Tragedy or discrimination???

Tragedy or discrimination???

Not so many male Marines or male soldiers in other services who had perished tragically in the Iraq war have a chance to have their stories told in such a detail several months after the incident on the front page of a major newspaper, but of course, women are different.

In an article titled “A Mission That Ended in Inferno for 3 Women” on New York Times on 20 November, the author tried to see the evidence of subtle discrimination against women soldiers in combat in Iraq. He asks whether the protection of the cargo trucks that carried women were adequate, why old cargo trucks and not Humvee, why mistake in the tactic in dealing with a strange car, why women had to commute to a checkpost while men didn’t need to, and concludes that protection measures for the women were all inadequate, and blame the Marine for it.

Never mind that Humvees were in short supply and not everyone get the best equipment, never mind that there are confusion among military brass about assigning women to combat roles, those advocate for women’s rights and women’s role in combat will never be happy until women soldiers get the best protection and best equipment available in the field which may or may not be available to male soldiers or even commanders, and be given the priority and best opportunity for conducting mission and gain visibility for their actions, so that women soldiers could succeed in their career, replace males in the commanding positions perhaps.

Thus, advocates routinely pull up advocacy pieces like this and put on a cover page, and put pressure on the Generals and military planners in the Pentagon and on the ground to accommodate and give special consideration to women soldiers. This puts unnecessary burden on the military planners and forces them to take into consideration politically correct, gender sensitive considerations in military planning and thus compromise the overall mission effectiveness.
Iraq war is getting increasingly complicated – complicated not only by the actual security situation on the ground, but also by political situation at home, which includes not only assaults by Democrats on President Bush’s war efforts but media with gender agenda starting to investigate and publish in-depths stories of the incident each and every time when casualties of the incidents happen to be women. Oh, I almost forgot that there were also three men who were killed during this attack (surprisingly, same number of men and women were killed but the former were mentioned so scarcely in the article)