In
1968, I was a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine with a
student deferment and a B+ grade average. I thought I was pretty well
immune to the draft. Besides, NROTC had turned me down for officer
training due to poor eyesight and had refused to give me a waiver despite a
99th percentile score on the mental fitness examination. And someone
had once told me that flat feet (I had fallen arches) were an automatic
disqualification.
Then came the Tet Offensive. The
war in Vietnam was becoming uglier and the military needed more
conscripts. Unable to supply the sharply increased quota of men under
existing guidelines, the Orange County, California, Draft Board, with whom I had
registered, decided to eliminate student deferments for everyone who did
not have a "war essential major." My major was Social Science and
within weeks I received a notice that I had been reclassified to
I-A.
The rules had suddenly changed and I and my fellow
classmates found ourselves struggling with our consciences. Some
decided to resist and others went to Canada but I, being the son of a
career Navy non-commissioned officer, did not have those options. The playing field had
been unfairly tilted against me and there wasn't much I could do
about it.
My solution to the dilemma was to
enlist. To my complete and utter surprise, they took me - coke bottle
lenses, flat feet, and all. At 5'11" and less than 140 pounds, I
wasn't much to look at physically. However, my drill sergeant had a
talent for pounding round pegs like me into square holes and he made a
soldier out of me and others that were in even worse shape than
I was. Surely if the Army could make a man out of me, it could
do the same with anyone - including women.
Rachel
Stein had kicked my ass in the 6th grade and shattered any notions I had of
male superiority and invincibility. Why was Rachel Stein exempt from
the draft? Slogging through the jungle, I couldn't help but think
that she really belonged here more than I did. Besides, the Army had
sent me to Panama where the chances of being shot were not huge and I could
see no reason why a woman could not do my job. I became a staunch
advocate of equal rights for women not so much out of any sloppy liberal
sentiment as from pragmatism and personal experience.
After earning an Honorable Discharge and getting an early out to go back to
college, I heard an announcement on the radio that the Selective Service System was
looking for volunteers to serve on local draft boards. I applied and
was approved despite having clearly voiced my decidedly dissident views to
the officer-in-charge. I thought I could better bring about change
from within. But now, 20 years later, I am still struggling to bring
about some of those changes and have never heard anyone give a satisfactory
explanation as to why women don't have to register for the
draft.
The draft is currently inactive. With the
demise of the Cold War, it is unlikely that Congress will deviate from its
policy of having an all-volunteer Army. But it keeps the Selective
Service System around as an insurance policy - just in case a lot of
warm bodies should be needed in a hurry.
To my mind
equal rights involves more than getting a piece of the pie - if it is to be
lasting it must entail an equal share of the obligations. No
Orwellian feat of logic could justify making some more equal than others in
a democracy such as ours.
In order to get a better grasp
of the issue, we need to study the history of conscription, the role of
women in combat, and how women came to be excluded from the requirement of
registering for the draft in the United States. The exclusion is
total. A woman who volunteers to register with the Selective Service
System will not be permitted to do so.
Conscription,
i.e. compulsory enrollment in a country's armed forces, is probably as old
as civilization itself. We know for a fact that the Egyptian Old
Kingdom (27th century BC) used a draft to flesh out its
armies.
Variations of conscription were used by Prussia,
Switzerland, Russia, and several other European nations to supply soldiers
for the conflicts that ravaged the continent during the 17th and
18th centuries. The first comprehensive nationwide system was
started by the French Republic and expanded by Napoleon after he
ascended the throne in 1803. Following the devastating defeat at
Waterloo in 1815 it was discontinued, but was reinstated a few years
later with significant restrictions.
In 1807 Prussia
inaugurated a system of conscription that was soon emulated by many
European nations. The Prussians got around limitations dictated by
Napoleon concerning the strength of their army by calling up the permitted
number of men (42,000), training them rigorously for a short period of time, then
placing them on inactive status so as to be able to call up a new
contingent. In this way they were able to build a powerful reserve
force while not openly defying Napoleon.
During the
Civil War, Congress responded to the need for huge armies by passing draft
legislation. However, this first attempt at a conscription system was
so obviously unfair (men with enough money could pay a fee to have someone
else take their place) that it sparked riots in New York and other large
Northern cities. It was dismantled following the South's surrender
and was not needed again until the advent of the First World
War.
In 1873 Japan abandoned hereditary militarism for a
conscript system. Despite its elitist samurai tradition, Japan
adopted the spirit behind the mass citizen army in a more wholehearted
manner than any of the Western nations. About 150,000 males were
called up for training each year. The conscripts served a two year
term and were made to feel that it was an honor to serve. By the
dawn of World War II, most officers came from humble origins and
could claim greater affinity with the enlisted men. The conscript
army during this period was viewed as a living symbol of upward
social mobility by impoverished peasants, who served in and supported
it with fanatical devotion.
Both Britain and the
Soviet Union found it necessary to draft women during World War II.
At the end of the war, Britain had 19 percent of its males and two percent
of its females serving under arms. While the majority of female
conscripts in the Soviet army served in regular combat units, their English
female counterparts did not.
On September 16, 1940,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service
Act into law, establishing the first peacetime draft in U.S. history and
placing it firmly under civilian control. As World War II began to
produce more and more carnage, a critical shortage of trained nurses
developed. In his state-of-the-union-address on January 6, 1945,
Roosevelt proposed that the law be amended by Congress "to provide for the
induction of nurses into the Armed Forces." A 1945 opinion poll showed
that 78 percent of Americans believed that there was a shortage of
nurses in the military and 72 percent favored drafting women. The
House of Representatives passed HR 2277 by a vote of 347-42 calling
for the draft of nurses and the bill received a favorable report
from the Senate Military Affairs Committee where a provision
exempting married women was struck out. The American Nurse
Association and the National Nursing Council gave the bill their full
support and also supported passage of a National Service Act that would
make all women subject to the draft. But with the surrender of Germany in May, the
urgency diminished and the legislation died quietly. As the Second
World War ended with the surrender of Japan, the draft was permitted
to expire, but was revived less than two years later at the beginning of the
Cold War.
From 1948 until 1973, the draft was used to
fill positions in the military for which there were not enough
volunteers. Protest against U.S. involvement in the War in Vietnam
sparked resistance to the draft in the late 1960's, persuading Congress to
create an all-volunteer military beginning in 1973.
The registration requirement was suspended in April 1975, but was resumed
again in 1980 when Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Although President
Carter pleaded with Congress to change the law to include women, Congress
chose not to act upon his request.
There have been
several court cases over the years concerning the role of women in the
military, but there has yet to be a case which directly challenges the
constitutionality of laws excluding women from combat arms. In the
case of Frontiero vs. Richardson, the court rejected the notion that "man
is, or should be, woman's protector or defender," which was found in
actuality to put women not on a pedestal as was alleged, but rather in a
cage. In Satty vs. Nashville Gas Company, the decision stated that
gender should not be used to determine who was capable of performing the
duties of a soldier. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of
Schlesinger vs. Ballard that excluding women from combat does not permit
them to gain the experience required for promotion within the
military because leadership training that can solely be acquired in
combat is usually needed to qualify for high-level
positions.
In May 1995 the U.S. Army Research Institute
of Environmental Medicine at Natick, Massachusetts, began a 24 week
training study to determine if women could develop the strength and
endurance to perform duties normally assigned to men. At the start,
less than 25 percent of the 41 women studied were capable of performing
the tasks. But after following a regimen of jogging, weight
lifting, and similar rigorous exercise which included running two miles
with a 75-pound rucksack and performing squats while holding a
barbell on their shoulders, over 75 percent passed. Nationally
certified trainers oversaw the conditioning. All but one of the women
were civilian volunteers. None had previously exercised regularly
and several had recently given birth to children. The conclusions
of this study were later confirmed when a similar study conducted by the
Ministry of Defence in Britain produced similar results. The British
study also noted that operational performance was greatly enhanced in
groups "if both sexes are involved."
But studies cannot
produce actual combat conditions. Therein lies the objection of many
experts that has effectively prevented women from assuming men's roles in
combat arms (artillery, armor, and infantry). However, their
misogynistic judgments are refuted by the historical
evidence.
In October of 1778 Deborah Samson of Plymouth,
Massachusetts, disguised herself as a young man and enlisted for the
duration of the Revolutionary War as Robert Shirtliffe. During three years of
service, she was wounded twice - suffering a sword cut on the side of the
head and (four months later) a shot through the shoulder. Had she
not come down with a brain fever, her true sexual identity might
have never been disclosed. A physician discovered her charade and
she was discharged from the service with a sum of money sufficient
to pay her travel expenses home. Years later, during the
presidency of George Washington, Congress granted her a pension, in
addition to a parcel of land, acknowledging her services to the country
as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, in part due to efforts on
her behalf by Paul Revere.
When the United States went to war with Mexico in 1846, Elizabeth Newcom enlisted in Company D of the Missouri Volunteer Infantry as Bill Newcom. She marched 600 miles from Missouri to Pueblo, Colorado, before being discovered and discharged.
During the Civil War, women provided care and nursing to Union and Confederate soldiers in field hospitals. In 1866 Dr. Mary Walker was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Twenty nurses died as a result of the Spanish-American War. Of the 21,480 Army nurses who served during World War I, more than 400 died in the line of duty.
In 1915 Madame Arno
organized a regiment of Parisian women to fight the Germans. A number
of women served the French forces as military pilots during World War
I. Emilienne Moreau was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the British Red
Cross Medal and the St. John Ambulance Society Medal for outstanding
bravery during the Battle of Loos in which she killed two snipers. In
1940 she would again fight for France, earning a second Croix de
Guerre.
Elaine Mordeaux, a leader of French resistance
forces, staged a successful attack against the 101st Panzers. Her
unit, a third of whom were women, disabled almost one hundred trucks and
tanks, assisting the allied invasion of Normandy by delaying the
advance of the panzer division to the coast.
Odette
Sansom, a French widow with three daughters, became an operative in the
French Section of British Special Operations and organized a resistance
unit in Auxerre. Following capture by the Germans, she was sent to a
concentration camp. A subsequent escape attempt resulted in solitary
confinement on reduced rations for more than a year before she was
liberated in April 1945. Her extraordinary bravery earned her the
George Cross.
Ho Te Que, adjutant of the 44th Rangers as
well as the mother of seven children, led Vietnamese troops successfully
against the Viet Cong in the Delta Region. She died in battle in
1965.
Wang Yunmei, now a robust 90 year old great-grandmother,
enlisted in the Women's Detatchment of the Chinese Red Army at the age
of 20. Barely five feet tall, she went to battle with a newborn baby strapped
to her back. In a recent interview with Los Angeles Times staff writer Ching-Ching
Ni, Wang reminesced, "I thought to myself, what is there to fear? If I die, my
daughter cannot survive, If she dies I won't want to live. Let's live together
and die together."
The official U.S. Army website has an article about two women MPs who hoofed it with the infantry in Afghanistan, carrying weapons and full packs. It's the same old story. Men advance in their careers while the most that women can hope to achieve is an official pat on the head. When it comes to soldiering, women are still being treated like second class citizens.
In the first week of the Second Gulf War, U.S. Marine Lieutenant Jennifer Hackwith, executive officer of "Hellbent Charlie Company," of the 7th Engineer Support Battalion was traveling in a convoy towards an airfield in northeastern Iraq when her unit came under assault by small arms and rocket fire. Some of the women in her command drove five ton trucks while others manned the .50 caliber machine guns mounted on turrets that guarded the convoy. According to Hackwith, fighting is part of the job. When the four-year veteran was asked by a reporter how it felt to be a fighting Marine, she instantly replied, "It rocks!"
Section 1(c) of the Military Selective Service
Act, proclaims "that in a free society the obligations and privileges of
serving in the armed forces and the reserve components thereof should
be shared generally, in accordance with a system of selection which is
fair and just, and which is consistent with the maintenance of an effective
national economy." As of August 16, 2000, more than 43,257,793 young
men have registered with Selective Service since it was reorganized in
1980. By doing so, they demonstrated their willingness to serve their
country. That women were not accorded the same privilege is indeed an
injustice. Now that war has been declared on terrorism and President
Bush is committing ground forces, perhaps Congress will reform the Selective
Service System to make it more equitable by ending gender discrimination.
It is possible in Afghanistan for women to be treated like beasts
of burden precisely because gender ignorance has been codified into law. We
pride ourselves on being democratic, but when it comes to the draft, we aren't
much better than the Taliban.
Registration can be as simple as answering a
few questions on a website or dropping a postcard in the mail. The
possibility of ever being called to serve is remote. Considering the
importance of maintaining a high standard of national defense, I personally do not
think it is too much to ask of a young person, male or female. There
is (or should be) a price paid for citizenship and enjoying our hard won
freedoms. True equality demands that there be no free rides.
Besides, should the world suddenly go to hell in a hand basket and the
worst possible scenario come to pass, it may be of comfort to note that
U.S. military forces are provided with unisex body bags that know no
gender.