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."
Here we go.....
I’m sure liberal men would send their womenfolk out late at night to deal with prowlers, too.
If women want to be treated equally, then, there should be nothing to stop them.
Then, they had better be equal in all respects and capacities. For example, they had better be able to carry a wounded soldier of about 165 pounds on their shoulder for about 100 years, or whatever is the requirements lately. No dumbing down, and no downgrading of the requirements. War is war, and nobody gets a break when in battle.
My daughter is 22. She has never fired a gun. All her life all she had to do was say “DAD! Shoot that SOB!” SOOOO...if they draft her I am certain of what she will say....
First gays, now females.. Someone is working hard to castrate our military. Or create a military that would follow orders to shoot civilians? Gay power, Girl power?
I remember being marched through the Oakland induction center with about 5,000 other guys when registered for the draft in 1966. I can’t wait to hear the squawking when the gals are ordered to come in and get their physicals so they can be classified.
That is to say, old maids being groomed to be rear-eschelon officerettes like Janice "light-fingers" Karpinski—the shoplifting general who gave us Abu Ghraib. Such are not the country-girl grunts and inner-city chicks who would actually get shot at, who oppose sending girls like themselves into combat 8-1 or more.
This will change when the first bomb falls on US soil.
You know “Affirmative Action” is coming. The men will have the standards lowered.
I'm not sure any country would be worth that kind of commitment!
No, my girls won’t be registering for anything. They don’t belong to the state.
Speaking of someone “ball-less”, if Bath-House-Barry didn’t register with Selective Service, why should anyone else?
Women soldiers are not going to be held to male standards in the future, nor was that the plan in the beginning. The government will lower the standards as far as they have to, regardless of the impact. That’s not an unintended consequence; that’s the idea.
They don’t care that the military is being weakened. That doesn’t scare them. They *want* that. They never intend to use the military for ground combat. They’ll either use drones or they’ll use nothing.
The military is just a government bureaucracy for delivering aid now. They’re going to slash the budget and kill the culture, leaving behind an armed version of the post office. And that will be that.
What’s so interesting is that the people who seem to be clamoring for women in combat, and a return of the Draft are the exact ones who rioted against the Draft in the 60s.
They can register my daughters right after they register my guns.
Incidentally, Schmitz, as the nominee of the American Independent party, ran against President Richard Nixon that same year and netted more than a million votes.
The thought of my granddaughters registering for the draft just sickens me.
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If women are so damned eager to get into combat it cannot be on a “only if they feel like it” basis. They get the full package or not at all.
Im sure the bum in the White House is all for it.
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