Posted on 01/29/2013 7:12:33 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
adies, for the first time ever, Uncle Sam soon may be pointing at you.
Days after the Pentagon cleared women to take certain combat roles, advocacy groups for military women say another new hour has arrived for all young female adults to register with Selective Service, the giant pool of names collected by the government should America ever opt to revive the draft.
The movement to require women ages 18 to 25 to sign up for Selective Service — mirroring the law for all U.S. men in that demographic — is rooted in both active-duty and veteran circles.
The Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), which strives to represent all women in the armed forces, believes such a change is simply the logical next step to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s decision last week to erase the long prohibition on females in combat.
“SWAN advocates for the inclusion of women into Selective Service,” said Anu Bhagwati, executive director of SWAN and a former Marine Corps captain. “Lifting the ban on women officially serving in combat is about giving qualified women the opportunity to serve and making our military stronger, and that would include having women register for Selective Service."
“If you are going to say ‘total equality’ in the military, that has to include Selective Service registration,” agreed Cassaundra StJohn, founder and CEO of F7 Group, which provides resources, training and mentoring to female veterans. StJohn served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve between 1985 and 1998, reaching the rank of staff sergeant.
Amid his historic announcement last week, Panetta alerted administrators of the Selective Service System “to exercise some judgment based on what we just did.”
Selective Service officials heard that remark. Since then the agency — an independent office within the executive branch — has been conducting a "what-if drill" in case a Defense official or Congressional member asks what adding women to agency's workload would cost the country, said Pat Schuback, spokesperson for Selective Service.
"We're not the policy-making group. We're kind of like mechanics. We just do what we're told to do. We have the mechanism. We don't hold a position on whether to draft women or not," Schuback said.
Should that change occur, Selective Service — which has about 130 full-time employees across the country — would "need to be probably resourced a little bit," Schuback added. "But we don't anticipate that it would be a lot because the machinery's the same. It would be in the man hours of answering the inquires, handling questions and doing direct mails out to people to remind them" to register.
Panetta also set a May 15 deadline for each service branch to provide “detailed plans for implementation” on how female service members will be placed into combat duties, said Nathan Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman.
“Following that, a formal notification to Congress will be made, detailing (combat) occupations that will be opened to women,” Christensen said. “Selective Service requirements are determined by law, and we can't speculate on any changes to law.”
However, federal law does require DOD — after making such sweeping policy changes — to provide a breakdown of the impact those shifts may have on the Selective Service Act, senior Defense officials said in a briefing last week. That analysis, they added, “will be part of the notification to Congress” made by DOD after each branch reports back to Panetta in May.
One female veteran who was attached with an infantry team in Ghazni, Afghanistan, argues that with the female-combat ban gone, women should now be Constitutionally guaranteed the right to be eligible for Selective Service — and a possible military draft.
“It can be hard to adapt to new customs. There will be some feathers ruffled,” said Courtney Witt, a former Air Force senior airman, who also served in Iraq. “... It is a little difficult, for some, to see our daughters, sisters and wives go off into war.
“I can’t explain the feeling you have when you have fought alongside brothers and sisters in arms. It’s a bond that can never be broken ... It’s an amazing patriotic feeling,” Witt said. “Shouldn’t any man or woman be a part of that?”
The drawdown of U.S. forces and the pullout from Afghanistan make the chances of a draft reinstatement far less likely than, say, even eight years ago when Coalition forces were battle-thin and bogged down in Iraq, experts say.
But there are some in Washington who still favor bringing back the draft — as a deterrent to war.
In 2010, Rep. Charles Rangel, D.-N.Y., reintroduced a bill that would require all U.S. men and women between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either in the military or in a civilian service that helps national defense. The bill died in committee.
At least four times before, Rangel has written similar bills that would have restored the draft.
“There's no question in my mind," Rangel told the New York Times in 2007, "that we wouldn't be in Iraq ... if indeed we had a draft, and members of Congress and the administration thought that kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."
You have to understand that Rush is correct when he says that the goal of the feminazis (not the same as a feminist) is to destroy your ability and freedom to choose not to be a feminazi.
Why don’t we just make the armed services an all women deal? Enough of the whining about inequality, from now on women can handle all of our national defense needs. Man up, ladies, the job is all yours now.
I don’t think you’re kidding at all. Agree 100%
this is one of the saddest times in the history of our country.
It’s about population control. As I said in another thread, this will give them the ability draft like they did in the 1960’s. The women drafted will be predominantly those who can’t afford college or can’t get in. Ie, flyover country girls.
The elites are planning on another war we won’t be allowed to win. This time the benefit they will get will be lots of dead flyover country women. Thus eliminating any troublesome children they might have gone on to bear. Make no mistake, the practice of getting pg to get out of hard duty will end. Depo or its equivalent will become mandatory. Pg’s will be ended with force if necessary. If they can vax your sons with who knows what experimental vaccines (and supreme court has sided with the military on this one), they can jolly well suck your grandkid out by force at 6 or 8w.
Elite girls unfortunate enough to fall through the cracks and girls with a minority card to throw will be stationed at ‘national guard’ home duty. Girls who don’t have a minority card of some sort to pull will get the hardest duty in the most difficult places.
If you want to eliminate your enemy forever all you need do is kill or grieviously injure their women under the age of about 35. Women are the rate limiting step with procreation (1 baby approx every year is sort of the biological limit usually) and the rate limiting ‘ingredient’. 1/2 the number of men can still get the job done. 1/2 the number of fertile age women effectively halves your birth rate.
We haven’t even discussed the women who will return from war ‘messed up’ at what they did, saw or had done to them and be eliminated from future motherhood by reason of ptsd.
Seems only equal, fair, and just......
And neither does anybody else. The entire idea of anyone being drafted, or forced into some kind of "national service" is repugnant to free people. It is nothing but a form of temporary slavery.
If a true crisis occurs either enough patriots will volunteer to save our nation or they won't. Requiring that the government have enough support from the people so that they volunteer to serve it is a good check on the ability of the government to rule against the desires of the people.
This might be a good time to propose abolishing the Selective Service system.
How so?
My 17 y.o. daughter doesn't want to fight in the military.
And I don't want her too, either.
I will keep my daughter out of it. Most boys can function reasonably well as a soldier. Many girls were actually raised as girls, like being girls, and only a -depraved SOB- would want to force them into the infantry.
Screw you govt types and careerist female military types who want my daughter for your career enhancement. You want my daughter? Come and take her.
Give it a try sport.
I have to admit I’ll laugh when the liberals start crying because their daughters are drafted and assigned to the infantry.
As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.”
Isaiah 3: 11-12
Starship Troopers, without the Bugs and the Coed Showers.
When do they start Drafting Illegal Aliens? After all, it’s the next step you know.
Seems to me, SS registration or not, the nation is facing a less physically fit future military something I find very troubling..
Exactly right.
Sasha and Malia should be drafted along with the homosexuals.
YES!!! It;s EXACTLY what is needed to STOP THE MADNESS~~
“I have to admit I’ll laugh when the liberals start crying because their daughters are drafted and assigned to the infantry.”
That will never happen. Their daughters will be in college. Even IF they’re drafted they’ll be in the national guard and stationed at home. It will be just like the 1960’s. Elites will get out of going to ‘nam by getting in college. Ones who do get drafted will be stationed at home. Did George W Bush go to Nam? Heck no. He was stationed stateside. You don’t really think any of the Biden granddaughters will be putting on body armor for a patrol in Helmand province do you?
I’m not talking about the liberal, or conservative, elites. I’m talking about the liberal voters.
If this becomes law, your daughters WILL register. The penalties are too severe for anyone who is required to register but doesn’t. You’d best work now to see that it doesn’t become law.
I don’t get how is it that males have had to register for SS for generations, with and without the draft, but they don’t “belong to the state” for merely registering, yet somehow it would be different for females? When they are college age, males have to check off a box stating that they have registered with SS in order to be eligible for any grants, scholarships, or loans. If women’s SS registration becomes law, obviously the same rules will apply to females.
So if as you claim your daughter(s) don’t register if that becomes the law of the land, they can plan either not to go to college, or you’d better have their full tuition and all expenses covered. And the fine of up to $250K each for not registering.
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