Stephen Wolfe, on “Women in the Military” (2)

From another Facebook post:

If you've spent anytime as either an officer or a senior NCO in the military you know what Robert Gates is talking about here:

"Men and women in the prime of their professional lives, who may have been responsible for the lives of scores or hundreds of troops, or millions of dollars in assistance, or engaging in reconciling warring tribes, they may find themselves in a cube all day re-formatting power point slides, preparing quarterly training briefs, or assigned an ever expanding array of clerical duties. The consequences of this terrify me." (from a 2011 speech at West Point)

This is what complicates the question of women in the military. I've seen women excel in the military because of this expanding array of clerical duties. Women are good at it. The modern military is very different than militaries of the past. Everything is bureaucratized, institutionalized, computerized, proceduralized, etc. Most officers at least in combat support positions spend their day either staring at a computer or in a briefing staring at a powerpoint slide. And usually the content is not about traditional military training, but some statistic on the completion of "sexual assault" training, or "suicide prevention," or something of that sort.

My point is that any position on women in the military has to deal with the fact that in some ways women actually contribute to the effectiveness of a modern military.