Academic

WOMEN SOLDIERS COME IN HANDY in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army?

By Glenn Reynolds

WOMEN SOLDIERS COME IN HANDY in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army and Marines found it useful to send a female soldier along on raids, as it was less disruptive to have a woman search the female civilians. There was no shortage of volunteers for this duty. The marines, as is their custom, saw more opportunities in this. Thus the marines began sending a team of women on such missions. . . . What the marines had also noticed was that the female marines tended to get useful information out of the women they searched. Iraqi women were surprised, and often awed, when they encountered these female soldiers and marines. The awe often turned into cooperation. Most Iraqi women are much less enthusiastic about fighting the Americans than their men folk (who die in large numbers when they do so.) Being a widow is much harder in the Arab world than it is in the West.

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Full post as published by Instapundit.com on July 01, 2009 (boomark / email).