WOMEN IN COMBAT!
Did we scare you? Did the idea of a woman near a battlefield send a shiver of fear down your spine?
Cool. Get used to the idea.
This week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will lift a ban that prevents women from serving in combat.
According to a report from the Associated Press, the reversal of the ban opened “hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after generations of limits on their service.”
“I can confirm media reports that the secretary and the chairman are expected to announce the lifting of the direct combat exclusion rule for women in the military,” said a senior Defense Department official, according to ABC News. “This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
That sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo jargon, right?
Basically, Panetta signed away a ban that will be fully lifted by 2016. Some of those new jobs and positions could open up this year, others may take more time.
Either way, what a great step forward for women. There’s no reason anyone in military and combat situations should be shamed or looked down on because they are the “fairer sex.”
We’re about to finally pass the point where we have to keep proving ourselves able.
“Panetta also directed the services to examine ways to open more combat roles to women,” ABC News wrote. “However, the ban on direct combat positions has remained in place.”
An official announcement from Panetta’s office is expected some time this week, and hopefully it will give us more details. Because that quote from the article seems to hint that women still aren’t “allowed” in direct combat positions.
We want total equality. It shouldn’t matter what sex or orientation a person is. “Women comprise about 14 percent of the 1.4 million active military personnel,” the Associated Press wrote. We matter.
About a year ago, the Pentagon “unveiled a new policy that opened up 14,000 more posts for women in the military,” according to an article on Slate. That decision was made before two female Army reservists filed a lawsuit “seeking to overturn the U.S. military’s restrictions on women in combat, claiming it violated their constitutional rights.”
They claimed the no-combat rule was based solely on sex and “violated their right to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment and ‘restricts their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits.’”
There’s no good argument to keep women off battlefields or out of leadership positions in the military. None.
It certainly seems like President Obama’s administration is working toward equality on all fronts. Remember when he ended the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy?
