Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
It was just a small news item on the blog site, but it had a big impact on me. It was reported that two female soldiers have filed suit against the Defense Department in an attempt to force the military to allow women soldiers to fight on the front lines along with men. They are alleging that women soldiers are being denied their Equal Protection rights under the Fifth Amendment by the military holding them back from fighting on the front lines in all military jobs.
“Two female soldiers filed a lawsuit yesterday charging that the military’s ban on women in combat is unconstitutional and violates their equal protection rights under the Fifth Amendment. Command Sergeant Major Jane Baldwin and Colonel Ellen Haring filed the suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, naming Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Secretary John McHugh among the defendants. ” MS. Magazine This news item really made me think. Are women really equal if the military shields them from some of the hazardous duties that men are required to complete? Are women able to fight in combat on an equal basis with their male counterparts?
The military brass in the Pentagon has recently allowed women into some of the previous male only job descriptions, but women are barred from over 200,000 positions in the military. “According to the Pentagon, women comprise 14.5 percent of active-duty military personnel. There are 238,000 positions in the military that bar women, according to Vee Penrod, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for military personnel” MS. Magazine It is hard to imagine that women are truly equal when that many jobs still ban women.
While the military has opened up thousands of positions to women, they are still far behind the men as suggested above. I understand the old argument that women are not as physically strong as men, but in this modern military, many jobs require more skill than brute strength. The type of jobs that these two reservists are trying to open up to women will also positively impact on their career advancement and future pensions.
‘ “The linear battlefield no longer exists,” the women said in the complaint, describing as “arbitrary and irrational” the combat restrictions for women. “Woman are currently engaged in direct combat, even when it is not part of their formally assigned role,” the reservists said. Furthermore, the Army has “deliberately circumvented”its own policies by “attaching” women to ground combat units. “There is no practical difference, in terms of the work that servicewomen do, between ‘assigning’ women to a ground combat unit and ‘attaching’ women to a ground combat unit,” the women said in the complaint. More than 200 women reported to brigade combat teams as of last week as the Army begins opening more than 13,000 positions to women that previously were restricted to men, General Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said at a May 16 Pentagon news conference. The case is Baldwin v. Panetta, 12-00832, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.” Bloomberg
On this Memorial Day, it is refreshing to see women soldiers attempting to bring equality into the military when it comes to female personnel. We tend to forget that women have been lost on the battlefield, just like their male counterparts. “At least 144 female troops have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and more than 860 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon. About 280,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars began.” Bloomberg
Isn’t it time for the military to utilize the many strengths and talents that female military members can bring to the front lines? Do you think the Pentagon should allow women on all the front line positions? If not, how are their rights not being violated? Is it a legal question or is it just something that “society” doesn’t want women to get involved in? How can society prevent women military personnel from being truly equal? What do you think?
On this Memorial Day, I want to honor all members of our military, past and present, male or female. Your sacrifices are truly appreciated!
Additional Sources: Huffington Post
CLH,
Excuse a personal question. Where did you and your noo-returning buddies serve?
To CLH, as a fellow veteran of the Vietnam era I agree with most of your post. I prefer to quote Col., David Hackworth on military tactics. He said, In combat if you get into a fair fight, YOUR TACTICS SUCK!
In regards to those who pointed out that the VC had an excellent woman sniper, that it true, but her difference got her killed. The US sniper who was tasked with killing her could not see which she was in the group she was with. So he waited to see if he could tell by other means which black clad body was hers. He saw her squat down to take a piss, and he knew which was the one he was after. She died because she stood out from the others. It is the same reason that officers get rid of rank markings and no saluting in combat.
The Soviets did have women combat pilots in WWII, but they had them in all female units which prevented many of the problems of a mixed man/woman force. I don’t know how good they were in air combat since the Soviets were flying less capable fighters, and in any case the Soviet Air Force operated under the direction of the Red Army and were used mostly in air/gorund combat.
The problem I have with women combat pilots is that while they can certainly fly as well as men and do that job, the combat pilot has other roles besides flying. First off, when the pilot hits the ground after being shot down, they become infantrymen if they land in friendly territory. They are expected to do that job until they are reunited with their unit. As a evader if in enemy ground, they have to become members of the resistance if there is one, as Yeager did in France. During his escape from France, he went over the Pyraneese mountains, and his companion was shot by the Germans. The shot took out his fellow airman’s knee, and Yeager had to carry him over the border in those mountains He put a tourniquet on his leg and left him by the side of a road in Spain. Most if not all women could not accomplish that feat.
Then recalling the Vietnam war where we had POWs who sat in prison for years. We would have had a LOT of problems since they most likely would have been raped, or had sex with some of their fellow POWs. So what happens with a pregnant POW? The Geneva Convention does not require birth control pills for POWs. If she were in a Muslim country and got pregnant, I can tell you the kid, if it was male would NOT be coming home with her. The US would have to do some pretty good negotiating to get the kid back if ever. So the question is then, will the increase in problems of having women in combat roles be justified by any comensurate increase in combat capablity? The whole point of the military is to fight and win wars, NOT to provide a good career and promotions for women.
ARE,
Not being an aviation knowledgeable reader I had to look up the SA227. Wiki reveals it to be a twin turboprop of 19 pax class. How can such a little plane require such
stremgth?
Of course, OS yesterday was into this matter of hydraulic assistance. Perhaps you could explain.
PS One crashed on approach quite spectacularly in vertical nosedive due to icing at Bromma airport in Stockholm. It lost public support and is now replaced by a BA product.
Excellent post and as you pointed out…. Without the ability to equally compete… The cost to the careers is enormous……
I am troubled by the fact that these women did not seek to overturn the different physical standards for men and women. If they accept the preference of easier, less demanding standards, they cannot rightly complain about discrimination. While I am all for womens liberation and rights in most things, I also demand that they do the job the same as men.
I worked in a refinery for many years, and my incoming class was the first to have any women in it. The old way of recruiting workers into the refinery labor pool was to have the candidates go out and climb a 200′ fractionating tower in a set period of time. They had to get rid of that test because too few if any women could pass. I was all for women to be on the operating units, but again, almost all of them failed to do their jobs. On turn arounds the operators have to climb those towers to open valves on top, and so all the men got to do that job, while the women stayed on the ground and watched. So the men got to do the hard work of the women, and had to do our jobs as well, yet they were paid the same as us while they did not do the work.
As chief pilot for a cargo airline flying the SA 227, I can tell you that I will not hire a woman pilot since that is one of the few aircraft that demands real upper body strength. Even I have a very hard time handling the plane in some situations, and I am 6’5″ 250#. I know of some incidents where a woman in the right seat would have caused a malfunctioning plane to crash since the situation required the full strength of two men. When I was starting out flying professionally, I was flying cargo, and we had a woman get typed in the SA 227, and she was in IOE training before she hit the line on her own. One dark and stormy night when I was flying back to CVG in a BE-99, I was getting my butt kicked by the weather and storms all over. I heard this woman, and fortunately she had a training captain in the right seat, she was stressed out and after she got on the ground, she told her check airman, she was NOT going to fly the plane ever again since she could not handle it in such weather. We were flying that plane single pilot too. So the company spent over $12,500 to train her, and lost all that money.
So yes there are plenty of jobs that women should be excluded from for good reasons. I think it should be evaluated on a rational basis, NOT by ideological ones.
Obscure! The NYTimes calls it a “stunt”, this simultaneous filiing of several suits in several dioceses in several courts. Yes or no can be discuessed also.
However, the word stunt implies disrespect for our legal system. Are they using the courts properly? Is it illegal to use the courts as a platform to make political or relegious points? Hope that’s better.
Here’s an OTOTOT notice for all RCCs and contraception folks. From NYTimes OP ED.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/opinion/the-politics-of-religion.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120528
The legal point, when is it relevant as to misuse of legal recourse?
For some reason, the photograph accompanying this article reminds me of President George W. Bush — multiplied by four — modeling his very own, way-cool “top gun” flight suit on the deck of the U. S. S. Abraham Lincoln. Without an adversary air force to fight anywhere in the middle east or Africa, gunning down third-world peasants from the air must seem terribly romantic. Why not let women join in all the fun? Seems only fair.
Of course, robot drones will do most of America’s fighting from now on, but it doesn’t make for such good recruiting visuals to show four women soldiers in drab dungarees flying computer consoles in an air-conditioned trailer at Creech Air Force Base just outside Las Vegas. Good duty if you can get it, though.
MM-
33% of women in the Military raped? That number certainly seems disturbing, but I don’t buy it. I might agree that the prevalance of rape in the military could exceed the rate of occurence in the civilian sector, but I have seen no valid data suggesting this is the case. Your source is hardly unimpeachable, and while I won’t say it’s flat out wrong, it is in my opinion a very biased source, and I would like to see better data, if you have it. (I’m not saying that you are wrong necessarily- I could be wrong myself, I usually am, I just don’t see the data, and you are not exactly the loudest cheerleader in the military fan club =b ) Rape of any kind is a crime that I have no mercy for, and if the convicted are indeed getting off so lightly, then sterner measures need to be put into place. Such as a firing squad. Soldiers must be held to a higher standard than the civilian population- these are people who are paid to take lives for a living. The ability to make wise and ethical decisions is a must for any military member who has the literal power of life or death in their hands, so the dicipline must be absolute and iron clad when it comes to something like that.
As to the rest of it… While I agree war is horrible, nasty, and ugly, and that combat is anything but glorious or honorable, anything taken to it’s extreme, even the view that war is inherently evil, becomes harmful
“Without an adversary air force to fight anywhere in the Middle East or Africa, gunning down third-world peasants from the air must seem terribly romantic. Why not let women join in all the fun? Seems only fair.”
While I am indeed sampling only a small part of your responses there, I believe it is representative of your arguments.First, I’ll point out that several countries in the Middle East and Africa have air forces. They suck, and they are woefully ill equipped to match western aircraft quantity, quality, and quality of pilots, but that doesn’t seem to stop them from using their own planes to bomb the crap out of their own people over politcal and religious differences. I doubt that most people, even pilots, view bombing as romantic. Flying, yes. Killing, no. Just a powerful, and sane, way to kill someone without giving them the opportunity to kill you back. Americans, since the days of the civil war, have been firmly wedded to the idea that it’s much better, not to mention more effective, to spend money, bullets, and resources than it is to spend American lives. (Inject Patton quote here) And while I’m sure you’ll slam my comment and my Rambo ways and my warmongering, I’ll forge ahead and say that I’m a big fan of the philosphy that a fair fight is only for fools. If I’m going to fight someone, I’m going to reach for the biggest stick I can find, and if the enemy can’t match that stick… great! Oh, and I’ll try and sucker punch them with it while I’m at it. And I’ll aim below the belt. And I’ll bring ten people to every one they have, if I can. And I will treat them with dignity and respect when the fight is over, to make friends of the former enemy if at all possible. (Personal philosophy, not necessarily the American one).
A miltary serves a valid purpose. War itself serves a valid purpose, when it is better to suffer death and mayhem than the loss of the most deeply held values and freedoms, and to protect those as cannot protect themselves. And guess what? War leads to abuses, every single time. It’s human nature. It’s going to happen. The violence does horrible things to people’s minds. I know. You know. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are what? They are kids who barely passed high school, come from the lower end of the income spectrum, and are usually left with few options. Broken families, poverty, and violence are the norm they grow up with. Why then do they volunteer for the war? Why do they volunteer for a job that really, really sucks? Well, because it pays well. And it offers a venue for college. And it offers a path to citizenship. And it offers a chance to do something that might actually mean something. I don’t know what you do for a living, or what you’ve done in the past as a veteran or as an advocate against war. You may very well feel that you’ve been able to accomplish something, and you indeed probably have. For so many born in poverty, the only way out seems to be through the military for so many of our youth, and the desire to serve does not make someone inherently evil, even when it comes to violence, and the desire to serve alongside men does not make women evil, It makes them heroes.
I will not claim that the US is using its military justly, or correctly. I will not claim that the invasioni of Iraq was anything other than sheer folly at best, and criminal (more likely) at worst. I won’t claim that soldiers are saints. Frankly, I think saints would make some horrible soldierss. Useless even. But seriously? Soldiers are, even when engaged in a war that is not exactly popular, servants of the people, who sacrifice in pursuit of the idea that freedom actually means something, and needs to be defended. If you want to rail and march against the government tools of big corporations and special interests who promote conflict for purely political and economic greed, I’ll rail and march right next to you. It’s a civilian controlled military when all is said and done. Don’t hate the people, or women, who want to serve, and who want to serve well, and who want to survive their service, and who want to protect their freedoms and ideals, even if you don’t agree with them. Hate the people of America who vote idiots into office in the first place. Promote politcal education and critical thinking to reduce the impact of propaganda. Hold elected officials accountable. Fry those soldiers who do commit war crimes, and rape.
Ok, I just realized my rant went on for a bit. I’m still up from the previous night, and I’m drunk, and I’m all depressed over a few of my friends who didn’t make it back with me. Stupid Memorial Day. I’ll end my comments to this thread here, and wish yall a fun BBQ and beer day =b
From the photos of Abu Ghraib prison, one can see that female troops often conduct themselves as disgracefully as their male counterparts. I haven’t seen any photos of women troops urinating on Afghan corpses or posing with body-part trophies yet, but I have no doubt that such evidence exists — or will, the longer women participate in the ultimate human degradation, war.
And, of course, women in front-line units always face this sort of behavior:
1/3rd of Women in US Military Raped.
The poverty and ugliness and brutality of military life usually don’t make it onto the recruiting posters. The reality of it all comes later — when you have to use the shower or latrine at night.
The word “ladies” in the headline sort of defeats the general thrust of the article. Not the thing to strike terror into the hearts of America’s enemies. “Amazons” might have worked better.
Captain Kim N. Campbell’s DFC citation at the link.
http://dfcsociety.net/?page_id=699
The A-10 flight control system is redundant. It can be flown without hydraulic boost, which is the airplane equivalent of power steering. It has the same kind of pulleys and cables to the control surfaces as any Cessna at your local airport. Although a jet, the flight performance envelope of the A-10 is similar to that of the P-47 Thunderbolt, its WW-II predecessor. It has also been compared to the P-51 Mustang, another fighter without boosted controls. It is not quite as hard as it might look at first glance. With hydraulic boost, you can think of the handling as more like a sports car. Without it, a heavy SUV or truck. The A-10 is subsonic so control pressures are relatively light, but bigger faster jets have control pressures so heavy they are almost impossible to control without fly-by-wire.
Lori Piestewa and Jessica Lynch show the truth that women assigned to the rear are often fighting as much as anyone in our modern wars.
Strange, I was trying to find video of Kim “Killer Chick” Campbell, famous for being an A-10 pilot that took heavy fire in Iraq and flew her aircraft for an hour in manual mode (Gene this would be like your dad taking the training wheels off your tricycle if you can remember back that far to 2005). She won a DFC for that.
Anyway, the video seems to have left the Internet.
Oohh- I get to talk about something I actually know a little bit about! Yay!
Absolutley women should be allowed the same roles as men. God knows some of the best marks”men” I know are women, the toughest person I’ve ever met in my life is a woman, and “strength” in soldiers is far more a thing of conditioning, reflexes, intelligence, emotional stability, good and timely decisions made under pressure, and speed than it is about how much mass you can move. Hell, the most terrifying unit the Russians ever fielded in WWII was the all women tank brigade. The Germans were terrified of those ladies. Even the “GI Jane” question of whether or not you can move a 220lb man with one arm in an emergency situation doesn’t really apply- first, you’re not going to be alone to try and move that person- second, they have these handy dandy little rover stretchers that make it a moot point. And unless they’re thinking of doing something stupid, like an all female squad (upper body strength does have an occasional use, whether people like that or not), then diversification of tasks would easily compensate for that one (not very important) detriment. I don’t have the links handy (hint hint Elaine- do your stuff, I’m too lazy to) but I am aware of several studies showing that women tend to more than match men in several of these, if not most, areas. I am also for the removal of the differing phsyical training standards for men and women in the military. If men want to gripe and complain about “strength” being so important, make the standards equal. (Pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and run, minus the pull ups for the Navy). The differing standards are a detriment to women, if you take as a given that if one requires a different standard, then one has automatically assigned capability or a lack thereof without any rational basis.
Always surprised that more men don’t get behind these women.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/17/military-rape-reports-ris_n_176106.html
OS,
I forgot to say thanks for your kind words.
Great response OS. Tammy Duckworth is running for Congress here in Illinois now.
Excellent post Larry. Women have fought on the front lines for centuries, and are not the delicate creatures some military leadership would make them out to be. Unless it is a job that requires extra upper body strength, there is no reason a female cannot do it. One of the deadliest Viet Cong snipers in Vietnam was a woman. In ancient Ireland, Boudicca was a fearless and inspiring leader of her troops. Our own Tammy Duckworth lost her legs in Iraq when she was shot down, and now works for the VA doing advocacy work for our wounded warriors. In WW-II, women in some countries fought with men and a number of the best Soviet fighter pilots were women.
I do not approve of war, because young people die and are maimed because of the failures of old men. But when it is time for a war to be fought, I don’t care if the person who has my six is male or female, or what color their skin is, as long as they are good at their job. My youngest daughter is a sworn law enforcement officer, and is highly competent. She can also fly a plane. She ought to be able to do anything she wants, as long as she can do it well. She and I have had many discussions, mostly revolving whether, if deadly force is needed, can she actually fire at a threatening perpetrator. She is very tough and a good shot. If I were a bad guy, I would not want her to be sighting in on me.