corrente

Through-out the nineties, the right carried on a curious campaign of hostile criticism against the US armed forces. It was a major component of that decade's share of the never ending rightwing declarations that the culture wars, which for the right have always been politics by other means, are still going on. The wedge issue was expanded roles for women in the military. The targets of rightwing ire, who else but "radical feminists," (as if there were any other kind in the rightwing world view), and their pandering puppets in the Clinton administration, of which the most important was the "Pander-in-Chief," Bill Clinton.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, another one of those right-wing front groups, was the pointwoman for most of the attacks, but the likes of Kate O"Beirne and Laura Ingraham got in their licks, too, often attacking the top ranks of the military for being afraid of the feminist lobby, and BTW, without ever being accused of being unAmerican, or rooting for our enemies.

The right has never acknowledged the reality that in an all volunteer armed forces, women doing jobs that take them to the edge, if not right into combat zones, is inescapable. It has nothing to do with feminists or whose in the Presidency, it has always had been a case of military necessity. That's why the Bush administration has done nothing to restore the rules on how women are allowed to serve back to the pre-Clinton days.

One of the most effective of the right's attacks on the notion that women in the military should do no more than hover at the edges of the action was the question they loved to ask, about how America would feel when women soldiers became POWs, when women soldiers started coming home in body bags. The implication was that Americans would fall apart and demand, if not a return to the days of the WACs and the WAVEs, but at the very least, to a military use of women that vindicated the gender views of the right, and further isolated from the mainstream, the feminist left.

Well, now we have the answer to that question. In Iraq, three women became POWs, and one of them, Pfc. Lori Piestewa, tragically, returned in a body bag, but the Rockies didn't tumble, Gibralter didn't crumble, and the American public took it all in stride. In the case of Pfc Lynch, they fairly grooved on her story, at first, anyway, and no place more than on Fox News.

Pfc Lynch presented a real problem to Donnelly and most other rightwing commentators. Here's Jane Chastain in an April 10th column typical of the way many on the right struggled with how to respond to Jessica's story.

Private Lynch survived the ambush in Iraq of the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, but can she survive the ambush of the feminine forces of political correctness that placed her in harm's way.

These people want to use her to promote their theory that men and women soldiers are the same.

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The feminists found willing accomplices in Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter – who viewed war as unnecessary – and Bill Clinton, who wasn't above hiding behind the skirts he was unable to lift.

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Unfortunately, all these changes in law and regulations were made with little fanfare, little mention in the press. Also, a myth was perpetrated that once combat positions were open to women, they simply would be allowed to decide if they wished to accept these dangerous assignments.

That myth was shattered on March 23, 2003, when the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company was ambushed after being lost, resulting in the capture of Pfc. Lynch, who is one of the more fortunate members of her unit.

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No one doubts the bravery of the women of the 507th. Let's just hope that Pfc. Lynch is as brave in confronting the feminists, when it comes time to address these truths, as she was in standing up to the paramilitary in Iraq.

Will she become a soldier of truth – or remain a prisoner of political correctness?

Of course it's nonsense to say that feminists tried to use Lynch; for the most part, we were wise enough not to to hype the clear reality that Americans were willing to accept that when women become soldiers, some of them are going to get captured, and some are going to get killed.

Here's Elaine Donnelly in a story posted at Free Republic, dated in June, asking some hard questions of the Pentagon about what happened to the women taken capture in Iraq. I suspect that many on the left would applaud some of the questions. But in Donnelly's case they betray a gnawing anxiety that the Bush administration is playing the story all wrong. In the comments thread that follows, there is mainly angry support for Donnelly's take on why Lynch's story supports everything Donnelly's ever thought or said about women in the military, but there are some surprises there, too.

When at the end of this week, ABC began to leak some of what Lynch says in her interview with "Diane," the Freeper mood and hearts began hardening toward Jessica, but even here, they're are a few surprises.

Of course women soldiers are still dying in Iraq. And they're still working side by side with their male compatriots, asking for no quarter, giving none. My take on what I've seen in the film from Iraq is that this is an armed forces that truly represents America today, men and women of all races, from red and blue states, working together as comrades, with the utmost professionalism. I'm not talking about what they're being asked to do. They don't have control over that. And please, no comments that they're war criminals for not refusing to serve. Anyone who believes that simply hasn't read enough of the testimonies of those who've been the victims of war crimes.

In their obsession with the ruination of all American instutitions, especially the American military, by the forces of so-called "political correctness," it just might finally be the rightwing that is falling out of step with the mainstream.