The leader of the Marine Corps will have a chance to voice concerns to the defense secretary about women in combat, despite the Navy secretary saying he would not formally recommend that any jobs remain closed, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said this week that he will not ask for any exemptions for the Navy or Marine Corps to keep any jobs closed to women, meaning infantry and special operations communities could include women in spite of Marine Corps objections after a study found men outperformed women in nearly every aspect of a nine-month Marine study.
“I’m not going to ask for an exemption for the Marines, and it’s not going to make them any less fighting effective,” Mabus said during a speech at the City Club of Cleveland on Monday. “In fact, I think they will be a stronger force because a more diverse force is a stronger force.”
Mabus’ recommendation isn’t going over well among some Marines and with at least one member of Congress, who called Mabus “a political hack.”
Recommendations from the services on which, if any, jobs should stay male-only are due to Defense Secretary Ash Carter by Oct. 1. Carter will approve or reject the recommendations by Jan. 1.
While official recommendations come from service secretaries, Mabus won’t get the final say on women serving in the Marines. All decisions must be signed off on by Carter, and Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said service chiefs, not just the secretaries, will be able to voice any objections to Carter.
“What I’m telling you is that the secretary will hear input from as many people as possible in making this decision,” Cook said. “If someone’s voice is out there, they will be heard in making this decision. So, he’s going to hear from a whole host of people, some of whom may disagree on some points.”
This will give Lt. Gen. Robert Neller, who will take over as commandant of the Marine Corps on Thursday, a chance to make a case for keeping certain infantry jobs closed to women regardless of whether Mabus supports the exemption.
The nine-month Marine Corps study looked at how all-male ground combat units performed compared to gender-integrated teams. It found that women were not as fast or accurate as their male counterparts and got injured at nearly twice the rate, according to a Marine Corps Times report.
Mabus, however, said the study may not have included the best of the Marine Corps’ women. The study, he said, relied on averages, but just because the average woman is not fast or strong enough doesn’t mean there are no women who can exceed standards for infantry jobs.
“We’re not looking for average. There were women that met this standard, and a lot of the things there that women fell a little short in can be remedied by two things: training and leadership,” Mabus said.
Cook said Carter had not yet seen the study.
Mabus’ comments on the report drew criticism from one member of Congress, who said the Navy secretary is “a political hack who cares more about doing the White House’s bidding than the combat effectiveness of the Marine Corps.”
“Mabus is not only insulting the Marine Corps as an institution, but he’s essentially telling Marines that their experience and judgment doesn’t matter,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said in a statement. “Mabus knows as much about Marines in combat as I know about being a liberal governor from Mississippi who’s eager to put politics ahead of Marine lives.”
It’s possible more lawmakers share Hunter’s criticism. The congressman is drafting a letter to Mabus from multiple members of the House, Marine Corps Times reported.
Outside of Capitol Hill, active-duty Marines are also stepping up to go against Mabus’ remarks. Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew, who helped run the Marine Corps’ study, posted on Facebook that despite picking the best women possible, they consistently performed as well as or worse than the bottom 5 percent of men.
“Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to pursue[sic] whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security,” LeHew wrote in the Facebook post, reported by the Marine Corps Times.
While he commended the two women who successfully passed Ranger School this month, he said a training program and a life-or-death mission in war are two different scenarios.
“In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to counter what you are throwing at them and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man. There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is,” he wrote.
