Fight like a girl The truth behind how female Marines are trained

Fresh examinations of how wars were fought in the past and how they will be fought in the future. one of the most interesting books on military affairs that 1 have read in some time is army of none: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (Norton, $27.95). Its author, Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger and Pentagon official who is now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (a think tank with which 1 was affiliated several years ago), provides a thoughtful overview of the mind-boggling issues associated with autonomous weapons - or, as some people call them, "killer robots." Unlike many authors examining the advent of autonomous weapons, Scharre doesn't get bogged down in the question of whether they will be built. They already are here, he argues, citing the example of the Stuxnet computer bug as just such an armament, ft was software inserted, almost certainly by American and Israeli intelligence agencies, into Iranian computers running that country's nuclear enrichment program. Because the Iranian computers were "air-gapped" - that is, not connected to the global internet - once the bug was inside the Iranian system, delivered through porn-laden thumb drives, it was on its own. And it worked impressively, physically destroying a key part of the nuclear program. This is not to say Scharre is a blithely optimistic hawk. He sees plenty of pitfalls ahead, both for the people attacked by auto-weapons and for the people who wield them. He foresees, for example, the development of an indoor anti-personnel weapon that flies around rooms killing people like a lethal Roomba gone mad. So he is sympathetic to the idea of calling a moratorium on the development of such arms while some of the more difficult ethical, moral and psychological problems are examined. One key question is whether autonomous weapons should be permitted to attack only other weapons - for example, an AK-47 rifle, rather than the person holding it? Also, how will autonomous weapons affect human behavior? Will they make people feel less morally responsible for taking human life? And what happens as machineweapons begin to learn? The more they learn, he notes, the more autonomous they can become. That development will in turn make them less predictable. High learning capabilities also will render them more vulnerable to an enemy who figures out how to make them think mistakenly, as by feeding them false images that can trigger them to fire at unintended targets. The bottom line is that the more an autonomous weapon is let free to roam in time and space, the more likely it is that something will go catastrophically wrong. Scharre handily explicates an extraordinary set of problems that we will only begin to understand as we see more of the weirder quirks and idiosyncrasies of high-speed artificial intelligence, a field we barely understand today. even contemporary wars can be difficult to comprehend nowadays. One of the hardest tasks for war correspondents is stepping back to try to see the broad shape of a conflict - its scope, duration and intensity, and especially how it might end. Sometimes historians are better positioned to gain such understanding, even as it is still underway. That seems to be the case with the continuing fighting in Syria and Iraq. The best of the new books on the turmoil in the region is QUICKSILVER WAR: Syria, Iraq and the Spiral of Conflict (Oxford University, $29.95), by William Harris, a professor of politics at New Zealand's University of Otago. Harris's point of departure is to treat the wars in Iraq and Syria as one conflict. This make sense not just geographically, but also demographically and historically. He also maintains that, despite the presence of external powers like the United States and Russia, it is not a proxy war, and it would continue even if those powers withdrew. Rather, he argues persuasively, it is the Thirty Years' War of our time, growing out of the ruins of twin totalitarian regimes in Iraq and Syria, and it is far from concluded. He estimates that about a quarter of a million people died in this war from mid-2014 to early 2017. But foreign powers have played a major role, if not a helpful one. As Harris describes it, the "feckless" Obama administration mismanaged Syria nearly as badly as the Bush administration mishandled Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry in particular is portrayed as almost buffoonish in his dealings with this war. In 2014, Harris notes, when the Kurdish enclave of Kobani fell to ISIS, Kerry maintained that it did not reach the level of a "strategic objective." But a few months later, when the Kurds retook it, he called it " 'a big deal,' especially as ISIS had defined Kobani as a 'symbolic and strategic objective.' " To be fair, there are so many players in this war, with so many complex interests, that even the most experienced observers may occasionally feel flummoxed. For example, in Iraq, the United States provides air power to government forces on the ground, which are supplemented by Iranian-controlled or Iranian-influenced militias, while in Syria, Russia provides air power to government forces on the ground, and Iran again provides them much of the manpower. Yet Russia and the United States back opposing sides in the war. Harris concludes that the winners in the war, at this point, are the Assad regime in Syria and its backers, Russia and Iran. The losers have been the United States, Saudi Arabia and Türkey - and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of people killed or displaced. My sole complaint with this fine, brisk book is with its title. All wars change and evolve, and so all have quicksilver elements. This is really a history of the 21st century's "War for the Fertile Crescent," and it would have been better to call it that. Another good book about the same region whose title is slightly Off IS THE CALIPHATE AT WAR: Operational Realities and Innovations of the Islamic State (Oxford University, $29.95). fn it, Ahmed S. Hashim, a former professor at the United States Naval War College who is now at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, offers a good history of the internal politics of the war in Iraq over the last 14 years. Among other things, he notes that the American military's detention camps in Iraq helped insurgents from diverse backgrounds come together to find common ground. "We could never have all got together like this in Baghdad, or anywhere else," he quotes one insurgent as saying, "ft would have been impossibly dangerous. Here, we were not only safe, but we were only a few hundred meters away from the entire A1 Qaeda leadership." But in the end, Hashim observes, this book is just an interim report on a war that has no end in sight. older wars can also be seen in new ways. A retelling of the Boer War through Dutch eyes? Oh, give it a chance. 1 did and was surprised at what a refreshing volume had been produced by Martin Bossenbroek, a historian at the University of Utrecht. As he relates the story in the boer war (Seven stories, $32), the Boers were essentially a late-19th-century version of the American revolutionaries of 1776 - that is, embattled white colonialists combating distant British imperial power. The Boers are depicted as doughty, honest fellows who "observe the rules of the game," while the British are "toxic," duplicitous types who tighten "diplomatic thumbscrews." Bossenbroek also reminds us that some 22,000 Boer children died in prison camps during the war. This approach enables Bossenbroek to offer particular insight into the problems of the Boers, especially their internal political and religious differences, and their relentlessly democratic approach, in which all officers up to their top general were elected by subordinates. One also sees how the agrarian Boers felt undercut by the presence in their midst of "the burgeoning and divisive organism that was Johannesburg," the home of capitalist gold miners who tended to be loyal to Britain. He concludes that the war left a long-lasting rift in Afrikaans society between the "bittereinders" who wanted to fight to the end and the "hensoppers" - those who put their hands up and surrendered. But the real losers of the war, he says, were not the Boers but the black Africans of South Africa, who emerged with almost no rights, not even to own land in most places. Even more obscure than the Boer War was the enormous round of killings in Indonesia in 1965-66. At least 500,000 people were slaughtered, and another million detained, but the event is barely remembered in the West. And when it is recalled, most of what people think they know about it is wrong, writes Geoffrey Robinson, a historian at U.C.L.A. The conventional summary is that a normally quiet, gentle people erupted into a cycle of impulsive communal violence that often was aimed at ethnic Chinese living in the country. Journalistic accounts usually would note that "amok" is an Indonesian word. In the killing season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 (Princeton University, $35), Robinson reports that the violence was not spontaneous, but was well organized, often by the Indonesian Army, which provided guns, trucks, clerks and bases for detention camps. Nor, he says, were the attacks simply on ethnic Chinese - indeed, most victims and perpetrators were of the same ethnic and religious group, whether Javanese Muslims, Balinese Hindus or Protestant Bataks. The killings were horrible, "among the worst crimes of the 20th century," he writes. Here is an account from a death squad member in Sumatra: "We shoved wood in their anuses until they died. ... We crushed their necks with wood. We hung them. We strangled them with wire. We cut off their heads. We ran over them with our cars. We were allowed to do it." Such memories have largely been suppressed inside Indonesia, which Robinson says has attempted reconciliation without doing much truth-finding. there are even new things to say about someone as familiar as George Washington. Why do we have such difficulty assessing his military career? Fundamentally, it is because he ultimately emerged victorious without having scored many victories. Indeed, the Revolutionary War began badly for General Washington, with his forces being hurled out of New York City in 1776. But over time he felt his way toward a winning strategy, which in a nutshell was to maintain a regular Army capable of occasionally confronting the British while letting the American militias chew up the British convoys and patrols. In THE STRATEGY OF VICTORY: How General George Washington Won the American Revolution (Da Capo, $28), the veteran historian Thomas Fleming tells the story well, albeit with a regrettable bias in favor of the role played by the regular Army. He emphasizes that Washington was an instinctively aggressive commander, and had to learn the hard way how to pursue an "indirect" strategy. Even then, Washington was not a pure "Fabian," a reference to the style of the Roman general who wore out the invading Hannibal by avoiding battle. Fleming shows that Washington knew it was important for the morale of Americans - both military and civilian - to strike a blow when he could, and he indeed did so at Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth and Stony Point. Like all effective strategies in war, this hybrid approach addressed military and political problems at the same time, and enabled the new United States, though deeply divided, to achieve a surprising triumph over the world's most powerful military. Fleming died last year, not long before this book was published. He will be missed. From Washington's time to today, there is always more to be said about the United States military and the people in it. Two new books, from an enlisted man and a female officer, offer almost diametrically opposite perspectives on the Marine Corps. Maximilian Uriarte, a Marine from 2006 to 2010, is the creator of "Terminal Lance Corporal," an insightful comic about life in the post-9/11 corps. Now his strips of the last eight years have been collected in terminal lance ultimate omnibus (Little, Brown, $30). (The word "terminal" refers to the fact that the heroes of the strip are never going to advance beyond the very low rank of lance corporal, the Marine equivalent of the Army's private first class.) Uriarte is the Bill Mauldin of millennials. His comic is earthy, cynical and profane, as anyone who has spent time around enlisted Marines would expect. But he also is surprising in his views. He is, for example, scathing about veterans who wail about how gays and women have ruined the Marine Corps. His own view, expressed in the running commentary in the book that accompanies the strips, is that "joining the Marine Corps is by far the gayest thing any straight man can possibly do." This testosterone-laden collection is probably the best book about Marine Corps culture in decades. At the same time, prospective readers should beware, ft brims with jokes about alcohol abuse and masturbation. One of its running themes is the myriad ways in which a penis can be drawn. Anyone not shocked or offended by at least a quarter of this book should probably seek professional help. FIGHT LIKE A GIRL: The Truth Behind How Female Marines Are Trained (Prometheus, paper, $18), by the retired Marine lieutenant colonel Kate Germano, relates a very different story about the same organization. While commanding the unit at Parris Island, S.C., that trains all female Marine recruits, Colonel Germano ran afoul of the Marine leadership by trying to raise their performances. She was a hard charger, and innovative, and she succeeded in elevating their rifle shooting scores and running times. "We should have high expectations for the women, and those high expectations should lead to better scores, and those better scores should lead to more respect from the men, more self-confidence for the women and a better Marine Corps," she writes. But, as Germano tells it, she was slow to realize that by doing so, she undercut the Marine Corps' determined opposition to gender integration. For her pains, she was relieved and publicly labeled a toxic leader. The anger of a Marine whose core principles have been violated can be fearsome to behold. Firing the commander of a Marine boot camp unit for being abrasive is a bit like complaining that water is wet. But that's what happened to her - even as an abuse scandal was brewing in a male-led battalion at Parris Island. That situation resulted in the suicide of a Muslim recruit and the removal of several leaders. One caveat: As a piece of writing, Germano's book is a mess. But then it is not a measured work of literature, it is a cri de Corps. Like most good rants, it is repetitive and a bit muddled. It is worth reading not as history but as a memoir, an anguished first-person account of what it is like to tangle with a powerful and tradition-bound institution. Oddly, Uriarte and Germano, despite their very different starting points, wind up in almost the same place: Both love Marines as individuals, but have developed an abiding skepticism of the institutional Marine Corps. In a time when everyone seems to want to "support the troops," that's an important distinction to make and remember: You can care for the people in the armed forces without mindlessly endorsing the views and actions of the officials overseeing them. ? Thomas E. ricks, a former war correspondent, is the author of six books, most recently "Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom." He writes the column The Long March for TaskAndPurpose.com.

Germano is a Marine Corps combat veteran with two decades of experience under her belt. When she was selected to command the all-female training battalion at Parris Island, she was prepared for a tough gig and felt sure that she could handle it. After all, she was a marine. But when she arrived at her new post, she was shocked by the systematic abuse of recruits and the women's chronic underperformance compared to men. The women scored lower in every area in which they were tested. Determined to raise the achievements of the women at Parris Island, Germano sought to change outdated procedures and encourage a more positive culture. In just one year, the women under her command improved their shooting, injuries decreased, and morale lifted. What was Germano's reward? The Marines fired her. Germano's biting memoir traces her time at Parris Island as she tackles the tough issues of gender bias and segregation in the military. This passionate and raw account resonates with the Me Too and Time's Up movements and is a powerful story of one woman's perseverance.--Smith, Patricia Copyright 2018 Booklist

A passionate account of a former Marine Corps officer's fight for equality and justice in a historically sexist system.When Lt. Col. Germano was hand-selected to take command of the 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island, a group that trains only female recruits, she was well-aware of the challenges ahead. The Marine Corps is the only service that still segregates men and women during basic training, and the biased strategy is a breeding ground of issues. Implemented after an outdated, inaccurate study that showed mixed-gender units performed worse than single-sex units, the training program holds women to lower standards and maintains the damaging assumption that women are inherently mean and emotional. This strategy results in poorer performances in female recruits as well as dangerous and destructive behavioral issues. When Germano took command of 4th Battalion for what was supposed to be the swan song of her 20-year career, she was determined to change things for the better and prove women could be just as effective as men. After a year in charge, Germano's recruits had markedly improved performance and fewer behavioral issues and injuries, and the overall quality of life at the training camp improved. Despite these achievements, the author's high expectations and no-nonsense command style shook up the status quo and the many Marines and leaders who wanted to protect it, and she was ultimately fired. Using her firsthand experience and anecdotal evidence from her year in command, Germano concludes that it was sexism, prejudice, and an overt opposition to women's success that ended her career. At times, the author is repetitive, and her prose can feel clumsy and awkward. Still, she provides a unique, powerful story of sexism and gender bias that will resonate with women across industries and experiences.A no-holds-barred condemnation of discriminatory training policies within the Marines and of systemic sexism facing women everywhere. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

From Chapter 1 - Tears and Cupcakes As  I prepared to take command of Fourth Battalion, the boot camp for brand-new female recruits, I told myself I would have to stop cussing so damned much. I would have to reconstruct my "resting bitch face" into a countenance brimming with sunshine and light. I would work to encourage a culture of compassionate listening, and I would try not to yell. It was, after all, the Marine Corps. I was excited to take over--proud that I had been hand-selected, and eager for a new challenge. In every position I had ever held, I did my best to leave it a better place. I aimed for efficiency and to improve the Marine Corps overall, but I also worked hard to improve the quality of life for Marines under my watch. After years of deployments, the last thing I wanted was a Marine feeling stressed out over recruiting duty or a drill-instructor tour. This job--commanding officer of Fourth Recruit Training Battalion--seemed perfect for me. I hoped to take the lessons I had learned as a Marine--but also as a female Marine--and build up a group of women who understood just how capable they were. I wanted to prepare them to succeed in a Marine Corps that might not always be supportive or understanding of their goals; and I wanted them to come out with a strong vision of themselves and their abilities. I wanted it for my drill instructors. I wanted it for my officers. And I wanted it for my recruits. The Marine Corps had treated me well, and I knew that strong, capable women could only help the service. I found the Marine Corps accidentally after a Navy recruiter rejected me for my math SAT scores, but I was attracted to the Corps from the beginning because I felt that it was a place for me to make my mark. From the start, I knew the Marine Corps was the smallest, most elite branch of the military, with the fewest women and the highest standards. I had always had high expectations for myself, so this resonated with me in a way no other profession or organization had. Plus, without the Marine Corps, I would never have met my husband, Joe. He has saved my life on more than one occasion, including on Parris Island. Over the years, my feelings of affection and loyalty to the Corps increased because it was the one place where I felt I could make a difference. It was where I wanted to believe I belonged. Ultimately, I loved how much I learned with every new mission, and I expected to learn just as much on this tour of duty. I had already established some goals for myself, and some of them were direct results of being a woman. Although some of my challenges may have been enhanced by my wholehearted Marine-ness, I don't think they are far off from what women who haven't served in the military also face. (Before any non-military readers get too far, I suggest you take a look at "Marine-Speak 101," at the back of the book, for an understanding of how Parris Island is structured, and a basic primer on "Marine-Speak.") In my previous command, I had pushed to make good changes for Marines--to make sure they had more time off and less stressful jobs. I wanted to see fewer divorces, fewer drunk-driving cases, and fewer suicide attempts. But to do that, I shoved my curvier peg into the Marines' extraordinarily square hole. I cursed. I yelled. I was extremely strict. Even though we were able to reach our goals and life got better, a lot of the Marines didn't like me much. I constantly fought not to be "other," by acting the way the male Marines acted; but because I was the only female commanding officer, I was never part of the group. And the things I did to fit in? The yelling and cursing? They only made me stick out worse. Even in the Marine Corps, those are not the traits expected of a woman--unless that woman is "mean" or "a bitch." Worse, none of those attributes matched my personal leadership style. So, as I took charge of women's boot camp for the Marine Corps, overseeing some of the world's fiercest drill instructors, I decided to be true to myself. I thought, "How awesome would it be to leave a command at the end of my tour as commanding officer and not have any regrets like, 'Maybe I shouldn't have said this?' or 'Maybe I shouldn't have yelled about that?'" I had served eighteen years in the military, including stints at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center on Twentynine Palms in California and a tour in Iraq, but I had never planned to stay in more than twenty years. My husband, Joe, and I had an agreement that we would launch second careers, and that agreement had allowed me to push hard to Marine Corps standards without worrying about the politics that career service members play to so they can make rank. But even with the yelling, I had always received excellent reviews. I was seen as a straight-shooting go-getter who could get things done. I went to Parris Island thinking, "This is my redemption tour. I'm going to retire after twenty years in the Marine Corps, and this tour is going to allow me to feel good about leaving the service." We all see how that worked out. To say it was a tumultuous year would be like calling the Titanic disaster a "bad day at sea." But despite the significant obstacles I faced, I never lost sight of the feelings of absolute pride I felt in my Marines at Fourth Battalion as they proved women recruits could, in fact and obviously, perform better if they were simply expected to shoot well and run faster. But no matter how we worked to overcome decades of apathy and low standards for performance within my battalion, there were men at the highest levels of command on the recruit depot who expected--even wanted--the women to fail because they didn't want to see women fully integrated into the Corps. And there were women who fell so fully in line with the status quo that it never occurred to them to see what the female recruits could achieve. My job was to oversee a battalion of fourteen officers, one hundred drill instructors, and 3,200 recruits. Parris Island is the only place in the Marine Corps where female Marines are made, and I wanted to ensure that every day of their thirteen weeks of training counted, so they could graduate faster, smarter, tougher, and better shots. But on Parris Island, the women trained separately from the men--which is different from the other services, where men and women train alongside each other. The women at Parris Island train separately simply because of an outdated study suggesting they would perform better that way. That proved to be incorrect in so many ways, but it also proved to be my downfall, along with a history of neglect, no support from my local leadership, and Pentagon-level bosses who saw better statistics as a step closer toward women joining infantry units. They wanted women to serve only in support roles. Going in, I knew that working only with women would be a challenge. Before I arrived at Parris Island, my predecessor warned me, "They're either baking you cupcakes or on your couch in tears." In hindsight, I see that her comment summed it up perfectly and encapsulated the perception of the battalion throughout the depot and the Marine Corps. Everyone had the expectation that Fourth Battalion, my battalion, was incapable. It could achieve enough to get by, but there was not an established tradition of excellence--a stated need to be better and best. Because it was an all-female unit, even the regimental sergeant major called Fourth Battalion the "Fourth Dimension." In other words, it operated in a different world with different expectations from the male recruit battalions. There was always an undercurrent of women being too emotional and cruel--to each other and to the recruits--and, because the expectation existed, that's how some of the women behaved. They shouldn't have. They were strong and capable. I started doing turnover with my predecessor in February 2014 by phone and email, and then I went to visit the battalion in April, before starting in June. During turnover, you learn the ropes of the new position and gain some of the cultural background of a new place. My predecessor could tell me where there might be problems, as well as point out on whom I could rely. That's when she told me the duty was either tears or cupcakes.The problems went deeper than that. Female drill instructors were sleeping with female recruits, and with each other. Drill instructors abused the recruits. Drill instructors abused other drill instructors. In my battalion, I would have to work through inappropriate sexual relationships, screaming as an accepted form of communication, and even fistfights. There were hazing investigations going on in April and a court-martial case later that month. A court-martial is when a military court is called upon to enforce military law. The issues with drill instructors sleeping with recruits were being brushed under the rug. A lot of the issues with recruits being abused? Those were being brushed under the rug, too. It was a big rug. I had to get everyone focused on good order and discipline, and then deal with the gender-related issues. It turned out the two areas of focus were intimately connected. When I finally arrived to take over command at Parris Island in June 2014, I thought, as I always do, "How am I going to make it better?" But as I dug into performance statistics to see how to do that, even obvious improvements met with sometimes violent resistance. We found that women hadn't performed better than men in essentially any category since the records had been kept. That included weapons qualification rates, academic performance, injury rates, and even how well women marched. Gender differences shouldn't have played into academics or marching, so I struggled, at first, to understand why the women would perform worse in those areas. But I also figured that if we could boost up all the numbers, we'd be making the Marine Corps look better, and everybody would be happy. I was naive. The abusive drill instructors didn't want to change, because they felt that new recruits--and new drill instructors--should have to pay their dues, just as they had. They also did not want to be held accountable for bad behavior. The enlisted Marines--the drill instructors--had run the show for so many years that officers--the Marines in charge of the drill instructors--essentially had nothing to do. This was bad for two reasons: They had no control. And they rebelled hard when forced to take control, because it meant more work. My boss didn't want change, because he didn't want to rock the boat. On top of all of that, the culture within Fourth Battalion was often petty and mean, riddled with rumors and false claims. This was reinforced by leadership that encouraged gossip and arbitrarily enforced Marine Corps standards. This led to a miserable climate within the battalion, but it also reinforced the idea within the male battalions that women could not operate without "drama." I was walking into a minefield, but because I had never encountered anything like it, I went in blind. I needed to hold my officers and drill instructors accountable; I needed to reorganize my staff to reward excellence and remove abuse; and I needed to help my Marines and their recruits understand that they were capable of meeting much higher standards. But without senior leadership that supported those changes, the task would impossible. During my first month in South Carolina, my boss invited me to talk about my goals, as well as to give me a rundown of his command philosophy. The colonel didn't seem too interested in what I had to say, but I wrote down the words he emphasized: "I prize harmony among my staff members above all else." In other words, he didn't want to deal with any turbulence. He just wanted everyone to get along. That stuck with me. The same month, I had my first conversation with Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds, who was, at the time, the commanding general of the depot. She was the first woman to fill that position. I wrote down what she said, too: "Go with your gut, and never back down if you think something is right." They gave me two perspectives completely at odds regarding how I should go into this command tour. If I had chosen the first, there would be no story to tell. Excerpted from Fight Like a Girl: The Truth Behind How Female Marines Are Trained by Kate Germano All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.