, “Spiking rates of childhood obesity are a threat to a nation’s security and demand government intervention, according to retired military leaders.”—In 2010, more than one-third of children and adolescents in the United States were overweight or obese.

In fact, “Combined with other disqualifying factors—including criminal backgrounds and poor education (whose fault is that?)—excess weight means that an estimated 75 percent of young adults could not serve in the military even if they desired to.”

In addition, according to the Trust for America’s Health.org, “The number of obese adults, along with related disease rates and health care costs, are on course to increase dramatically in every state in the country over the next 20 years.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, “More than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese.” In fact, two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese.

But the National Center for Constitutional Studies says it is the voluntary duty of the citizens of a country to enlist in the army in time of war … and support the President in an hour of crises.” In addition, the Founding Fathers of the United States assumed that American citizens would undertake responsibility for the ordinary functioning of the civil social order—that included defense of country.

However, there is a solution to this weighty problem, and the U.S. Marines already successfully used it in 1965-66.

When I served in the U.S. Marines (1965-1968), there was a recruit at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego who was so fat and out of shape that he couldn’t perform the simplest exercises without fainting. He was sent to what was known then as the book camp’s fat boy platoon where he spent more than a year exercising ten-to-sixteen hours a day to lose weight and build muscles before he was sent to combat in Vietnam where he was landing in DaNang the day I was leaving.

Therefore, if America needs young citizens of military age to defend the country, those fat boys and girls may find themselves in a boot camp for a year or more exercising their fat off—the ultimate weight loss, cannon fodder machine.

Discover Eating out in Vietnam in 1966

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Women Warriors in Combat

In the United States it is a hot-button issue that women should or should not be allowed to serve in combat. Those against claim women cannot compete with men in combat—that they don’t have the physical strength or proper mindset.

Curious, I decided to discover where women have been allowed to serve in combat and how they performed.

The Washington Post listed countries that allow women in front-line combat positions. “In Europe: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania and Sweden. Elsewhere: Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the Anglosphere; plus Eritrea, Israel, and North Korea.”

It made sense that Israel would need women to serve in combat units, and I decided to focus on this country first. After all, Israel population is less than 8 million, and Israel is a tiny island of democracy in an Arab-Islamic world with constant religious and civil unrest.

In fact, women served alongside men in ground forces in the paramilitary groups that predated Israel’s foundation as a state in 1948. Then for the next 25 years, they were mostly relegated to roles as administrators, medical assistants or trainers, but after the Yom Kipper War in 1973, they started to serve as combat instructors and officers.

The NY Times reported that Arielle Werner, who grew up in Minnesota and immigrated to Israel in order to join a combat unit, said female recruits underwent the same training regimen as men.

 “Each year, 1,500 female combat soldiers are drafted into the IDF, a number which has remained consistent in recent years. Female soldiers also play crucial roles in command and control positions.” Source: Israel Defense Forces.com

In fact, a professor at Duke University studied Soviet women in combat during World War II and said she was shocked by the stories and images she came across—stories of Soviet women in combat, images of Soviet women dressed in military uniforms, holding sniper rifles, teaching other solders to kill.

Anna Krylova, associate professor of modern Russian history at Duke University, said, “When it came to paramilitary training, men and women received the same education and, even more important, were expected to perform the same tasks. … Significantly, the Soviet women who became soldiers did not think of themselves as women performing a man’s job.”

For example, Lyudmila Pavlichenko—a Soviet sniper—killed over three hundred Germans during World War II and women in the Red Army also made parachute drops behind enemy lines. Source: History News Network

Therefore, it is obvious to me that the issue isn’t if women can or can’t perform in combat but if the society/country they live in allows them to think they can serve in combat.

And America, promoted as the land of the free, is still a country where the Equal Rights Amendment—first introduced to the United States Congress in 1923—has been repeatedly defeated by conservative members of the GOP (Republican Party), who want to keep women as second class citizens earning less than men and serving in the kitchen to cook and the bedroom for breeding purposes only—without the right to an abortion. Maybe conservative men fear what women might do if they were trained to kill.

What do you think about military women fighting in combat units?

Discover Causes of Increased Sexual Assaults in the US Military

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”