Pentagon lifts ban on women in combat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon lifted its ban on women in front-line combat roles on Thursday in a historic step toward gender equality in the U.S. armed forces after 11 years of nonstop war, during which the front lines were often not clearly defined.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed an order at a Pentagon news conference rescinding the rule that prevented women from serving in direct combat jobs.

"They serve, they're wounded, and they die right next to each other. The time has come to recognize that reality," Panetta said, noting that 152 women in uniform had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Over more than a decade of war, they have demonstrated courage and skill and patriotism," he said.

The move topples another societal barrier in the U.S. armed forces, two years after the Pentagon scrapped its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

President Barack Obama expressed strong support for the new policy, as did top civilian and military officials.

"Today every American can be proud that our military will grow even stronger with our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters playing a greater role in protecting this country we love," Obama said, calling the decision a "historic step."

The decision to lift the ban came with important caveats, and sweeping change will not happen overnight for women, nearly 300,000 of whom have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

The decision could open 237,000 positions to women in America's armed forces and expand opportunities for career advancement. But acceptance into the newly opened jobs will be based on gender neutral performance standards.

"Let me be clear. We are not talking about reducing the qualifications for the job," Panetta said. "If they can meet the qualifications for the job, then they should have the right to serve regardless of creed or color or gender or sexual orientation."

"There are no guarantees of success," he added. "Not everyone is going to be able to be a combat soldier. But everyone is entitled to a chance."

OPEN EVERYTHING

A senior defense official said Panetta's goal "is to open everything" to women. Service chiefs will have to ask for exceptions if they want to keep some positions closed, and any exception would have to be approved by the defense secretary.

Panetta made the decision lift the ban after the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded it was time to integrate women "to the maximum extent possible," according to a statement.

Gender-neutral performance standards will be developed for all the new jobs opening to women, officials said. But whether that means the physical requirements become more or less rigorous remains to be seen, they added, cautioning that they would depend on the actual demands of the position.

An example of a physically demanding job that may be out of reach of women without significant upper body strength could be in front-line tanks, where soldiers need to lift and load heavy ammunition in confined spaces using mainly their arms.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the changes would be gradual. The service chiefs have until May 15 to offer plans to implement the new policy by January 1, 2016.

"The secretary understands with a change of this magnitude it does take some time," the official said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a suit in November seeking to force the Pentagon to end the ban on women in combat, applauded the decision.

For many women service members, the move is belated acknowledgement of the realities of the past decade of war, in which there were often no clearly defined front lines. Of those who served in the wars, 152 have been killed, including 84 in hostile action, and nearly 1,000 have been wounded.

Women serve in combat roles for the armed forces of a few developed nations, including Canada and Israel, but officials say demand from women for such jobs in NATO nations is very low. In 2010, Britain decided after a review that it would not change rules excluding women from infantry or combat teams.

"I feel like it's beyond time," said Staff Sergeant Tiffany Evans, a soldier stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.

The United States is drawing down its some 66,000 remaining forces from Afghanistan through the end of 2014, when only a small residual force is expected to remain. It is possible that some women may see themselves in new combat roles before that withdrawal is complete.

"I don't think we can exclude that possibility," one senior defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-lifts-ban-women-combat-161333549.html

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The Conservative Left

President Obama's second inaugural address

Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.

I disagree. I think the president?s speech will be remembered for its reframing of history. Obama isn?t just trying to shape the future. He?s trying to reshape the past. He?s challenging the foundations of conservatism. And conservatives, in turn, must rethink what they stand for.

Obama infuriated the right with his invocations of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Founding Fathers. But what made his account potent is that it didn?t end there:

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together. Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.?Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life?s worst hazards and misfortune.

This is the key to Obama?s story: History is progress, and progress is history. Ideas that were once progressive?regulation, entitlements, federal management of education and the economy?are now rooted in our past. They?re conservative.

This argument is a mortal threat to the right. Smart conservatives recognize the threat. ?Obama?s larger political project,? writes Rich Lowry, is ?to reorient the American mainstream and locate conservatives outside it. He wants to take the Founders from the Right and baptize the unreconstructed entitlement state and the progressive agenda in the American creed.? In this telling of history, Lowry observes, Obama?s critics ?represent a break with the American tradition.? To defeat this account, Republicans must make a case against decades of what is now the nation?s history. As Charles Krauthammer puts it, they must block Obama?s attempt ?to restore us to the liberal ascendency of 60 years? that predated Ronald Reagan.

The problem for conservatives is that they don?t agree on which parts of our history to accept. Obama asserted, for example, that the founders? affirmation of equality ?guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.? Pat Buchanan, among others, rejects this extension of equality to homosexual relationships. ?When I was a kid,? says Buchanan, presidents talked about ?Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. What was he talking about? Stonewall. That's a barroom brawl in Greenwich Village in 1969, when cops were hassling gays and their bar, and the gays fought back and threw them all out. Does that belong in a presidential inaugural?? Similarly, in his Weekly Standard critique of the speech, Jeffrey Anderson argues that marriage has ?been defined throughout American history as the monogamous and complementary union of man and woman.?

Libertarians and moderate Republicans, however, don?t see it this way. ?I, too, would celebrate Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall,? writes David Brooks. Nick Gillespie agrees: ?What links Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall is the?removal?of governmentally sanctioned inequality, not the creation of a new entitlement or protected status.?

If conservatives can?t agree on which parts of our history to conserve, maybe they?re better off talking about which parts of ?progress? have become regressive. Maybe they should be the party not of reaction, but of reform. In the best critiques of Obama?s speech, you can find strong threads for such an argument. Stephen Hayes, rebutting Obama?s assumption that debates over the role of government have ?been settled,? rebukes the president for resisting ?structural reforms to the country?s entitlement programs.? Gillespie accuses Obama of ?defending programs that fail to achieve anything more than the dispossession of the young and powerless. That's not a progressive message.? Brooks, noting that Obama?s history left out Wall Street and Silicon Valley, argues for a national identity based on enterprise, innovation, and decentralization. ?We are bogged down with a bloated political system, a tangled tax code, a byzantine legal code,? he writes. What we face in this century is ?the task of reinvigorating a mature nation.?

Isn?t that a more appealing Republican message for the 21^st century? In the wake of the New Deal, the Great Society, and the ballooning national debt, what the GOP needs is less worship of American history, and more talk about fixing its mistakes.

William Saletan's latest short takes on the news, via Twitter:

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=d8e82b9885e97d1156c5dadf675990dc

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