The Political Voices of Women

During the past few weeks it seems that events in US politics have been moving at light speed. It’s certainly more than this blogger can keep up with. Fortunately, as I member of the Political Voices of Women Community I can count on my fellow members to keep me up to date. Here are excerpts of a few blog posts from our community. Enjoy,

From “Baker’s Dozen About Obama” by Ellen Keim

Here are thirteen of my “Obamic” impressions, for what they’re worth:

First of all, I hope people can separate what they think of Obama–either his track record or the man himself–from the historical fact of his presidency.

Second, I can’t even imagine how much pressure he feels to be the best for fear that he may ruin the chances for another black candidate.

Third, I never thought he was the “Messiah” as some did, so I never expected him to be super-human. Some people are getting disenchanted because they expected perfection and instant gratification.

Fourth, I don’t think people are giving him enough credit for what he has done, either because they don’t agree with it or because it isn’t their pet project.

Fifth, he hasn’t been President for all that long. Considering the messes he inherited, we should expect fixes to take longer than a year.

Sixth, I don’t think we have seen the positive effects yet of the way he has reached out to the Muslim community around the world.

From Marcia G Yerman, “Thoughts for a New Decade: What I Wish for Women“

As we move into a new decade, I can’t help looking over my shoulder at all the things I would like to leave behind.

VIOLENCE: Number One – Violence perpetrated against the female gender. Whether it is domestic violence behind closed doors in the United States, acid being thrown in the faces of young girls in Afghanistan trying to attend school, or rampant rape as a tool of war…It must end.

DYSFUNCTIONAL HEALTH CARE: I would like to discard health care that doesn’t take into account the needs of women, and policies that don’t speak to the disparities in care for all members of the female community at the local, state, and national levels.

UNEQUAL CHANGE: I would welcome a roll back on the wage disparities between a woman’s paycheck and a man’s, taking into account a gap that is even larger for women of color. Moving forward, I would like more support for women working in the services sector, where wages are lower and benefits are commonly non-existent. More legislated awareness for the work/life balance issues that often drive women to choices based on the need for flexibility, as they seek to mesh family responsibilities with a career agenda, would be helpful.

From Margaret, “Free Speech and Corporations“:

Over the weekend, I posted a link on my Facebook page to a Keith Olbermann commentary on the SCOTUS decision that was issued on January 21, 2010. Now, I’m not a fan of Olbermann as a general rule, but I found what he had to say pretty much nailed what has me concerned about this decision. I don’t often publish anything on Facebook that is politically oriented, but I feel as if this decision has such far-reaching implications that it transcends “politics” and really has the potential to impact my daily life. In short, it scares the living crap out of me.

And from Onedia Hayes Sylvest, “Lifting the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy — Those Arguments Against Sound Familiar“:

I am a retired navy commander. I retired in 1994 just after the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy was begun. I thought it was insufficient then and I thought the reasons for taking such a half-baked (read another word there) stand was a little brass short of what it should have been. I also heard lots of reasons (and some of those are being repeated now by such people as John McCain) that sounded remarkably familiar.

When I first entered the Navy women did not have pants in their uniforms, they had to leave the service if pregnant, their husbands could not be claimed as “dependents” without proof that the navy woman provided at least 51% of his monetary support. We did not have top ranks or positions, there were no women with stars on their shoulders and we were denied access to many jobs/skill areas solely because of our gender. Women could not serve on ships or on aircraft and the primary reasons offered sounded almost identical to those I heard in 1993 and that I am hearing now.

I know that I served with gays and lesbians in the navy. Most were talented and dedicate. Some were not or even disruptive. However, neither the talent and dedication nor the poor performance and disruptive behavior were caused by their sexual preferences. The same traits and performance were equally present in both heterosexual and homosexual service people. In those days if you wanted to get someone eyeballed by the chain of command then feed the rumor of homosexuality. In my early days many people even assumed that women in the military were probably lesbians and if not they were either looking for a husband or were not of good moral character. The environment bred, I think deliberately, some level of hostility to any who did not fit the accepted image of what a sailor, CPO or officer should be. In the 70′ the primary targets were women and homosexuals.

This is just a sampling of what women are saying.

Want to read more? Why not join us and make your voice heard.

Thanks to Marcia G. Yerman for bringing Kimberly Hefling’s article, Female Veterans Struggle for Acceptance, to my attention. As Marcia noted in her comment on the post, “Military Sexual Trauma is a major issue.”

Sadly, it’s a major issue that is gravely under-reported.

In her article, Ms Helfing writes:

“Female service members have much higher rates of divorce and are more likely to be a single parent. When they do seek help at VA medical centers, they are screening positive at a higher rate for military sexual trauma, meaning they indicated experiencing sexual harassment, assault or rape. Some studies have shown that female veterans are at greater risk for homelessness.

Former Army Sgt. Kayla Williams, an Iraq veteran who has written about her experience, said she was surprised by the response she and other women from the 101st Airborne Division received from people in Clarksville, Tenn., near Fort Campbell, Ky.

She said residents just assumed they were girlfriends or wives of military men.”

Read Kimberly Heflng’s Article at HuffingtonPost

Unbelievable! It’s sounds like Sgt. Williams is encountering people who’ve watched too many episodes of MASH and taken the fiction as gospel.

But as one response to the HuffPo article indicates, even if people view today’s service women as more than the “girlfriends and wives of military men”, many are still unaware of the scope of the problems that they face. In his comment Kidorf asked, “Are you suggesting that those female soldiers are being “offed”?

Well, Kidorf, the parents of Army Pfc Lavena Johnson may well answer that question with, YES.

On July 19, 2005, Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson was found dead in Balad, Iraq. It has been reported that when her body was discovered in a tent belonging to a private military contractor her remains displayed a black eye, broken nose, burned hands, loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals and a bullet hole in the head. The military ruled her death as a suicide.

While it is yet to be confirmed by the military that Pfc Johnson was murdered, it is certainly clear that she and many other service women have been and continue to be subjected to various forms of abuse. It is also evident that their concerns (and those of their loved ones) are largely being dismissed.

The following is a video clip from a 2008 hearing held by The Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs’ on “Sexual Assault in the Military.” In this segment, you see Subcommittee Chairman Tierney and Full Committee Chairman Waxman practically threaten Michael Dominguez, Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Defense, with contempt after he reveals that he has ordered Dr. Kaye Whitley of the DOD Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office to defy a subpoena to appear before the committee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi9Sb5nsnAM

In his opening comments to the hearing Chairman Tierney remarked:

“What’s at stake here goes to the very core of the values of the military and the nation itself. When our sons and daughters put their lives on the line to defend the rest of us, the last thing they should fear is being attacked by one of our own. We fundamentally have a duty to prevent sexual assaults in the military as much as humanly possible, and to punish attackers quickly and severely. We also must empower victims so they feel comfortable coming forward to seek justice and to receive help to get their lives back on track and to restore their dignity. Finally, we simply must ensure a climate in our military where sexual assault is in no way, either officially or unofficially, condoned, ignored, or tolerated.”

Another article which addressed this same troubling issue was “Rapists in the Ranks” by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), a must read for anyone concerned about this issue.

In this article Rep. Harman wrote:

“The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.”

She also noted:

“At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through “nonjudicial punishment,” which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of ‘insufficient evidence’.”

In the following video Massachusetts School of Law Professor Diane Sullivan interviews Kirsten Holmstedt on her book, The Girls Come Marching Home: Stories of Women Warriors Returning From The War In Iraq. In the book female veterans of the war in Iraq speak about soldiers dying on their watch, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the difficulties of returning home.

Recently, President Barack Obama announced that an additional 30,000 troops will be deployed to Afghanistan. Of course, a percentage of that number will be women. Regardless of how you feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, isn’t it time to make sure that the women who courageously serve in the armed services be treated with the respect that they have earned.

Related Posts:

Will You Become One of 25 Million?

Speak Out Against the Sexual Violence in Iraq

What Happens When Johnny Comes Marching Home

Before the post begins, I’d like to send wishes: to our readers in the US, Happy Veterans Day; to Canada and Australia, Happy Remembrance Day; and to every one else, Happy Armistice Day.

Now to the post —

Ok readers, you can get up off the floor now.

I haven’t suddenly lost my mind. But you know that I have to call them like I see them, even when it gets me into big trouble. So here goes.

In a recent interview with FoxNews on the topic of the tragedy at Ft. Hood, Ms Malkin stated:

“I don’t think that we have to play games with the rush to judgment anymore. I think that the bigger problem for the American government and their culture post 9/11 is that there are too many people still doing the rush to white-wash.“

She later states: “the red flags were missed and it behooves everyone in Congress and in Washington to figure out who dropped the ball.”

Friends, when Michelle is right, she’s right. Sadly, the rest of her argument misses the point and her statement is a few years too late.

During the rest of the interview, Ms Malkin blames the recent tragedy at Ft. Hood on “the military’s worship of the “false god of diversity” which, in her opinion, was placed before national security.

First of all, that is an insult to the military and all of the servicemen and women whom Michelle Malkin constantly criticizes liberals for not supporting. Shame on her,

Second, I submit that it wasn’t the military’s worship of diversity but rather the Bush administration’s rush to war with an all-volunteer military and a “see no evil” recruitment policy that opened the door to disaster.

In an April, 2008 post, I referenced a December 2006 article in the San Francisco Chronicle which raised very serious questions about the military’s recruitment policy. In his article, “US is recruiting misfits for army: felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks“, reporter Nick Turse wrote:

“After falling short of its goals last year, military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, and a spate of recent press reports touting the military’s achievement of its woman- and manpower goals.

But the armed forces have met with success only through a fundamental transformation, and not the transformation of the military — that ‘co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology’ that Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

In 2004, the Pentagon published a ‘Moral Waiver Study,’ whose seemingly benign goal was ‘to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success.’ That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records.

In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was ‘a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms ‘serious criminal misconduct’ in their background’ — a category that included ‘aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats.’ From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of ‘recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records.’ In fact, as the military’s own data indicated, ‘the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001.’

One beneficiary of the Army’s new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been ‘a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder.’ “

In that same post I mentioned, Paula Zahn’s 2007 report on “Gangs in the Military“. If you missed it, here’s an excerpt from the show transcript:

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): No one knows for sure just how many gang members are in the military. By some estimations, it’s less than 1 percent of all military personnel, hardly an epidemic, but enough to prompt the FBI to issue this report.

(voice-over): Gang members at military installations from Fort Lewis, Washington, to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have been involved in drug distribution, robberies, assaults, and murder. According to this 2007 internal FBI document, the report found that gang activity in the U.S. — quote — “is increasing and poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security.”

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Military men training gangsters on how to use weapons.

GUTIERREZ: An issue law enforcement is taking seriously.

Al Valdez (ph) is a former detective. He trains police around the country on gangs in the military.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s not illegal to be a gang member in the United States. And it’s a protected right. In fact, the head of Army Recruitment Command correctly states that. What happens is, they bring that gangster mentality within the military.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When these cats come back from — these gang members come back from Iraq, we are going to have some hell on these streets, because these dudes are coming back with training that’s on another level.

So, if the military was willing to overlook gang members, overt racists and felons, then it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if they may have overlooked an Islamic jihadist or two. To be clear, I said “IF”.

Of course, Ms. Malkin may not read the San Francisco Chronicle or be a fan of Paula Zahn but there were other signs that the recruitment demands placed on the military by the Bush administration’s rush to the war in Iraq and lack of an exit strategy would have serious consequences. Where was her concern then?

Oh yes, I forgot. Ms. Malkin was busy labeling anyone who expressed a concern about the war as a “traitor”, “a coward” and “an enemy sympathizer.”

Yes, when Michelle Malkin is right, she’s partially right. “The red flags were missed and it behooves everyone in Congress and in Washington to figure out who dropped the ball.“

Related posts:

What Happens When Johnny Comes Marching Home

The Illusion of An All Volunteer Army

originally posted on Pam’s Coffee Conversation

If you apply the Sarah Palin standard the majority of the people who lost their lives in that big-city, eastern, liberal bastion of New York City would not be considered as “real Americans”. Nor would those “Washington insider” Pentagon employees or the majority of passengers on Flight 93 meet the Palin standard.

And when you think about it, a large number of US troops probably do not meet the Palin “real American” criteria either.

Of course, as suggested by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), the media can always conduct an in-depth investigation to see if members of our military are “pro-America”. After all, swearing an oath of allegiance isn’t enough proof. And if you don’t tow the GOP line, being a decorated general and former Secretary of State doesn’t count for much either.

Here is a guest post from community member Onedia Hayes Sylvest.

[If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Political Voices of Women, just join our community, and start posting.]

Last November 26 as the race for nomination began in earnest I posted an Open Letter to the Candidates. I think it relevant that I now post it again with a few additions highlighted in bold.

Well, since it is here and easy to step onto, I am pulling out the soapbox this morning. This is an open letter to all the presidential candidates about what I want from my next president. Here it is not in priority order since I don’t want to make this too hard:

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It doesn’t make much sense, and you might assume that because John McCain is the candidate who is a veteran himself, that his record on veterans’ benefits would be superior.  But, you would be wrong.  So, why is John McCain claiming to have an excellent voting record on veterans’ benefits and other veterans’ issues?  I imagine, it’s for votes.  He appears to be putting his campaign ahead of the welfare of veterans. What do you think?

Taking on McCain on Veterans’ Issues…

In the first presidential debate a couple of weeks ago, John McCain boasted that he’s always been a champion for veterans. I’ll take care of them,” he said. “And they know I’ll take care of them.”

Unfortunately for McCain, facts keep getting in the way of the claim.

In recent years, McCain’s ratings from veterans’ groups have been less than impressive. The Vietnam Veterans of America, for example, recently compiled a list of key votes, and found McCain voted against the group’s position 15 times and with the group eight times. (Obama, in contrast, voted with the VVA 12 times, and against it only once.)

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This is an interesting question. Are you better off than you were eight years ago? Do you know anyone who is? Just wondering. Let me know in comments.

“I don’t torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can,
quicker than the other fellow if I can. Often my haste is a mistake,
but I live with the consequences without complaint.“— from “Worth Fighting For” by John McCain and Mark Salter, 2002

Is this the person who you want with the power to deploy US troops?

Is this the person who you want with the ability to launch a nuclear assault?

Is this the person who you want attempting to influence the US economy?

Are you willing to live with the consequence’s of John McCain’s quick decisions without complaint?

If I worked for the Obama campaign this would be the one quote that I would repeat in ads over and over and over again.

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Here is a guest post by community member Moi, she also blogs at Bloggg.

[If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Political Voices of Women, just join our community, and start posting.]

Did you notice Dumbya’s eyes last night? Red. More beady than usual….but instead of idiocy, the characteristic smirk has a snicker behind it. And he seemed zoned out. Something is going on. It could be drugs, but I think it’s something else…..

Here’s the text of his speech from last night.

Outside of FEAR! and DANGER!, he is blaming the people for buying houses and things – not that he WANTED people to do this, ya know – for the problems the economy is having. That’s Delphi. Turn stuff around, blame it on the victim, and make it sound feasible. Delphi is what Hitler used. How many times have Dems compared the Bush administration to Hitler’s?

I keep mentioning Delphi lately in my posts. We parents of special needs kids know from Delphi. All politicians use it in some form, too, but I’ve never seen it used as much as I have this election. Obama’s used it, successfully, in the primary. Saul Alinsky, the guy who developed the Delphi technique, was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s thesis. So that makes the primary even more pathetic. But I digress….

What Fearless Brainless Leader didn’t explain to the American people was how the Fed is desperate because they are overextended, and China pretty much owns us. Their butts are in a sling, no matter what else is going on….and they are counting on the wimpiness of the Dems to bail them out.

Of course, there were no solutions in his speech that would benefit the American people, like paying off everyone’s credit cards and loans, or giving everyone in the country a million dollars and then requiring them to pay off their loans….which would be a lot less than them giving all that money to the institutions. Institutions, heh, that is a good name for them. That’s where the people who run these things belong…. But Heaven Forbid the Fed bail out real people, instead of real assholes.

The flip side of the coin? We’ve all joked at some time that Bush/Cheney would probably pull a martial law stunt, just so the Republicans could stay in office. It seems that that might not be such a joke.

Think about it. McCain suspending his campaign. When Hillary and Edwards suspended theirs, they basically quit. But – Is McCain not suspending, and just getting out of the way in preparation for a major move by the guy he supported 90% of the time? Is this our October Surprise?

Actually it’s probably more of a Dicktator Cheney move. Bush is too dumb for a move like this. People, in our zeal to return the pResidency to the Dems, and with Bush/Cheney keeping a low profile, we are not thinking about them. HOW many times have we all talked about this kind of thing?? We must never turn our back on scum. All these little things I am about to mention have happened in dribs and drabs. They’ve been easy to miss, or put aside. There is too much to truly be coincidence, especially with the timing….

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