Your Daughters in Combat

     I remember when the “Equal Rights Amendment” was first out in the early 1980’s and Alan Alda was running around promoting it by reading its very simple language implying that nothing is wrong with this benign statement.  It basically came down to this one sentence section:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

     This was a time in history just after the discontinuation of the military draft by the United States, which was led by the anti-war (Vietnam) movement. 

     They felt that minorities were unfairly affected by the draft system since fewer of them went to college and enjoyed a college deferment and fewer yet of them had the political influence that the left claimed white America enjoyed to avoid conscription. (although it didn’t seem to help me much)  Anyway it was a political football.

     This was in the political soup soon after the Bakke decision by the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) which bared “quota” systems in college admissions, referred to as “reverse discrimination.”  The case in question was related to the University of California’s policy of accepting Black (the term they used then) students into Medical School with a GPA of less than 2.5 while not accepting white students with averages that were often much higher than the 2.5.

     I realized from the Bakke case that as soon as the “Equal Rights Amendment” passed that the next time we had a shooting war of sufficient size that the “volunteer” don’t ask don’t tell army wouldn’t be adequate and that it would take one lower court level case of one draft resistor to force the conscription of women.  Of course idiots like Alan Alda went around wringing their hands sighing that such concern was ridiculous since there wasn’t a draft for men even, much less women.  What an idiot.  He didn’t have the acumen to project what every level headed person could figure out which was that the next “big one” would expose women to the draft with this amendment.  It will only take that one case to strike down any gender preferences and such strike down would carry equal weight as to job type, meaning combat.

     Do you want you daughters in Combat?  If so you want to vote for Barack Obama.  Obama has come out in favor, skipping the dicey game of the Court System (if there were an equal rights amendment) moving directly to his recommendation that the law be changed to require women to sign up for the stand-by draft like all males must do today upon turning the age 18.  Check out this news article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: 

Candidates differ on female draft

     Monday, October 13, 2008By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.     Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft.     But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn’t think women should have to register.

     Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.

     “Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should be updated to reflect realities on the ground,” said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama’s national security spokeswoman. “Barack Obama would consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain.”

     According to his campaign, Mr. McCain supports the current Department of Defense restrictions on women in combat units, including armor, field artillery and special forces.

     In 1980, President Jimmy Carter revived the Selective Service system, which compiles a list of nearly all men in the U.S. between 18 and 25 in case a crisis forces the government to undertake a massive expansion of the military.

     Both Congress and the Supreme Court have exempted women from registration because of the combat rules.

     For years, that position has rankled some women’s rights groups and men who face penalties for not registering — including loss of employment with the federal government — at a time when female soldiers regularly find themselves in dangerous situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, both conflicts without defined battlefields.

     Mr. McCain, a decorated former Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, speaks often of how his military service has helped prepare him for the role of commander in chief and how his time as a captive in Hanoi reinforced his love of country.

     Yet he doesn’t want to see a return to mandatory service, for men or women, according to his presidential campaign.     “Sen. McCain strongly believes that an all-volunteer force is preferable to a conscripted force,” said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the campaign. “The tools available to recruiters have historically enabled the all-volunteer force to attract sufficient numbers of qualified recruits.”     His views are echoed by many high-ranking officers in the military, who prefer a force of motivated volunteers. But some of the same officers have also expressed concerns about the strains of more than six years of sustained combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially if the U.S. commitment in both countries doesn’t end in the near future.

     Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that he will draw down the U.S. military presence in Iraq if he becomes president, but he has also said he would increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, where Taliban forces have seen a resurgence in recent years.

     During a CNN/YouTube debate for Democratic presidential candidates last year, he said he doesn’t “agree” with the draft.

     But he did say women should be expected to register with the Selective Service, comparing the role of women to black soldiers and airmen who served during World War II, when the armed forces were still segregated.     “There was a time when African-Americans weren’t allowed to serve in combat,” Mr. Obama said. “And yet, when they did, not only did they perform brilliantly, but what also happened is they helped to change America, and they helped to underscore that we’re equal.     “And I think that if women are registered for service — not necessarily in combat roles, and I don’t agree with the draft — I think it will help to send a message to my two daughters that they’ve got obligations to this great country as well as boys do.”

     Elaine Donnelly, a former member of President Bill Clinton’s Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, dismissed Mr. Obama’s comparison of the roles of women and black soldiers, arguing that males and females, in general, aren’t equal on the battlefield.

     “There are differences between men and women where physical strength is an issue,” said Ms. Donnelly, who heads the nonpartisan Center for Military Readiness. “There are a lot of civilian feminists who are making unreasonable demands on the military.”

     Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, argues that women should have a chance to compete for any position in the armed forces.     “I hope a new president will revisit the restrictions,” she said.

October 13, 2008 | Filed Under American Left, Political Correctness, Presidential Politics 

comments

9 Responses to “Your Daughters in Combat”

  1. the Grit on October 13th, 2008

    Hi Steve,

    I’m thinking that, as the Government has demonstrated through the tax code, it’s perfectly alright to discriminate between people based on their income, we should draft all the “poor” into civil service and put them to work, at low pay - but with free food, housing, and medical care - in positions that would displace the over paid, and under performing, civil servants that currently swell our national budget. Really, it’s obvious that the only meaningful job requirement for most low level Federal clerical jobs is a bad attitude, now literacy, so why not do a good deed for the less privileged by kicking the union workers to the street and giving their jobs to the previously disenfranchised poor?

    For that matter, what the heck, why not expand this program to Congress? Truly, could we be worse off having previously poor people doing the bidding of lobbyists than the lot we’ve gone to the expense of electing? These days, I don’t see the difference.

    the Grit

    Hi Grit………now that is a good idea about Congress. And I am still having problems linking to your site from my computer or entering the URL in my address bar and getting there. As I said before, I can link to your old site……….steve

  2. plodon on October 14th, 2008

    Interesting points in this post mix. American women are, for the first time, going into direct ground combat (look into the Lioness temporary/theater units to see what that’s all about). I say register females for service in non-combat roles (except for some which, imo, should change, like armor). What we should not do is to make these decisions on a pc social-engineering basis. We can make changes, but let’s not force them to satisfy a social agenda (Fannie mae/Freddie mac, anyone?). We are not in desperate need (like the Russians in ww2). On the issue of women in combat, there is probably a lot to be learned from the Israelis experiences, past and present, in this area.

    Hi Plodon………….I am not ready for women in combat and I wasn’t in the early 80’s when this so moderate “Equal Rights Ammendment” was circulating around for ratification. I don’t believe that you could have such an amendment nor a law as Obama wants and insulate women from the same exposure in war as men. If I am not making sense here, we need to support women for the NFL as well………….steve

  3. Virginia Harris on October 14th, 2008

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    Hi Virginia………I suppose. Don’t know what your point is relative to my point, but right on! We’re all for women having the vote. I don’t know if you are confusing womens rights with Combat Duty or if you are just droping a note of promotion. Anyway………don’t make the mistake on the first point and promote all you like on the second point………..steve

  4. plodon on October 19th, 2008

    Hmm. How about women being all required to register for the draft, but only screened female volunteers let into combat units? a) it seems a shame to me for our country not to take advantage of a huge pool of female…er…manpower (there are lots of jobs in the military they could make a contribution in other than combat-oriented ones - I think I read that in WWI the Army was 90% fighters [infantry and such] and 10% support, and now it’s the opposite as it’s been found out that more support increases the combat effectiveness of the fighters a lot). b) As Technologies make physical strength differences between men and women of less importance on the battlefield, I think we’re gonna see women in combat, anyway. It seems to me it would be to our advantage to figure out how we’re gonna go about getting the maximum benefit out of it now.

    I once talked to a guy who had a gal come into his Army recruiting station and tell him she wanted to join the US Army, but only as a tanker. She had been in tanks in the Israeli Army, but he had to turn her away because of the no-females-in-combat thing. So, our country lost a combat-experienced asset there, and imo, we’re passing up good homegrown people, too. Now, I don’t think we can have females in some things like Infantry or Special Forces yet. Those kind of jobs still require carrying heavy loads over long distances and other things where physical strength is a factor. However, there are combat jobs females can do no problem.
    I guess this issue kinda interests me. :) Of the Army units I was in, none allowed females except for one (a reserve Psychological Operations unit I was in at the end of my association with America’s green team). Frankly, it was kind of weird at first, I wondered if they’d really pull their weight. As I worked with the female members, however, my confidence in them grew quickly. It wasn’t long before you didn’t even think about their gender. I would’ve gone running around badguyland with ‘em, no problem. As one of the female soldiers from a Lioness team in Iraq said: “When you go outside the wire, the enemy doesn’t care what gender you are”. Granted, I never went into combat with females on my team, but I would have.

    Ok - Warren Buffet is interestin’ and all - but we’re talkin’ chicks with guns here! :)

    Hi Plodon………this is a difficult subject. I believe that your idea to have both male & female register for the draft but only allow men to go into combat is fraught with risks. I don’t believe in this day and age and in this litigious society that it would be very far into a “shooting war” on a large scale where some lemming draft resistor will find some willing accomplice in the legal profession to bring a suit against the United States citing unequal treatment under the law, and I believe they would unquestionably win that battle. The result would be women in combat (ipso facto).

    You mention some issues related to the technology and the narrowing of the distinction between the capacity of men and the capacity of women to perform a combat role. I still don’t believe that there would not be an impairment in a fighting unit that was “compromised” with women. After all we still don’t allow women to compete in the men’s PGA even though there is not a direct issue of individual contact like football would suggest. If they used the ladies tees presumably all would be equal, but we really know it is not.

    You may recall that Charlie Rangle (Democrat from Harlem) brought action in the current Iraq war to activate the Draft. His objective was not to activate the Draft but to use that issue to gather support against the war. I think those on the left such as Barack Obama support the conscription of women along with men as a buttress to cause Americans to be less likely to us force to protect our national interest. When the enemy becomes aware of this, this will lead to them taking greater risks in probing our weakness and this increases the possibility of armed conflict. I know that countries like Israel have women in the military on a mandatory basis, but I believe they are a different situation than us. I think our National Interest could be seriously compromised with the use of women in Combat from many different angles overt and subtle……….steve

  5. Roxeanne de Luca on October 21st, 2008

    Hi Steve,

    (Signing in under my new nom de plume here….)

    My womanly opinion on all this: I’m all for women in engineering, sciences, political office, etc… what I am not for is women in combat. Perhaps there is some better reason for it, but, for me, it comes down to a very simple issue: women who are captured can be raped. No amount of technology, strength training, exceptional women, or the like can change the fact that female captives are (routinely) faced with rape, whereas male captives almost never are.

    A few years ago, a British ship was captured in the Middle East. Fourteen (IIRC) male soldiers ignored their captors’ threats; one female capitulated and sent pleas back to England for help. Now, some misogynists will say that this is because women are weak, but it turns out that her captors threatened to rape her if she did not comply.

    Beat me up, maim me, torture me, but don’t rape me, because that is the thing that will make me wish I were dead.

    Rape is a routine war crime because it is so easy for the perpetrator and so horrific for the victims and the people around her.

    On a side note, I want to know why I haven’t heard about this. Why aren’t the PUMAs all over this? Why aren’t the feminists out in full force, adding this to the list of reasons to vote for Barack, or, absent that, criticising The One for it?

    Roxeanne :) ……. Wow you make a good point that I haven’t considered directly. I have considered it indirectly from the perspective that the close association of Males and Females in a combat environment could (and in my opinion would) alter the response that males would make in association with women. I generally think this alteration would be negative as to the combat role. I realize I am not being clear here, but I get the idea that there would be a lowering of morale and “esprit de corps” in this situation and some of that could result in abusive situations as well as overly accommodative situations. In short I believe that this would not be good for the fabric of the country nor the capacity to fight and win wars. During WWII and in my case Vietnam we had a WAC (Women’s Army Corps) but that was eliminated due to the emphasis on not “discriminating” against women and the concept of the WAC became another victim to political correctness. This was all part of the gravitation towards women in combat. I do not believe that in the degree with men that women can be as reliable as men in full out combat and thus may impair the mission (sorry here, I know I’m going to be subject to criticism here by those that haven’t been in a war………I also know that women have done a good job in Iraq, but battle is not their direct assignment). I’m not ready to send women to war and I feel that our doing so will affect the political process in determining the necessity to go to war. This is what the left wants out of the proposition, but if that is the reason we don’t go to war at some point it will almost always be a mistaken decision…………steve

  6. Roxeanne de Luca on October 21st, 2008

    Steve,

    Understood. From what little I understand, people in combat are trained to save the most number of soldiers possible and to not compromise their goals in the process. If the choice is between having three of your buddies go home dead, and ten of your buddies (and maybe you) go home dead, we can hope that soldiers would choose the former. It’s not an unrealistic hope, at least. If torture is involved, many men will just let the enemy beat up on all of them, with the “we’re all in this together” attitude. On the other hand, men may behave differently if the choice involves watching their female colleagues get raped.

    Not to disparage our soldiers, but there is also a very high incidence of sexual assault and pregnancy (unrelated, often) in the military. When you put young men and young women together, in a very intimate situation, for months at a time, you can just expect these things to happen. Hormones don’t stop working just because people are all PC. Also, stressed women who want to go home will often get pregnant (with the willing help of another soldier) to get leave.

    If women are drafted, we’ll see another baby boom.

    What really gets me is that the same people who say that sexuality is a normal and healthy part of the human nature, and that all teenagers have sex, are the same ones who act all shocked and appalled when women in combat get pregnant.

    So yes, I agree with you - crazy feminist that I am. Mostly, it’s because I recognise the difference between “equal” and “same.”

    Roxey ;) ………… Great points and I totally agree with this statement:

    So yes, I agree with you - crazy feminist that I am. Mostly, it’s because I recognise the difference between “equal” and “same.”

    So with an Obama election this is just another wonderful value that we can look forward too……… steve

  7. plodon on November 12th, 2008

    The article: “realities on the ground”.

    http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14642

    p.s. - Hope everyone had a reflective and thankful Veteran’s Day!

    plodon………….Glad you came by, that is a great article and very informative as to this alarming (in my mind) situation. Thanks for the contribution to this discussion………steve

  8. matt on November 12th, 2008

    plodon and steve

    interesting find. i hope that the right leaning press and blogs will give obama the chance to get in the white house and see what he does rather than speculate. he is in the uneviable task of cleaning up the mess that bush 43 left him. heck, at least clinton gave bush a budget surplus. our country is spiraling out of control. if he started to do something anyone would accuse him of stepping on bush and being disrespectful. let him get in the oval office first.

    if anything, he owes bush a big thankyou since bush lifted the homeland security ban until after the election for asylum violators. obama’s aunt could have been embarrassed further. it could have been a national security nightmare, but more of political gesturing. lets wait to see what “goodies” gw pulls in his final days. maybe he will rival clinton in the excess of executive power. or, maybe he will ride off into the sunset watching the neo-cons impale the party. regardless, i hope that the repubs use this as an opportuntiy to rediscover their roots of classical conservative philosophy, and put some compassion into the compassionate conservative he ran under in 2000

    Matt…….we are discussing the “change” that Obama has called “change you can believe in.” That would mean his assertions of altering the standby draft to include women and in combat isn’t a matter of speculation as to what he might do, hence we need to wait and see. It is something he has stated he wants. It doesn’t have anything to do with Republicans “giving him a chance.” Thus it is not hostile speculation, just like Republicans discussing Obama saying he will end the war would be hostile speculation.

    Also, the biggest part of this mess you say that Bush left Obama (financial crisis) has much more of Obama’s direct finger prints and exclusively the Dem’s in Congress blocking regulation of the Housing Mortgage industry as their associates in the DNC got rich running the agencies. It is unfair to say that Bush left the mess when he and McCain were the ones trying to regulate the issuance of bad loans.

    I’ve said before that I am for open markets, but the mortgage got bastardized not because of open markets, the left pejoratively called that “red lining” It is the force the Democrats put on the banking industry to make very very risky loans (unlikely to be repaid) that forced this out of the free market definition. This isn’t a failure of free markets it is the failure of social engineering that was forced on the financial industry by the Democrats. You were for Huckabee, he fully understands what went wrong here. I wrote of it in my CRA White Paper, HERE. The original test case on this was by ACORN and Obama (originally separately) against CitiBank (later granted an ACORN and Obama combined class action status in 1995) and settled with City in 1997 after the Democrats forced a reduction in loan standards for Freddie and Fannie “guarantee” so Citi would write loans to unqualified borrowers. Phil Gramm saw the problem starting to emerge in 1999 and attached a fix to the bill that was otherwise supported by both the Dem’s and Rep’s abolishing the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, but when the Senate passed Gramm’s version Clinton threatened to VETO the final bill if it included the regulation of Freddie and Fannie as to the CRA. Bush’s repeated warnings to the Congressional oversight committees was repeatedly shouted down by likes of Dodd, Frank and Waters. (yes it is the congress with the responsibility for oversight of the banking community, not the President). Matt, I think you really need to come to an understanding what actually happened here. Obama is more directly responsible himself in 1994-1997 than any or all Republicans. Re-read my paper and research his record on this……….steve

  9. matt on November 12th, 2008

    i am not denying that i liked huckabee. i still do for 2012. i did not like mccain and believe that if he would have acted like he did when he conceeded to obama over the whole election process, it might have changed my view of him.

    obama has his fingerprints on the legislation you say. your ability to dig into the facts and line them up is impressive. however, we dont know his motive, nor what went on behind the closed judicial doors. i highly doubt that he knew or could forsee how egregious people would take his original suit. i dont think he or bush is responsible for people living out of thier means.

    as far as bush giving him an opportunity to succeed, bush truely had a better gift from clinton than he is giving obama. that is not to say that bush is responsible for the mess, but it did happen under his reign. it is unfair that he will forever be linked to it independent of misplaced “ownership”.

    also, when we attacked iraq, he told everybody to spend and go to disneyland and other consumer pleas. i dont think that is great advice. it is dangerous and this is just one example of his poor leadership.

    i did re-read the paper and it goes to show how greedy people can take legislation that is not intended for elicit means and pervert it. i would bet my 401k that obama would not have done it in hindsight.
    like i said above, i dont think obama truely would have been able to predict how the finance and mortgage industry would take his legislation. his fingers are all over it and i would like a coherent explanation, not a free pass. your research is convincing.

    Matt, Matt, Matt………Nobody would have done it in hindsight, but it was with Foresight that Gramm, Bush and McCain tried to bring it to regulation because the amount of questionable loans on the Govt. guarantee were rising exponentionally. Of Course Obama didn’t do it out of bad will, but out of bad judgment and it is somewhat karmic that he has inherited this problem himself, but there are no Republican fingerprints on this particular one.

    Bush started the war yes, with support of a majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress. In hindsight I doubt he would have pursued the exact same course of action just like Obama on this Citi issue……..steve

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