Do we want another Jessica Lynch?

You know, I saw the thread pop up in Latest Posts yesterday and read it without noting the date of the piece or early responses!

what is it exactly that you disagree with in my post 84?

I disagree with your point that the hoopla around Lynch has to do with her being female. (And no, I am not for women in combat.) It was because of the way they roused reporters out of bed for a special briefing to announce something and we all waited to see what it was and then they announced the details of the rescue and then the next day showed some footage.

It would have been the same, I know for a fact based on previous stories, if it had been a man. And none of it has to do with the early and almost immediately discreditied WaPo story. Nobody on this board, for example, carried forth with that tale as the basis for their excitement over her rescue---and it was a rescue---but some like to pretend that a bogus story was the reason behind the "Lynch myth".

There's too much ugly baseless gnashing of teeth and wailing over Lynch on these threads. It's pretty disgusting.

Since you asked I thought I'd answer. Not flaming you---I usually agree with you and like your posts.

You implied that the media only hypes female rescues. That is absolutely untrue. The O'Grady and Anderson rescues are proof that the media also reports extensively on male rescues.

If it would do any good, I'd get down on bended knee and seek forgiveness for not remembering who Anderson was/is. Beyond that, I'm still not sure what you are arguing. But, before I take it back to the point I was trying to make, ask yourself this question (no fair looking it up): What were the first and last names of the two Chief Warrant Officer Apache Pilots who were rescued about the same time, or, for that matter, the names of the other males who were released at about the same time?

My main point, although I acknowledge I didn't make it with my one-liners, was, not only should we, as a country, ask if women should be in combat, but should they be in the military in the first place? The distinction between the front and rear areas has been obliterated in theater. So, it goes without saying, if women are in the theater - they are in combat. In country = In combat. It follows, if we accept women in combat, we should accept male and female casualties equally.

I disagree with your point that the hoopla around Lynch has to do with her being female.

Please see my comment to #3Fan above. Oh, and thanks for the compliment.

This is a complicated and emotional issue. If it weren't, these subject thread wouldn't get the heat they do.

If it would do any good, I'd get down on bended knee and seek forgiveness for not remembering who Anderson was/is.

I could see no way that someone politically aware could not know who Anderson was. He was our most famous hostage and dominated Middle East news for years. But since he wasn't military and his story was from 20 years ago maybe those premises caused you not to remember so if I wrongly accused you of jerking me around over Anderson, sorry about that. But you had to know who O'Grady was, that was just a few years ago!

Beyond that, I'm still not sure what you are arguing. But, before I take it back to the point I was trying to make, ask yourself this question (no fair looking it up): What were the first and last names of the two Chief Warrant Officer Apache Pilots who were rescued about the same time, or, for that matter, the names of the other males who were released at about the same time?

I don't know and it doesn't matter that I don't know because I said all along that it is lone rescuees that we remember. I can't click off all the names of the hostages from the Iranian hostage crisis either. Lynch was a lone rescuee for ten days during a period of the war where everyone was paying close attention, a soldier we assumed was in great peril and so we remember her. We got to know her in those ten days, just as we got to know Anderson and O'Grady.

My main point, although I acknowledge I didn't make it with my one-liners, was, not only should we, as a country, ask if women should be in combat, but should they be in the military in the first place? The distinction between the front and rear areas has been obliterated in theater. So, it goes without saying, if women are in the theater - they are in combat. In country = In combat. It follows, if we accept women in combat, we should accept male and female casualties equally.

Although I'm not interested in arguing about that, I think women make our military a better military because the more volunteers we have the more lives are saved. As long as they are not in the infantry and as long as they are given statistics to show the odds being raped and what-not I think it is up to women to decide for themselves, it's a free country. Contrary to what everyone claims women have always taken casualties in support of our armies in close proximity to battlefields as nurses, etc. I don't see a difference between a female causualty while being a nurse or maintaining a Patriot battery. More women died in the twin towers than have died serving in military operations so really if your standard is "where are women safest", they're not even safe in the domestic workplace in this modern type of warfare, let alone supporting our front-line troops in foreign lands.

Believe it or not, without looking it up I can recall the names of CWOs David Williams and Ronald Young. After Jessica Lynch, they are probably the best known Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans. They were interviewed together on 60 minutes 2 by Dan Rather, Williams was on the Letterman show, Young was one of People mags 25 most eligible bachelors and they were both the subject of a minor controversy when they told a reporter that they had been sent on a suicide mission on the day they were shot down and that they are planning to write a book about their experiences.

If you are saying that Jessica Lynch received the amount of attention that she did mainly because she is a woman, I disagree. If Jessica Lynch had been rescued with the other 5 POWs from her unit and the 2 chopper pilots, had walked out of the building they were held in like the others, had walked off the airplane at Ft. Bliss with the others and waved to the crowd like they did, would she have been singled out the way she was? If one of the other POWs from the 507th, say Spc. Joseph Hudson for example, had been severely injured, held seperately from the other POWs, rescued dramatically by Special Forces and kept in seclusion for months while he recovered, wouldn't he have had as much public interest in him as did Jessica Lynch? Maybe he would have had slightly less, but not much. The overarching factor in the fascination with Jessica Lynch was the circumstances of her captivity and rescue. Her gender may have been a factor, but a minor one.

Good job on your ability to recall those names. I'd say you are probably the exception rather than the rule in being able to do that.

You may be right that her gender played a minor role in the media's/public's attention to the story, but I don't think so. As I remember, even DOD may have been complicit in "jazzing up" the story in the name of PC.

Maybe we are making headway in this department. What would really convince me - as long as we are going to have women in the military - is when we change the Selective Service Law(s) to include 18-year-old women in mandatory registration.

Requiring females to register, hmm, I'd be interested in the reaction of feminists to that proposal, if it ever happens.

What happened to the Night Witches after WWII? Why did the Soviet Union decide to discontinue the use of women in combat positions?

They were demobilzed by November 1945.

Even during the war, however, the Soviets had replaced the female commander with a male commander as they felt the female commander had a lack of aptitude and felt that too much female "cat fighting" was going on.

The experiment was mandated by necessity at a time when every available pilot need to be utilized. However, as one historian of the unit wrote,.......

"At the same time, expecting something more of female pilots proved to be a tragic mistake. Flying a fighter in a dogfight required an outstanding stamina and strength and, truth be told, proved to be business the women were not supposed to do."