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There has been a lot of talk lately on the news about letting women into combat in the military. Including the forces of Seals and Rangers.

I've read books on what Seal training is like and as I was reading about it I was thinking to myself I would not survive. I would wash out. Don't know if the physical would break me or the mental. At some point I would collapse and fail. Something like 80-87% wash out of Seal training. It's not the physical training alone it's brutal mentally. You either survive or you break. Most people break.

I have friends in the military. They really don't care much about gender, sexual orientation or that stuff. What they care about is can the individual do their job. If you are in combat you have to know that the person next to you will do their job and keep you and the unit alive. Seals have even tougher training. They train for a month or longer to do a certain objective. That objective is things like going after Osama bin Laden. They also train all the time for things that come up like saving the captain  of a tanker who was in a small boat with Somali hijackers. The Seals are the ones who were able to target and kill the hijackers on choppy seas. That's thousands of hours on a shooting range to be snipers.

On a talk show I heard pundits talking about the subject of women as Seals. One was saying "what about Serena Williams?" as an example of a woman who is in shape. The training has more to do with just being fit. She would probably be able to do the physical stuff. But would she be able to be immersed in cold sea water for long periods of time, sleep deprived, hungry, doing physical training? It is meant to break people and only the toughest ones survive. All the elite military forces are like that. Most people can't do the job. Which is why they are the elite forces. The ones who do impossible tasks in dangerous circumstances.

So what am I trying to say? Keep women out of combat? No. They serve in other armed forces all over the world. But to put someone who didn't make the cut in a Seal unit for diversity sake is wrong. They need to make the team like the few who survive training and become Seals. Male or female, they have to be able to do the job.