Small Wars Journal

Army Secretary Fanning Says Trump Would Have Trouble Rolling Back Women in Combat

Thu, 11/17/2016 - 3:42pm

Army Secretary Fanning Says Trump Would Have Trouble Rolling Back Women in Combat by Morgan Chalfant, Washington Free Beacon

Army Secretary Eric Fanning said Thursday that it would be “very hard” for the Donald Trump administration to roll back the Pentagon’s decision to open up all combat jobs to women.

Fanning was asked at a summit hosted by Defense One whether Trump would be able to undo the Defense Department’s new policies on women in combat roles and transgender troops, which were referred to by moderator and Wall Street Journal reporter Gordon Lubold as “social engineering in the military.”

Fanning said the initiatives will be hard to stop because of societal changes. He also said it is harder to reverse decisions about who can “wear the uniform” than those about who can be forced to remove it.

“It’s very hard to roll back things completely,” Fanning said. “This tide is moving forward and it is difficult to stop. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have pivots and ups and downs and so forth, but I feel pretty confident that these changes in this direction are here to stay.”

The Pentagon opened up all combat jobs to women in December, over the Marine Corps’ objection to women serving in some frontline positions.

A months-long Marine Corps study completed ahead of the decision to integrate women into all combat roles showed that female service members were injured twice as often as male service members and were less accurate with infantry weapons.

It is unclear whether Trump would move to reverse the decision. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.), a former Marine who is a possible choice for Pentagon jobs in the Trump administration, told the Washington Times this week that he would reverse the decision to open up infantry jobs to women, in addition to other policies he said “have cut down on the warrior mentality.” …

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