Mr. West is wrong on this one. If women meet the same standards (yes, the standards should be the same across the board instead of the current gender-based standards), then why can't women serve in combat? Supporting individual merit is a conservative principle. From Politico, about the conservative Republican: "Former Rep. Allen West on Thursday slammed a new Pentagon policy allowing women to serve in combat roles. 'Women in combat billets? Another misconceived lib vision of fairness and equality,' tweeted the Republican from Florida who served in the military for more than 20 years."
More: "His comment came a day after news broke,
indicating that the Pentagon would remove a ban that prevents women
from serving in direct ground combat positions in the military. West, who served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, took to Facebook to further bash the decision. '[To] make the insidious policy decision that we shall now open up
combat billets to women is something completely different,' he wrote,
saying that women already have the potential to engage in some combat
situations. 'GI Jane was a movie and should not be the basis for a
policy shift. I....have known women who are Apache and Cobra helicopter
pilots...but being on the ground and having to go mano y [sic] mano in
close combat is a completely different environment.' He called the strategy a 'social experiment' and said that given the
challenges facing the country, now is not the time to try it."
Allen West Rips Call For Women In Combat
