Obama Honors Women in Combat

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 5:54 AM on October 14, 2008.

In July of this year, a grim threshold was passed: 100 female service members had died in Iraq. Sixty-one of those deaths were hostile; i.e. "occurring during combat or enemy attacks," despite the fact that women are still not officially allowed to serve in combat positions. It's one of the "women's issues" that doesn't get much attention, but for the thousands of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the families of those women, it's no small thing -- not just being officially prohibited from serving "on the front lines," but the reality that many of them already are serving "on the front lines" in two wars where the front lines can be wherever the next suicide bomber decides they'll be.

So this is pretty significant:

Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.

"Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should be updated to reflect realities on the ground," said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama's national security spokeswoman. "Barack Obama would consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain."

It's not a promise to allow women to serve equally, but the recognition that women are already in serving in combat is a big step in the right direction.

More of this, please.

Oh, and neither candidate supports reinstating the draft, but, in that eventuality, only one of them supports requiring women to sign up with the Selective Service, while the other one doesn't, probably because he thinks the womenfolk need to keep the hearth warm for the brave boys coming home or something equally retrofucktastic. If you guessed the anti-egalitarian asshat is John McCain, give yourself 1,000 points.

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Tagged as: iraq, women, troops, obama, afghanistan, combat

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.