Archive for the ‘Military’ Category
Ann Quindlen: Women Should Have to Register for the Draft, Just Like Men
Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen wrote a column the other day noting that although 1 in 5 new military recruits are women, men are still singled out and required to register with selective service for a potential future draft. Quindlen argues that this is a sexist anachronism. But, really, the entire selective service process is an anachronism.
To be sure, if there’s going to be mandatory draft registration, it should not discriminate against sex. Quindlen writes that when Jimmy Carter restored draft registration after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both he and the Army chief of staff wanted registration to apply to both men and women.
Congress, however, rejected that idea and the Supreme Court held that since women were not allowed to serve in combat positions, it didn’t make sense to require them to register for the draft. But now women are actively engaged in combat in Afghanistan, so that argument doesn’t hold much water anymore.
But as much as I agree with Quindlen about the discriminatory nature of a male-only draft, the problem is really with the draft itself. For example, Quindlen chides feminists for not being more vocal about including women in the draft,
In 1980 NOW released a resolution that buried support for the registration of women beneath opposition to the draft, despite the fact that the draft had been redesigned to eliminate the vexing inequities of Vietnam, when the sons of the working class served and the sons of the Ivy League did not.
Huh? On this point I agree with the National Organization for Women — the draft is in principal wrong, and the Selective Service registration requirement should be eliminated. But, beyond that, as NOW put it in that 1980 resolution, people should “oppose any registration or draft that excludes women as an unconstitutional denial of rights to both young men and women.”
Opposition to the draft is not, as Quindlen implies, solely based on the class-based inequities of the Vietnam-era draft. In fact, at this point the selective service is largely symbolic with the Pentagon itself acknowledging in 1993 that eliminating it would have “no effect on military mobilization requirements, little effect on the time it would take to mobilize and no measurable effect on military recruitment.”
Draft registration is an anachronism whose time is long past. Lets kill the program outright, not waste time trying to reform it to be sex neutral.
Source:
Uncle Sam and Aunt Samantha: It’s simple fairness: women as well as men should be required to register for the draft. Anna Quindlen, Newsweek, November 5, 2001.
A Dishonorable Discharge for Selective Service Doug Bandow, Cato Institute, September 20, 1999.
Tags: National Organization for Women
Are Men War Mongers?
Even when she temporarily strays away from animal rights ever so slightly, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chief ignoramus Ingrid Newkirk still manages to spread falsehoods and nonsense wherever she goes. This week, Bruce Friedrich posted an article by Newkirk, “Violence at home,” to an animal rights news list. Within the first three paragraphs, Newkirk manages to make three demonstrably false claims about violence and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States.
Newkirk opens her article by writing,
Is it a conicidence that, in the wake of the attacks on Washington and New York, most men speak of retaliation while most women express an urge to return to peace?
No, Ingrid, it is not a coincidence, its a complete falsehood. Zogby International interviewed 1,018 likely voters September 14-16, asking them, “Would you support or oppose an all-out war against countries which harbor or aid terrorists?”
Of those polled, 78.9 percent of men and 71.0 percent of women said they would support such an all-out war. When asked, “Do you agree or disagree that such a war would be worht it even if it involved substnatial American casualties?” 77.0 percent of men said they agree,d while 64.8 percent of women did as well.
The number of men and women who outright oppose such a war on terrorism are almost identical. Only 16.1 percent of men said they opposed an all-out war on terrorism, while 18.7 percent of women said they opposed such a war.
Apparently when Newkirk writes that “most women express an urge to return to peace,” she’s talking about her and her 5 closest friends, rather than the general female population of the United States.
Newkirk then goes on to describe a speech by Colman McCarthy. Newkirk writes,
At the Washington Center for Teach Peace, Professor Colman McCarthy has fretted over the fact that, year after year, his female studnets are always more open than his male students to the concept of peace. A Georgetown law student thought she had the answer. “Women want to know about nonviolence more than men because we are more victimized by violence than men. And, victims always want solutions quicker.”
This is pure nonsense. Aside from rapes that occur outside of prison, the overwhelming victims of violent acts are men. The risk of being the victim of an assault, murder or other act of violence is much higher for men than it is for women.
Finally, Newkirk repeats an oft-repeated but completely fake factoid.
The leading cause of injury to women is being beatne at home. Some women have more fear walking into their homes than walking out of them.
This claim is one of those factoids that appears commonly in domestic violence literature, almost always, as in Newkirk’s case, unattributed. This is because both Justice Department and Centers for Disease Control studies suggest that about 1 percent of women’s injuries are caused by their male partners.
Source:
Violence at home. Ingrid Newkirk, September 21, 2001.
Women In Combat
It always amazes me that the issue of whether or not women should serve in combat positions is still an active debate. Women who are up to the challenge and can handle the physical tasks entailed by combat should certainly be allowed to become part of combat units. Instead the debate typically ends up with those opposed and those in favor both offering sexist excuses for their position.
Great Britain is currently studying whether women should be allowed to serve in frontline combat units and some are charging that the armed forces are engaging in one of the forms of sexism — downgrading the physical requirements so that more women can pass. The British Army recently conducted field trials that were supposed to be gender neutral — men and women were supposed to do the same tasks — but the UK Daily Telegraph reports that the field tests simply dropped tasks that some women would have found difficult.
The exercises, for example, didn’t include heavy weapons or tanks and apparently found many women were incapable of carrying out physically strenuous tasks such as digging themselves into hard ground. The Telegraph reports that one of the findings was that women’s bodies had to work about 25 percent harder to achieve the same level of physical exertion as men.
If this is true, this is a pointless exercise in sexism. The military should set objective standards for minimum physical capabilities of combat soldiers, and then enforce those standards regardless of sex. If a woman can meet those standards, then she should be allowed to serve in a combat unit. If not, then she shouldn’t. End of story.
On the other hand, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce displayed the sexism commonly found on the other side of this debate by wondering whether or not women would be aggressive enough in hand to hand combat, saying that aggression was not “a natural female trait.” Give me a break. I’ve known plenty of women who had no problem with being aggressive.
Even if we assume that, on average, women as a group tend to be less aggressive than men as a group, this tells us little about whether or not any given man or woman is aggressive enough to be a combat soldier (and, in fact, even supposedly “naturally aggressive” men have to be subjected to intense training to overcome their long-conditioned responses against killing people. Far from being part of a natural trait, many men who have killed others in combat have reported any number of psychological problems from the shock and guilt at taking a human life).
Put men and women on a balanced field with objective standards and allow the qualified soldiers into combat units regardless of sex.
Source:
Combat tests ‘watered down for women.’ Michael Smith, The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2001.
Sweden may subject women to the draft
Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor reported (”Equality may mean Army service in Sweden“) that Sweden is considering extending its military draft to women. Israel is currently the only nation in the world that drafts women as well a men (although women are not drafted into combat positions).
Rather than maintain a standing professional army, as nations such as the United States does, Sweden tests all 18-year old men for military aptitude and then requires about 40 percent of them to undergo military training. After the training the men are part of the nation’s military reserve until age 47. Women can choose to join the military as well, but it is not required.
According to the Monitor, men in countries with military drafts are beginning to file lawsuits against military drafts that exclude women. In Germany, for example, men have filed a sex discrimination suit against that nation’s military policy. As a National Organization for Women spokesperson tells the newspaper, the United States’ male-only draft registration requirement would almost certainly be found unconstitutional by today’s Supreme Court.
Ironically, although Sweden is probably at the vanguard of governments creating programs to enforce sexual equality, many of them not very well thought out, most women are definitely not in favor of a gender-neutral draft. According to the Monitor, 70 percent of Swedish women oppose the measure. Apparently many women in Sweden share the view that military service is a uniquely masculine role.
I believe military drafts are immoral, in general, but military drafts that do exist should be gender neutral. Morever, gender should not be used to exclude women from combat positions. If a person meet the objective qualifications to fulfill a military position, whether or not that person is male or female should never enter into the equation. The military should set a single standard that have to be met for positions and ignore irrelevant characteristics such as race and sex when making personnel decisions. Unfortunately, this is a position even too radical for NOW which, like many feminist thinkers and organizations, maintains that men and women need to have “separate but equal standards” for physical fitness and other criteria used to evaluate a soldier’s fitness.