More than 60,000 women have been deployed overseas in support of Iraq war

[bigtree]

Homefront tugs at mother-soldiers likely heading overseas

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Spc. Jessica Ellington, who will soon deploy to Iraq for up to 18 months, has tried to prepare her 2-year-old daughter, Brianna, for her impending absence.

"I told her that Mommy's going bye-bye for a long time," Ellington said. "Being gone a day is a long time for her, so she really doesn't understand."

To ease the transition, Ellington recorded her voice in a stuffed animal for Brianna to listen to at night.

Ellington, 21, has plenty of company as she juggles her dual roles as soldier and mother. Nearly 70 percent of the 60 soldiers in her Indiana National Guard detachment are women, reflecting a trend that has seen the number of women at war rise more than 700 percent since Vietnam.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/8622025.htm
________________________________

I just don't know. Some countries fight wars to protect their women and children. We offer them up as war fodder for a group of pencil pusher's world domination schemes.

What becomes of a society which exhausts the bulk of its defenses in a war of opportunity and foolishly commits the heart and soul of its population in its isolating defeat?

How could we lose any worse by pulling out? What a waste! We have lost in Iraq, but we stand to lose more for some false notion of victory, made hollow by the forfeiting of the last shred of justification for this war, the 'liberation' of Iraqis, with the exposure of our ugly policies of mistreatment and abuse of detainees and others in Iraq.

No American should delude themselves that America will ever liberate Iraq until we have withdrawn our repressive, occupying forces and dismantled our false, installed authority (in Iraq and here at home).


Me Book

[FireHeart]

1. Women have the right

to defend their country in whatever way they are capable. It makes no difference if women OR men are sent into battle/support groups--they all signed up to protect our Constitution. If they weren't aware of that, well, the recruiters failed their duty and those recruits obviously never read their contracts in full.

I'm not saying the war in Iraq is wrong or right. I'm just looking at things realistically. If those 60,000 women were NOT there, then we'd need an additional 70,000 men to take their place. :evilgrin:

[bigtree]

2. Yeah. Undeniable right.

I don't have to like it. I respect the wishes of any woman who wishes to serve. I think that ship has sailed, and I wouldn't work against that. I don't have any stomach for the harming of these women soldiers, however. Especially the ones with children. I don't see a need to deploy these women with children for a needless war on Iraq. Under Bush, both parents have been called to serve. All for a losing war of opportunity. When we exhaust this vulnerable tier of our defenses, and it comes to a draft, I wonder how many American sacrifices will folks tolerate for the ambitions of this cabal.

The point is that we are running out of regular and reserve duty soldiers and we are reaching farther than ever before to fill the conquering ambitions of this imperialistic confederation of counterfeit losers. The war in Iraq is lost. No lives lost are worth the trumped-up justifications Bush has used to keep us there.

[liveoaktx]

5. I have a cousin that has been written up twice in the Dallas Morning News

first time for the Gulf War, where she met her now-husband, and second time for this war. Both she and her husband were sent overseas and their child is watched by grandparents. I find that absurd.

[hippywife]

6. I seriously believe

that all the majority of the current recruits signed up for economic reasons and were comforted by the fact that there has been little or no serious conflict since Vietnam. Everything since then has been a quick in and out and fought like a video game. I don't think any of them had any idea that they were going to be so screwed by the mistakes of this adminsitration.

[bigtree]

3. All moms deployed away from home-

Happy Mother's Day.

[hippywife]

7. Indeed...

for those who avoid General Discussion Campaign 2004:

Mother's Day Proclamation, penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy
and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the
summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the
dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to
the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of
Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of
nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most
convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.


Happy Mother's Day to all from the women of the Kucinich Campaign!

[kentuck]

4. They think it is "equality"...

???

[bigtree]

8. I think a nation that allows mothers with young children to be deployed

to unecessary conflicts cannot claim to value families and has lost the moral high ground that it supposedly sent these women out to defend. This is one tenent of equality that I don't share. Women make fine soldiers. They serve with strength, dignity, and honor. But I have a hard time watching them fight and die in this war of opportunity.

Women have served in every major war in U.S. history. Women served as nurses, parachute riggers, mechanics, map-makers, translators, intelligence operatives and welders, among other assignments. During the fall of the Philippines, 81 women were captured by the Japanese and spent 37 months in prisoner of war camps. Over 400 women were killed in the war, and approximately 400,000 women served at home and overseas.

Approximately 7,500 American military women, mostly nurses, served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Seven were killed in the line of duty.

More than 40,000 women served in the Gulf, flying helicopters on reconnaissance and search and rescue missions, driving convoys, staffing patriot missile placements, piloting planes and guarding POWs, among other duties. Women comprised 7 percent of the deployed force. Thirteen women were killed in the line of duty during Desert Storm and two were taken as prisoners of war.

Despite their increased roles and representation in the ranks, women are not permitted to serve in direct ground combat, which excludes them from infantry, armored and special forces units. Submarine warfare also remains closed to women.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1265/context/archive

Are our mothers expendable? Not until recently, and I regret that. I think that the deployment of these women soldiers with young children is wrong. I wish we could recognize that and end these deployments. I don't think I will get much support from the women, so, I guess I lose this argument. But I wish they weren't fighting and dying in the worthless occupation of Iraq. I wish none of our soldiers had to sacrifice there for Bush's whim.

That's the pain I have: This war is not necessary. As we sacrifice more lives to satisfy Bush's pride, I wonder how far we will go to militarize Americans who haven't traditionally been considered for combat, to what end? I don't agree that war is an inevitability. I don't agree that we should prepare all of our citizens for combat and killing. I long for the days where we barred women from combat, if only for the fact that that would be one less segment that would fight and die for some militaristic nonsense. That's right, militaristic nonsense. That's how we got here. Peace is how we stop the madness. All I see is this mindset to war, and more war to end war.

We can pull back from our world domineering ambitions, and value all of these soldier's lives as we modify our manufactured mandates to conquer. Women with young children should not be deployed away from home. It's a matter of priorities, I think.

[VelmaD]

9. More paternalistic nonsense...

if women with small children shouldn't be deployed then MEN with small children should not be deployed either. Otherwise you're just perpetuating the notion that women belong at home with their children while men go out and deal with the big bad world. And you're perpetuating the idea that women are responbile for the raising of children and fathers are somehow not important.

[bigtree]

10. Yeah. I expected that

I understand the point you are making. I think more men have taken ultimate responsibility for raising children. I have not doubt that they can do as well as women, but I would note the number of fatherless children is high and the majority of our nation's children are still cared for during the day by women.

Paternalistic nonsense? Perhaps. I do see the change in military policy towards women, however, as another erosion of the home base of non-militaristic contributions, another tier of society who is now seen as expendable in our petty wars. I wish we could have kept these folks away from the war games of this men's club. I think that the elevation of women into the higher ranks- despite my wishes that they would not participate in war or war-making- could perhaps bring some restraint and reasonableness to the process by which we declare and wage these petty wars.

[swinney]

11. Promise Keepers-Oh! Promise Keepers wherefore art thou

The group stresses woman's place is in home baking cookies and raising kids.

But they back every move by Bush and were for war on innocents.

Nice policy fellows. Sounds like Taliban trained the group.

[bigtree]

13. Great. So, now I'm akin to conservatives, Bush or the Taliban

I'd rather the women were not at war. That doesn't mean that I want to dictate the roles they would play in society. I would just rather they wouldn't be in combat, especially in this military corporatism that drives these overseas engagements and deployments.

I think it's shortsighted ambition that puts these ambitions ahead of the important service that women give to their families at home. On the other hand, I don't see how I can object to some woman who wants to serve and die and is able to persuade a majority of our society and a majority of our electors that they should be given that opportunity. I just wouldn't advocate it or encourage it. I wouldn't stand in the way. These are honest feelings of, yes, paternalism, and also love for our nation's mothers. I don't want them to die in these petty wars. I can't stop them, but I wish they wouldn't go an kill, fight, and die for needless expansionism.

Our nation's military priorities have shifted from defense to military hegemony, or dominance. I don't see the nobility in using these forces for some executive's ambition in Washington. Defense is honorable, needless aggression is folly, and wrong. As we reach further into the part-time forces and the reserve guard to support our losing folly in Iraq, we expose more of these mothers with young children to full-time combat duty.

I am suggesting that we can prioritize, and pull back our military ambitions and allow these women, and single men with dependent children also, to continue to provide that important support at home which is at least as valuable to our nation as their service abroad in the Bush's costly wars of opportunity.

[kentuck]

12. Yes. Women should be treated like pawns ...just like men....

That is the definition of equality by today's standards. If men can become cruel animals of war, why shouldn't women? It's only fair.

[bigtree]

14. I don't think men should be pawns

I would seek to restrain as many segments of our society as I could to refrain from war. Service in defense of the country is honorable. Other services, parenthood, civil duties, are likewise honorable.

I wouldn't value warring over other service. I would go further to suggest that there are many services that are more valuable than warring. Why did we go to war with Iraq? Can't we distinguish between pursuits and place the value of different services accordingly? Why is contrived war more valuable than other interests?