Essay on U.s. Defense Secretary At The Time

In early 2013, the Defense Secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, announced the decision to open direct combat roles to women in the military. The pentagon has allowed each branch a three year time frame for implementation of the new policy, with all jobs being open by the year 2016. If a branch of the military feels that a specific job should not be open to women, then representative of that branch will need to ask for an exemption of that particular occupation. Although these changes will most likely open jobs in the artillery and armor fields, many people speculate that each branch will request an exemption for the infantry and special operations communities. These jobs are simply to physically demanding, and are suited for men. Allowing females in the infantry will severely reduce mission readiness. So why the sudden change in the exclusion policy? Thousands of women have been involved in the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have done so while serving in combat support roles, as medics, military police and so on. Advocates of the new policy like to cite this as reason why. It is true that women have served and fought alongside men but they did so in support roles. There have been Female engagement teams and lioness teams that I have worked alongside that did an excellent job, and should be proud. These teams were necessary when interacting with the female population while deployed to very strict Muslim countries. But the fact is, that this jobs only do a…