Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said that women should be actively deployed for military combat if they “meet the standards.”
“Women have been in combat, and it doesn’t matter if that 762 hits you in the chest, no one gives a sh– if it’s a woman or guy who pulled the trigger,” he said during the National Security Innovation Forum on Wednesday.
“If you meet the standards, our military must be and always should be a standard-based merit-based military, period, full stop. Doesn’t matter if you are white, black, a man, a woman, Catholic, Protestant,” he added.
“What matters are standards, readiness standards. Do you meet the standard or not. If yes, pass go, collect 200, join the infantry.”
In recent weeks, leaders have pushed back on Pete Hegseth’s comments about women in combat after he received President-elect Trump’s nomination to lead the Department of Defense.
“I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast less than two weeks ago.
In response to those remarks, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) fired back by asking, “Where do you think I lost my legs?”
“We can’t go to war today without our women military members,” she later stated during the CNN appearance, crediting over 225,000 active-duty women serving in the military.
Some Senate Republicans have remained optimistic about Hegseth’s appointment while others have questioned how he will fare presiding over a trillion-dollar budget with lack of experience.
