The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 93, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, January 25, 2013 Page: 4 of 8
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■
The Baytown Sun
Viewpoints
Friday
January 25, 2013
EMILY
MACRANDER
Women get a
place in combat
Moving toward equal access and equal recognitiorrin
the United States military will make for stronger defense
against our enemies.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday
that the military would be making more
than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and
Marine infantry units and potentially in
elite commando jobs, available to wom-
Jk ' en.
The change overturns a 1994 rule
if* prohibiting women from being assigned
:f.W to smaller ground combat units.
The transition to gender-neutral job
descriptions carries a September 2015
deadline and services must make a case
as to why jobs cannot be open to wom-
en by January 2016. Before then, departments are charged
with providing progress reports every 90 days to show
that they are working toward integration.
Women account for one in seven individuals serving in
the armed forces and the number of women serving has
doubled since the 1970s. The enrollment numbers show
that despite the military being a historically male-domi-
nated field, women are interested in serving the country.
According to military.com, prior to Thursday’s an-
nouncement, women were eligible to Serve in 95 percent
of jobs. Women are barred from the positions such as in-
fantry branch officers and members of special operations
missions.
An argument against full integration and equality is
that the military culture has historically more traditional
views on men’s and women’s roles.
Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in
an interview with the Today show, “When you have men
and women together in combat, men have the emotions
when you see a woman in harm’s way. It’s natural. That’s
my concern.”
Some have argued that presence of a woman on the bat-
tlefield could interfere with bonding among men.
The problem with theses arguments is that they’re way
, too similar to arguments once used.against having Afri-
can American individuals serve, or gay individuals serve.
Being different can no longer be an excuse to avoid
change.
Yes; the dynamic with an out-group individual may
change the dynamic on the battlefield, but until we com-
mit to making things more equal all the projected, eso-
teric evidence cannot convince me that it will not be a
positive change.
We’re looking at two years to make fins change. I think
it’s time to clean up offensive, sexuaflanguage. Changes
shouldn’t be made because women are now in barracks
get offended, changes should be made because it’s 2013
and being treated differently isn’t tolerated'in the work-
place it shouldn’t be tolerated in our military.
It is also necessary to consider that women have already
infiltrated many roles. In the 10 years since we went war
in Afghanistan, the front lines have changed.
Senator John McCain spoke in favor of maintaining
physical standards for certain positions.
There are certain individuals - both men and women -
that will never be able to able to load a tanker during bat-
tle. But let a fair, gender-neutral test be the.determining
factor, not an outdated, sexist standard.
A candidate being female should not exclude her from
enhancing the best military' in the world with her physical
and mental skills.
Women are already serving on the blurred front lines
of mpdcrn warfare. These changes will allow women to
achieve more and for some, allow recognition for jobs
they’re already doing.
In the past 10 years, women have taken on jobs as med-
ics, military police and intelligence officers, sometimes
attached to battalions.
So, though not technically in combat, women have
been around combat for more than a decade.
The change is good and it is overdue.
I’ll be curious to see which jobs are left closed to wom-
en and more curious to see why..
Emily Macrander is the desk editor at The Sun. She
can he reached at viewpoints@baytownsun.com. Atten-
tion: Emily Macrander.
TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is the 25th day of 2013 and the 36th day of winter.
TODAY’S HISTORY: In 1533, King Henry VIII of En-
gland married Anne Boleyn.
In 1787, Shay’s Rebellion broke oufin Massachusetts.
In 1915, Alexander Graham Bell made the first transcon-
tinental telephone call from New York to San Francisco.
In 1961, a few days after his inauguration, President John
F. Kennedy held the first televised presidential news con-
ference.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Robert Bums (1759-1796),
poet; W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1964), novelist; Vir-
ginia Woolf (1882-1941), novelist/essayist; Etta James
(1938-2012), singer; Paul Nurse (1949-), biochemist/No-
bel laureate; Alicia Keys (1981-), singer.
TODAY’S SPORTS: In 1924, the first Winter Olympic
Games began in Chamonix, France.
TODAY’S FACT: In the first Winter Olympics, the Ca-
nadian ice hockey team trounced its opponents, winning all
five games and outscoring the competition 110-3.
TODAY’S QUOTE: “ One cannot think well, love well,
sleep well, if one has not dined well.” - Virginia Woolf
TODAY’S NUMBER: 6- wives of King Henry VlIL
He ordered two, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr, executed
by beheading.
TODAY’S MOON: Between first quarter moon (Jan.
18) and full moon (Jan. 26).
/IRE YOU
SUPPORTING
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Obama uses children as power pawns
Not one of the 23 exec-
utive orders that President
Obama signed - flanked
by schoolchildren whom
none of us want to see
•murdered and before an
audience that included rel-
atives of murdered school-
children - would have
prevented the massacre at
Sandy Hook.
Did the main J idea of
the sentence above come
through - that the presi-
dent’s latest orders would
not have stopped the
heavily armed monster
who entered a Connecti-
cut schorfi last month and
killed 20 children and six
adults? Or was your brain
overwhelmed by anxi-
ety signals arising from
the imagery of vulnerable
youngsters?
The overwhelming .im-
agery is no accident. It’s
emotional manipulation,
and I’ve never seen a more
lowdown exercise of it than
the White House’s "gun
violence” event this week.
What President Obama put
the nation through was the
propaganda equivalent of
a slasher movie, a disgust-
ingly crude attempt to jam
our emotional buttons and
frighten us into surren-
dering more of our rights
to live free of centralized
government surveillance
and control.
Such pandering, of
course, fails to address
the cultural factors - god-
lessness, fatherlessness, a
pomographically violent
“entertainment”-media
complex - that drive this
most transgressive form of
violence. Postmodern de-
velopments all, they help
US see why, for example,
well-armed settlers open-
ing up the West didn’t ever
shoot up the village school.
Here’s what I call
“Obama’s Choice”: Do
Americans want happy,
live children or some old
constitutional provision?
Do members of Congress
- the president’s main tar-
get along with the Consti-
tution - want an “’A’ grade
from the gun lobby,” as he
put it, or to give parents
DIANA
WEST
■peace
of mind
vv hen
t he y
drop
their
child off
for first
grade”?
Gazing
into the
shiny
button-eyes of the four
children on stage, America
heard the president say: “If
there is even one thing we
can do to reduce this, vio-
lence, if there’s even one
life that can be saved, then
we’ve got an obligation to
try-”
Yes, yes, yes, we reply.
Yes, Mr. President, go
ahead and sign the exec-
utive orders that put in
place what amounts to a
national database of kooks
as defined by federal bu-
reaucrats who consider
conservative beliefs and
military personnel to be
crazy automatically. Yes,
empower and encourage
our doctors to add to that
registry innocent patients
who have committed no
crime but who, like re-
turning veterans, may
have sought counseling.
(Meanwhile, continue to
permit confidentiality laws
to silence attorneys with
knowledge of clients' actu-
al criminality.) Outlaw the
sale of high-powered guns
and ammunition - equal-
izers in the face of home
invaders, terrorists, drug
gangs and, yes, a demo-
cratic government turned
tyrannical. And tell me
again why the Department
of Homeland Security -
emphasis on “homeland"
-acquired more than 1 bil-
lion rounds of ammunition
(including hundreds of
thousands of hollow-point
bullets) last year? And why
did DHS order an addition-
al 200,000 hollow-point
bullets in December? What
possible domestic threat
requires a stockpile like
that?
But I am looking away
from the hearts and bun-
nies at the White House. I
am supposed to be concen-
trating on the letters from
little ones who, in the wake
of Sandy Hook. President
Obama said, asked him to
take such measures. As the
president pul it: “On the
letter that Julia wrote me,
she said, T know that laws
have to be passed by Con-
gress, but 1 beg you to try
very hard.""
There was a burst of
laughter, perhaps unex-
pected, given that the
president was winding up
for a solemn pledge; "Ju-
lia, I will try very hard,”
Obama continued, taking
up his gauntlet against en-
enty-Congress on behalf of
Julia and her four brothers
and sisters. As the presi-
dent also told us she wrote:
"I know I would not be
able to bear the thought of
losing any of them."
Nor would any of us
- the normal human re-
action. What is now a dis-
graceful part of American
history is the spectacle of
a president harnessing this
normal human reaction to
drive his own power grab.
This makes his calculation
far worse than President
Jimmy Carter’s famous
invocation in 1980 of his
13-year-old daughter,'
Amy, as his moral goad
against nuclear weaponry
in a debate with Ronald
Reagan. Thirty years ago,
Americans in the debate
audience burst into laugh-
ter, too. In those days,
however, derision over
the president's emotional
pandering stuck. This time
around, the derision in the
room seemed aimed at
Congress.
Obama went on. “But
she’s right. The most im- ,
portant changes we can
make depend on congres-
sional action. ... Get them
on the record.... Ask them
what’s more important, do-
ing whatever it takes to get
an ‘A’ grade from the gun
lobby that funds their cam-
paigns, or giving parents
some peace of mind when
they drop their child off for
first grade.”
Outside the claustropho-
bic White House bubble
definitely not a gun-free
zone Americans are as
concerned as the president
with protecting their chil-
dren. Even more so, 1 think,
since schools attended
by the president's daugh-
ters and other children ot
privilege are protected by
armed guards. W'hy one
solution for elites and one
solution for everyone else?
famously, Wayne I.aPi-
erre of the National Rifle
Association has asked this
same question and been
crucified for doing so by
media stars and politicians
whose children also attend
well-guarded schools.
The NRA produced a
commercial to ask this
question that the media not
only refuse to ask but gnash
their teeth over: “Are the
president's kids more im-
portant than yours? Then
why is he ‘skeptical’ about
putting armed security in
our schools when his kids
are protected by armed
guards at their schools?”
White House spokesman
Jay Carney decried the
NRA for using the presi-
dent’s children as “pawns
in a political fight,” even
on the very day the pres-
ident was using all of our
children as pawns in his
war on the Constitution.
Carney went on, project-
ing outrage: “But to go so
far as to make the safety of
the president’s children the
subject of an attack ad is
repugnant and cowardly."
The NRA wasn't at-
tacking the “safety of the
president’s children.” The
NRA, in fact, called for a
similar level of safety for
everyone’s children.
The president's prob-’
lem is that would leave the
Constitution intact.
Diana West is the au-
thor of "The Death of the
Grown-up: How America's
Arrested Development Is
Bringing Down Western
Civilization. " and blogs at.
dianawest.net. She can be
contacted via dianawest@
verizon.net. Follow her on
Twitter @diana_west_.
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Yanelli, Adam. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 93, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, January 25, 2013, newspaper, January 25, 2013; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1066062/m1/4/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.