The Amazon Legion

[chris_gerrib]

I mentioned that I was reading Tom Kratman's novel The Amazon Legion. Kratman's very much a libertarian / conservative type, so when he wrote a book about training female infantry combat units, I felt it might be interesting. It was, for a number of values of "interesting."

The plot is simple enough - Panama-analog nation-state in colony world has pissed off the US-analog major power. Small state is ruled under Starship Trooper-style only ex-military can vote system. Heinlein-ish competent and benevolent semi-dictator counts troops, knows he needs more, decides to form separate regiments of gays and women. The later end up being used in guerrilla warfare when big state invades. Much blood and gore ensues.

Now, I have no problem with Kratman's portrayal of the women's boot camp. They train separately than the men (much like the current USMC) and train to somewhat lower physical standards. Kratman explicitly understands that one of the reasons of training to physical collapse is to ensure that the people being trained know what physical collapse is and how close they can get to it. (The other is to get more out of people than they think they can deliver.)

I have a general problem with the "only vets can vote" model, in that one risks creating a permanent underclass, and I have somewhat of an issue with segregated units. The argument against said units is that the men will spend more time protecting the women than fighting - something that tends to break down in combat. Even in Kratman's book, by the end of it, the women are fighting in mixed guerrilla units with great effect.

But this whole women in combat argument has a bit of a straw man. Most people, including me, don't want equality of result, we want equality of opportunity. It's fair to ask if a certain physical skill-set is really necessary, but if it is and women can't make it, then so be it. The other straw man is that modern combat includes many activities other than front-line infantry.

The third straw man is effectiveness. The average woman may be less effective than the average man in infantry combat, but "less effective" is not "ineffective." As Stalin said, "mass has a quality all its own" and if you don't have enough troops, or enough of a certain skill (language, for example) then you become ineffective.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

There isn't enough room here to discuss the problems with the only vets may vote thing.

Not just because of the point you raised, not all vets are equal. For every D-Day survivor there were veterans like my father who spent D-Day playing football (soccer) in Southampton with his shipmates and the rest of his war trundling around the North Sea in a converted trawler sinking mines.

A military has a lot of roles that don't involve getting shot at... it's a huge pyramid to support combat operations and the idea of giving the vote to people who served in mundane roles in the military over, say, doctors, police, firefighters, truck and train drivers and the whole panoply of things that make society actually, you know, work, is just stupid.

It's always struck me as something of a wank fantasy promoted by people who didn't serve but feel they would have done if they'd had to and have this 'magical' view of the 1950s when men were men and women were invisible.

Sadly for your thesis,

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

Dave, I spent something over 20 years as an infantry officer and enlisted man.

What role, do you think, does the military have that does not, not ever - "what never?" No, Never!" - involve getting shot at? Did your dad, perchance, save the certificate given him by the Wehrmacht saying that, no, under no circumstances, would the German armed forces engage him while he was playing soccer?

You may want only equality of opportunity, Chris

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

, but I would suggest that you are, in practice, in a minority. Why? Because the people pushing this are, by and large, of the "reality is a mere social construct" school, that they don't believe that there are genetic physical differences, in terms of strength and stamina, and are, at heart, in love with a bizarre and childish notion of magic.

Re: You may want only equality of opportunity, Chris

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I don't know anybody over the age of 5 with a "love of magic." I do know people who are ignorant (in the "not informed" sense of the word) of the military.

Education seems to work better than snark on those folks.

Re: You may want only equality of opportunity, Chris

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

And, see, I disagree. I used to think that the core of liberalism and leftism were faith in the easy and reliable mutability / perfectability of man (see the initial draft of the SDS' Port Huron Statement. See Lenin's New Soviet Man. See the preference among the left for professions that involve what would appear to be character, opinion, and value formation: academia and journalism especially. See the faith in psychoanalysis and reform and rehabilitiation of criminals. Universal? No, probably not. But so common as to be typical and stereotypical) but I've been gradually coming around to the idea that it's really an inarticulable faith in a kind of magic. You may have a better word for those who think everything, including physical strength and stamina, is a social construct but "magic" seems to me to be closer to the truth.

Re: You may want only equality of opportunity, Chris

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I see this belief in "magic" any time a libertarian starts pontificating on politics or economics.

It's not a belief in magic - it's a misunderstanding of human nature.

Re: You may want only equality of opportunity, Chris

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

Well, reputation aside, I am neither a libertarian nor - God forbid - an objectivist. I find the former as unrealistic-to-the-point-of-fantasy as Marxism, and the latter a nightmare.

You may have a different notion or word for the faith of people in the easy and reliable maleability of Mankind. "Magic" works for me.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

The other straw man is that modern combat includes many activities other than front-line infantry.

------

Chris, how exactly are you using the term 'straw man' in this entry, particularly in this post?

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Every time the "women in combat" debate comes up, the counterargument always starts at infantry. Pilots or Navy are never mentioned.

That's because

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

infantry is qualitatively different, so much so that there's no real and valid comparison to anything else.

Re: That's because

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well usually the people making the argument learned everything they know about the military from watching John Wayne movies. Obviously present company excepted.

Re: That's because

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

Well...if being unqualified to comment were an actual bar to commenting, possibly the only one talking would be me, soooo....

;)

In point of fact, I find the physical arguments to be the least persuasive, though they are not without their truths, too. The most persuasive arguments are social, and what it does to an organization to have its mission changed from a collective: WIN, to the personal: get the desireable mate.

Try this, which is the story of the story: http://www.baen.com/amazonsrightbreast.asp

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I've read that - it's why I bought the book.

I was coming into the military as you were going out, and I'm not sure (at least for the Navy / Marines) that the collective mission had changed.

Given the decade of ground combat we've seen, I remain unconvinced that it has.

I think we both need to recognize that we're "The Old Man" at least in military terms. I'm 47, and if I were still in I'd be rolling off of a command-at-sea tour, where I would have been literally the oldest man (or one of a handful) on the ship. The 20-somethings running around pulling triggers today grew up in a different environment.

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

That's one of the things about war; it doesn't really change. People of short vision and limiting experience or study think it does, but that's their limited experience and study in action, not the truth of war. Things that were true five thousand years ago - important things, core things - are just as true today.

Not sure what you mean about coming in and getting out. I was active in 74-78, 80-92, 97, and 03-06. In between, as in when in law school or practicing law, I did reserves / NG to keep my hand in. I have been, led, or commanded (sometimes only briefly) organizations of considerable variety: light, heavy, and indirect fire infantry, arty FIST, armor, personnel admin, IG, intel, operations, logistic, BCT, recruiting, armored cav / scout, maintenance, mess, transport, medical...frankly, almost no one with my time in and rank has quite as much breadth and scope. Among those things, I have commanded mixed organizations. None of those would have been, at the level of personnel, really odd to one of Caesar's centurions, except for the mixed units which said centurion would have predicted to be a something between a problem and a disaster...and been right.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I thought you got out in the '90s, based on the Baen article. Sorry.

War doesn't change, but the people fighting it do.

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

As individuals? Maybe. As groups? Nah. ANd it remains a social activity, an activity of groups, with the effective groups enduring and winning, and the ineffective groups collpasing and losing. (Other things can, of course, intervene - disease, nukes, what have you - but I speak of the average and in the main.)

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I remember my CO telling me stories of how, back when he was an Ensign, his ship had a near-riot because two gays were caught having sex. (This was 1992, during the birth of "don't ask / don't tell.") Now, gays are openly in the military.

Thanks for the conversation, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

The details are instructive. Was one of the gays the skipper and the other somebody up for promotion? ANd what, in any case, does that have to do with whether war has changed?

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

And, yes, of course we can "agree to disagree," but I can't see where you've put in any thought to back up your disagreement. If it were only you, well, meh. But we live in a world where people refuse to actually think in any depth. Example: in the post above you mentioned, correctly, that not as effective is not the same as ineffective. Why didn't you contemplate whether love,lust, sex, romance, favoritism, and de facto prostitution might not make the _units_ ineffective, irrespective of any individual's effectiveness? Why didn't you look to the cost of using women, the bottleneck in the production of the next generation of cannon fodder, as mere cannon fodder? It's clever to expend the tank factory rather than the tank? Over and over and over I see people, otherwise intelligent people, content and happy with the first and simplest sound bite that doesn't upset their preconceptions.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Replying to both thoughts:

1) The two gays were common sailors, one of whom was in my CO's division. The near-riot was entirely over the "ick" factor of gays on a boat.

2) Regarding "using up the tank factory:" I'm looking at the current US situation. There's no danger in running out of tanks at our current casualty rate. Were we in a WWII-level combat, we'd still be expending the tank factory, because we'd be experiencing bombing of civilian areas.

It also takes two to tango - many a European woman died an old maid because of the losses of men in WW1. It's in short a concern but not one of prime focus. Right now, in our volunteer military, the concern is not enough bodies to fill slots.

3) Love, lust, etc: problems, yes. Having said that, favoritism is hardly unique to sex - I've had COs who had favorite sons and shitbirds, regardless of performance. (One CO told me he didn' trust a fellow officer because the man was a teatotaller.) I had a CO that basically ran the ship via the CPO's mess over his officers.

[tom kratman (from livejournal.com)]

3. Again, think a little more clearly. Is it a question of uniqueness or profundity? Is liking the same as loving in its effects. Is loving with sex the same as simply having a sense of duty.

2. We haven't had a shortage, filling slots-wise, lately. Recruiting is never everything one might hope for - BTDT, and quite successfully, too - but re-enlistment has made it a non-issue. Now we've been underrecruiting for a decade, to be sure, and there is no excuse for the Regular Army not having been returned to 18 or more divisions. But that was a budget issue, AFAICT, not a recruiting one. It is somewhat notable that back during the early accession of women, 70s and 80s, the only service to increase market share, recruiting-wise, was also the service that most successfully resisted kowtowing to the latest feminist pieties and resisted accessing women in anything but small numbers.

That an enemy may destroy a tank, or machine gun fodder, factory is a long way from establishing that we should make it easier for him to do so.

1. I trust you're not suggesting that people will no longer riot over the ick factor, which is probably true, and therefore we can safely ignore love, lust, favoritism, de facto prostitution, and Paula "Duty-Honor-Blowjobs" Broadwell.

By the way, I've seen from women and liberals, and especially liberal women, quite a bit of, "I have now successfully refuted this argument you never made and therefore you have to give up as lost all other arguments you have made because I'm a grrrrrllll." I'm glad you're not doing that.