Hell no!
Women belong in an Indy car driving 200 mph plus.
Posted on 05/29/2005 11:13:11 AM PDT by Crackingham
Maggie Williams and her daughter Sam Huff had much in common. As a teenager 35 years ago, Ms. Williams joined the US Marine Corps and became an air traffic controller, directing jet fighters and helicopters in Vietnam as the war there was winding down. Back in the United States, she began a career in law enforcement, married a police officer, and raised a family.
When she was just 16, Ms. Huff told her parents she wanted to join the US Army right out of high school, and later start a career with the FBI. She toughed out boot camp last year and then joined a military police unit driving Humvees through the mean streets of Iraq. But there the mother-daughter similarity ends. On April 18, Pfc. Huff's Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad, and she was killed. Posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, she was buried at Arlington National Cemetery recently. She was 18.
As Memorial Day approaches, one might say that Maggie Williams and Sam Huff are bookends for the history of women in the US military in the modern era. As a marine, Williams did a job that was very traditionally male. Huff - the 37th (and latest) American woman to be killed in Iraq - epitomizes the current debate over whether women, even if they volunteer, should be fighting alongside men. Congress has been debating the issue this week. Some lawmakers want to assert more congressional control over Pentagon policies that have opened up more and more jobs to women in recent years, including those that increasingly put them in the thick of the shooting. Of the 37 women lost, 25 were from hostile causes such as rocket or grenade attacks, ambushes, and roadside bombs.
In a way, the job expansion is a pattern that has occurred since the Vietnam War: Women demonstrate excellence in such positions as fighter pilot, military police officer, and heavy equipment operator, and then are more likely to have perilous assignments - particularly during a recruiting shortage. Some welcome the opportunity; but some do not, according to surveys of women in uniform. Here, too, the changing nature of war seems to accelerate the pattern.
"Modern wars will be fought 360 degrees, which means women will be on the 'front lines' whether the Congress likes it or not," says retired Army Col. Dan Smith, a military analyst with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington.
Though many servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq have children, it is the mothers in the war zones who seem to raise greater concerns. (Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first American woman to be killed in Iraq, left two small children to be raised by their grandparents.) Until recent years, if a woman in uniform got pregnant or adopted a child, she had to leave the service. Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., says his parentsare a good example of what happened in the past. His father was an Army colonel who served with Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell in China. His mother was an Army major on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff during the occupation of Japan. They met in Korea and married.
"Some time later I was conceived and Mom got the boot, even though she appealed her involuntary retirement all the way to the Senate Armed Services Committee," recalls Dr. Thompson.
While the general trend toward more rights for women in the United States has advanced steadily in recent decades, those gains aren't necessarily exportable - particularly in wartime. Waging a counterinsurgency war in one of the world's most traditional societies is a reminder that American values cannot be the only factor shaping military policy, says Thompson.
"The first lesson of effective counterinsurgency is respect for local peoples and their cultures, so this could become a test of American flexibility," he adds.
"This is one case where it may not be feasible to honor American values and those of the people we propose to liberate at the same time," he says. "Our attitudes toward gender equality and relations between the sexes may simply be too different."
Illustrating this point is an Army Reserve unit based in Richmond, Va., which will soon go to Iraq to train Iraqi soldiers. They will leave behind some 20 female drill instructors because of such sensitivities.
"I understand each culture has different morals and customs, and I have to respect that," Staff Sgt. Stefania Traylor told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "But on the other hand, it's quite different from our culture, so I do have a problem with that. If you are getting experience, knowledge, and guidance from an individual, it shouldn't matter whether you are male or female."
Those who argue otherwise note the physiological differences between men and women - for example, the upper-body strength necessary to operate some heavy weapons effectively or to pull a fallen comrade out of harm's way.
"To pretend that women would have an equal capability of doing that is a dangerous philosophy, and lives could be lost as a result of it," says Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness and one of the most outspoken critics of current military policy on women in war zones.
I have to go read the new article, but I don't doubt she would apply her formidable intellect to it.
Phyllis Schlafly has cogently outlined these issues in her book "Feminist Fantasies". Many leftists dismiss Phyllis Schlafly as a "womans place is barefoot in the kitchen" kind of woman, but she is so far from that she makes the feminists look that way in comparison. She is a formidable intellect, and if I could ever work for her, I would do so in a heartbeat. Read a bio on her sometime, and you will see what I mean.
She wrote an article, which can be found at http://www.townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/ps20040517.shtml
While I abhor nearly any editorial related to U.S. Army Pfc. Lynndie R. England, (not because I hate her or anything, I think she was just a dumb young person, as many of us are at some point, and she just did something...dumb-it is because I am so sick of the media hype on the "prison scandal") I think this article makes some good points. But check out the book from the library, it is worth the read.
"Phyllis Schlafly has as article in today's Townhall.com suggesting that men might sign up in larger numbers if women were kept OUT of the combat zone."
Yeah, we'd get every faggot to sign up.
Phyllis Schlafly is a truely remarkable person, one of my heroes (or heroines, if you prefer) All I ever knew about her before I really read about her is that she was despised by many in media and politics who saw (and still see) her as a partisan blockade to their agendas, which often run counter to hers. I just accepted their version of her as a dowdy opposed-to-change anti-feminist, the same way I accepted the media and schoolbook's historical portrayal of Joseph McCarthy as a red-baiting-personal life invading-horrible excuse for a man. Both characterizations are unfair and wrong.
What I found most astounding was her depth of knowledge in military strategic thinking. Not that I did not think she was capable, but you NEVER hear anything about that. She does her work quietly, behind the scenes.
She worked her way through college on the night shift at the St. Louis Ordnance Plant testing ammunition by firing rifles and machine guns and as a laboratory technician investigating misfires. She received her Master's in Government from Harvard University in 1945. She received her J.D. from Washington University Law School in 1978.
Mrs. Schlafly is an attorney admitted to the practice of law in Illinois, Missouri, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She served (with the late Chief Justice Warren Burger) as a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 1985-1991, appointed by President Reagan. She has testified before more than 50 Congressional and State Legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, foreign policy, education, tax, encryption, and family issues. She served five terms as a member of the Illinois Commission on the Status of Women, 1975-1985, appointed by the Illinois Legislature. She served as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, 1983-1986. She has filed several amicus curiae briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal.
Same sentiment from me, too.
I agree with you about Mrs. Schlafly. I got to see her when I was in NY for the Convention. There is not a woman I admire more.
#84..was referencing #6 & 10
I sometimes feel like a dinosaur when I express my opinions on this subject,but,like women have always been,I'm one tough dinosaur.
#87..LOL, well count me in the dinosaur club too :)
Hell no!
Women belong in an Indy car driving 200 mph plus.
man I couldnt even tell that from some of the comments on FR on Sunday...
I agree. No matter how good our kid may be brain wise for the Navy we will always have the ground pounders, and grateful for them.
My heart just went out to that little girl when she saw her mommy.
Hmmmm God forbid it ever makes it's way to our soil again But where do you think our woman would be if it did ?
Be ever Vigilant
NO....next question.
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