Posted on 04/06/2003 5:53:01 AM PDT by billorites
RAPE IS used by Saddam Hussein's regime as a weapon against his own people. Mothers and wives are sexually abused in front of their husbands and children as a means of torture and political suppression.
So how in good conscience can the U.S. government send American servicewomen so close to the front lines in Operation Iraqi Freedom?
Though military rules prevent females from serving in most combat positions, women are routinely closer to the front in this war than they have been in any other major conflict in U.S. history.
Already two enlisted women, Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 19, and Army Specialist Shoshana Johnson, 30, (USA), were captured by Iraqi troops. A third servicewoman, Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, has been listed as killed in action.
All three were members of a supply unit that took a wrong turn and wound up in the enemy's hands. The American public may never learn — and perhaps dignity dictates it has no right to know the details — whether these heroines of war were sexually abused by their Iraqi captors.
This much is already known: Saddam Hussein's regime rapes women for sport, and it sexually abused American servicewomen during Desert Storm in 1991. Gulf War veteran Rhonda Cornum testified that she was subjected to "sexual indecencies" just hours after her helicopter went down in 1991.
Sadly, this knowledge was not enough to prevent President Bill Clinton's defense secretary, Les Aspin, from liberalizing the rules on women in combat in 1994.
No longer was "inherent risk of capture" a good enough reason to keep servicewomen out of a combat zone, and the Defense Department's "risk rule," which kept non-combat servicewomen away from the front, was eliminated. Clinton and Aspin listened to the handful of militant feminists who complained that these measures patronized women and threatened their equality in the armed forces, instead of to the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, which recommended the opposite.
Had Clinton heeded the commission's advice, Johnson, a single mother who joined the Army and was serving as a cook, would likely have been deployed in Kuwait, where her family expected her to be, instead of in Iraq.
Lynch, the college-bound 19-year-old supply clerk who was rescued Tuesday, might not have had to risk her own death in a gallant attempt to avoid capture (and possibly Rhonda Cornum's fate) once her unit was overtaken.
Women who nobly join the military under the impression that they are going to "free a man to fight," as the World War II recruiting slogan promised, can easily find themselves in situations they never dreamed of — a reality that ought to sicken and enrage every American.
But unfortunately, there are those who would prefer that Americans feel no special measure of protectiveness for servicewomen over servicemen. Cornum, a career officer and a strong advocate for women in combat, clinically dismissed the sexual abuse visited on her; it was just part of being a soldier. In fact, she neglected to mention it for the first year after her tour in Iraq, while key decisions about women in combat were under consideration in Washington.
Other proponents of women in combat counter that male POWs can be sexually abused just as easily as women — ignoring that the commission found no evidence of that happening to male POWs, and that the kernel of terror and demoralization in female rape is the threat of forced impregnation.
In a POW situation that can theoretically last months or years, pregnancy by rape is a circumstance beyond a servicewoman's control.
Even if a woman willingly takes these risks to serve in combat, what effect does it have on her male counterparts, whose natural urge it is to defend her?
"When men know women are being subjected to pain and abuse, they react differently," explains Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness in Washington, D.C.
Donnelly also served on the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces and underwent POW training. A male soldier's protective reaction might be hard-wired by human evolution and at the same time admirably chivalrous. But it could also be detrimental to his unit's overall performance.
A nation learning of brutality against captured servicewomen risks losing its nerve to undertake justifiable and necessary military action. In order to steel the public's resolve, "We would have to desensitize the whole nation to violence against women," Donnelly says she learned while serving on the commission. "A step forward for 'women's rights,' or a step backwards for civilization?" she asks. Exactly the right question.
Bernadette Malone is the former editorial page editor.
I had forgotten this little bit of awful truth from the past. Les Aspin was a military hater from way back. He had no business being Secretary of Defense.
I think there are plenty of places in the military where women can serve admirably but a combat position is not among them.
2 posted on 04/06/2003 6:00 AM PDT by HankReardon
Major dittoes. I believe in equal pay for equal work - but the big exception is the equal work in the Military, or BTE, Police, FiremEN, etc. I know the Feminazzi's will come after us for this, but I honestly believe there are jobs that women are just not suited for. They do not have the same strength, and as for war - I won't even go there. Look at how many men risked their lives to save Pfc. Lynch. Not that they wouldn't have done the same for a man, it's just that I worry that they might have made a rush to do so - because it's in their nature to protect women. Was the timing perfect? We'll never know.
It has been proven by studies conducted at bases, that when women are in practice combat situations with men, the men react differently.
It is time to reverse the Klintoon and Feminazzi's push to allow women anywhere near a combat zone. It has nothing to do with women and the issue of equality. It is insane for a civilization to treat their women so callously.
My exact sentiments. Lets hope our president recognizes this and issues an order keeping women out of direct combat.
Who's legacy? Eleven women were killed in Desert Storm and two were captured.
OK, I proclaim you President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, with the power by Executive Order to make the changes you talk about. Now, how are you going to do it? What changes will you make to prevent women from dying in the service? Would you ban them from overseas duty? Limit them only to jobs 500 miles behind the lines? Ban them from service in the armed forces altogether? What?
....amen brother!.....it's extreamly dangerous to put women in combat support roles....situations can reverse very quickly; just ask a Korean War vet that remembers when the Chinese entered the war and over ran U.S. positions.....hastily assembled scratch platoons of clerks, cooks, truckdrivers and other rear echelon personnel suddenly found themselves fighting for their very lives....it's a sad commentary when you have women in harm's way in Iraq, and able bodied young men here at home partying it up on Spring break...
I do not consider sending childrens' mothers into harms way "civil." Not quite as bad as using a pregnant woman as a human shield, perhaps . . . but barbarous nonetheless.
Frontier wives could hunt, shoot, chop wood, do medical care, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.