Posted on 05/12/2016 7:32:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
The article was written just to get that response. The article wanted readers to come to the conclusion these women had served in the military during World War II and were not recognized or treated properly just because they are women.
The truth that they were not in the military but were contractors and that was the reason for them not being eligible for military benefits all these years. Gasp...it wasn't because they are women! Exceptions had to be made to give them what they have received.
Actually it looks like these women are getting recognition and benefits that other contractors for the military in World War II have not received.
On the WASP website, they specifically state (and I have seen in said in a few other places as well) that WASPS were not allowed to fly Overseas at all, didn't specify combat or non-combat, just not overseas.
Even Jackie Cochrane, the head of the WASPS was not allowed to do so in her official role, although she did fly one airplane across the Atlantic in WWII:
(From the Dwight D. EisenhowerPresidential Library Archives) "...By 1941 Jacqueline Cochran was one of the most famous women pilots in the United States. Keenly aware of the Nazi threat to Europe, she approached the U.S. Army Air Corps and suggested the possibility of using women as ferry pilots in wartime. When her initial proposals were turned down she went to England (becoming in the process the only woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic in World War II) and volunteered her services to the Royal Air Force. For several months she worked for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), a branch of the Royal Air Force. Her work involved recruiting qualified women pilots in the United States and taking them to England where they joined the ATA...
You need to brush up on your facts if you are going to try a pro-Obama/pro-Democrat Spin:
Female WWII Pilots Barred From Arlington National Cemetery
01/01/2016 03:55 pm ET | Updated Jan 04, 2016
Matthew Barakat
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/female-wwii-pilots-arlington_us_5686e6b8e4b06fa688827ba1
“Women Airforce Service Pilots, that flew noncombat missions to free up male pilots for combat. Granted veteran status in 1977, the WASPs have been eligible to have their ashes placed at Arlington with military honors since 2002.
But earlier this year, then-Secretary of the Army John McHugh reversed course and ruled WASPs ineligible.
See also:
Women WWII Pilots Denied Final Rest at Arlington National Cemetery
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/01/women-wwii-pilots-barred-from-arlington-national-cemetery.html
“Kate Landdeck, a Texas Woman’s University history professor who has focused much of her academic research on WASPs, said she doesn’t understand the rationale for the Army going out of its way to exclude this group of women from Arlington after they had been deemed eligible for over a decade without controversy.”
And if you notice, the “rectification” came from the Republicans, not the democrats. Thus, the democrats make war on women, and the republicans defend women.
There is no war on women.
You’re full of crap about me trying to spin anything pro-Obama. Don’t try that kind of crap on m because you make yourself look stupid.
That is the point made many who see this as pandering.
These WASPS who ferried planes in the USA were not veterans. They were contractors as well. They operated at the direction of the Army, in much the same way Halliburton operated at the direction of the military in the Gulf War.
Are people who worked as cooks or other people who set up facilities in Iraq or Afghanistan eligible to be buried in Arlington? (I don't believe they are) It is fair to say, with the environment of IED threats, etc. that those Halliburton employees were in as much or comparable danger than a woman ferrying a B-24 from Willow Run to California.
As for the 38 fatalities suffered by WASPS during the war, I would ask why they should be treated as veterans? According to government sources, more than 75,000 Americans died or became permanently and totally disabled in industry during the war.
My rhetorical question is, why would WASPS be treated differently in this respect than a shipyard worker, and how is his death when he falls 100 feet to his death in a drydock any different than a woman whose plane crashed on takeoff after getting 100 feet off the ground.
Shouldn't he be granted veteran status too?
Is it because they flew war-like planes, and had parachutes on their backs? Why would they be any different than the Civil Air Patrol, whose members were probably in as much or more danger, flying planes that might have been antiquated, poorly maintained, looking for subs, and enemy activity on the coasts, or looking for crash survivors from military or ferried planes?
My father served on a destroyer in WWII, albeit during active war for only a month or so before the Japanese capitulation (which as the crew members of the USS Indianapolis know, sailing the Pacific in the late summer of 1945 was no guarantee of safety). Granted,he also served on a front line destroyer in Korea as well, but I am not sure he heard the sound of gunfire, apart from their own guns performing shore bombardment. As a 30 year veteran, he is buried at Arlington...should he be allowed to be buried there? (the rules that have been in place for decades say yes)
I admit that I see this move as pandering to women.
There were over 400,000 combatant and non-combatant military deaths in WWII, of which 400 were women. And then when one enters Arlington National Cemetery, the largest and most visible structure you see is not the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but the "Women in Military Service for America Memorial". That seems quite disproportionate to me, and more of an indication of political lobbying by active and vocal organizations than actual impact. But that is my personal opinion.
And I don't regard references to them as "heroes" with any seriousness any more than an NFL football player, a rock star, or a man who is crushed in a piece of industrial machinery manufacturing artillery shells should be referred to as a "hero". My dad was a hero to me, but not in the sense of the word as I see it used. I have heroes, but on a more personal level to me. (I fully recognize that many women view them as heroes, but that is also their personal opinion as well)
This has no level of disrespect to women, but is more towards the relative level of respect we should have for those who served and died in combat or in military service to their country.
I sincerely hope those of you who read this will not take this as a personal attack on you an institutional attack on women (though I suspect there may be some who will accuse me of both) but rather, the questions we should (or should have in the past before granting these women status as veterans) asked before taking action to declare them as such. I do believe it is a subject worthy of serious discussion.
That’s my point
I read an article about Arlington a week or so ago and it mentioned plans for expansion along its southern border. Would be great to do that.
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