Posted on 03/11/2002 1:47:34 AM PST by kattracks
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Feminists in the armed forces are taking incremental steps to remove every barrier to military women's career paths, including combat exemptions, that stand in the way of their goal of seeing a woman appointed chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a leading expert on defense policy issues said Friday.
But winning the war on terrorism should take precedence over "politically correct social engineering projects," including gender-integration in the military, which only hurt military readiness and ultimately endanger lives, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told policymakers at the Heritage Foundation.
"After September 11th, we can no longer afford to think of the military as just another equal opportunity employer," she said.
The new Pentagon leadership under President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, "has made a difference," Donnelly said. But problems, especially those dealing with morale, remain after eight years of the Clinton administration.
"We are waging a war now with Bill Clinton's military," but she said the military "is under new management."
Donnelly recently led a coalition of conservative women's groups who called for the scrapping of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), a civilian board that promoted the inclusion of women in combat roles.
When the committee's charter ran out at the end of last month, the Pentagon decided not to renew it, but instead to constitute a new committee whose focus shifted away from what many saw as a feminist agenda.
Donnelly welcomed the change as "a step in the right direction." But the reconstituted committee didn't solve the problem. "I don't see that it's anything new at all."
"The DACOWITS is very skilled at intimidating or manipulating male military members, both uniform and civilian, and they never stop pushing the agenda, step by incremental step. And this is why the feminist agenda has been allowed to move forward, like a battleship on autopilot," she said.
Donnelly said she supported women in the military, but not in close combat, or in "tip of the spear," units.
"Equal opportunity in the military is important, but if there is a conflict between career considerations and military necessity, the needs of the military must come first," said Donnelly, who served on DACOWITS under President Reagan in the mid-1980s.
The Defense Department said the defense leadership had not targeted DACOWITS. Changes in the committee resulted from a review that was part of a broad-based review of 35 other discretionary advisory committees.
"The restructure was a functional decision and not a political one," said Army Lt. Col. James Cassella. "We're trying to make it more effective and relative and efficient."
Cassella said he anticipates no changes to the policy governing the role of women in the military set fourth by Congress in national defense authorization acts of 1993 and 1994.
The DACOWITS changes include a trimmed budget - from $673,000 to $520,000 - and a slightly reduced staff - from 40 mostly civilian members to 35 members at most.
Travel by the committee will be slightly curtailed and redirected. Instead of two costly semi-annual conferences, the committee will seek to get its members to more military bases so they can hear the concerns of more people.
"By reallocating some of that money we can get better feedback and more of it," Cassella said.
The committee will continue to conduct overseas trips, but instead of all 34 members plus their liaisons and support staff taking part, visits will be done in smaller groups, allowing more visits to more representative installations.
The Pentagon leadership also will provide more focus to the committee, including asking for reports on retention of women in the military and quality of life issues.
Committee members whose charter expired are being asked if they want to be considered for reappointment to the new DACOWITS, but the focus will be on getting more members with military experience, either as a former service member or as a military family member.
"We think that provides a base of experience to help them put some of the issues in context," Cassella said.
The Pentagon hopes to reconstitute the committee in the next couple of months.
Donnelly said that under the new management at the Pentagon, the military as a "resilient institution" could "bounce back."
"After four years of Jimmy Carter, Reagan came in and said he was going to rebuild the military, and he did," she said. "But there was one thing Ronald Reagan did not have to do, and that was to rebuild the morale of the military. That is the challenge right now," she said.
E-mail a news tip to Lawrence Morahan.
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Indeed. Carter may have been incompetent and mush-brained, but at least he wasn't a traitor.
The Feminists however want a wimpy woman, not a warrior queen....
To further enhance the effectivness of the unique qualities women bring to the armed forces, it has been suggested that instead of conventional munitions, copies of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" be dropped on the enemy, challenging male patriachial contructs of violence by waging discussions of topics relevant to modern progressive society in an ethnically diverse, ecologically sensitive manner.
I spent a summer in the Canadian Army Reserves, which had female soldiers in it. You can't avoid the suspicion of favoritism when a female gets a better watch shift, or ignore the fact that females do not have the biological imperative to wage war or the strength to carry a wounded comrade from the field. I'm all for equal rights for women, but in the armed forces the stakes are literally life and death if we do not recognize that humanity has never used females in combat. If we try to be politically correct, the first to suffer will be those women put in harms way, leading to much higher numbers of deaths and possibly losing a war. Having said that...I'd appreciate that toning down the sarcastic comments about the Canadian military. Canadian women can kick the ass of any country...in ice hockey:)
Its all just too funny.
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