Elaine Donnelly, CMR President
The Center for Military Readiness
P.O. Box 51600
Livonia, MI 48151
Dear Mrs. Donnelly:
You are quoted a number of times in a recent New York Times piece about the “troubling” rise in the number of women killed during military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. To those who claim that a woman soldier’s life is equal to a man’s you say that “deliberate exposure of women to combat violence in war is tantamount to acceptance of violence against women in general.” As a nation, you say, it shows that we are “willing to tolerate violence against women as long as it occurs at the hands of the enemy.”
This is certainly troubling, but I am not sure that it is more troubling than our acceptance of violence against men. Before these women appeared on the scene and joined the statistics of those killed in action, why did we tolerate and accept violence against male soldiers and their deaths in the thousands? Why do we continue to accept it but raise eyebrows when we see a woman’s name on the list of the dead?
And if this recent phenomenon of female military personnel fatalities is a troubling sign that our nation is tolerating violence against women, why is it any less troubling that our nation seems to silently accept the rape, torture and murder of countless women in Africa at the hands of their “enemies”?
I do believe that when a woman enters the military she should get full disclosure as to where she might be stationed and what level of danger she could be exposed to. But as long as she is not being deceived, I see no reason why she should be assigned to different types of duty from her male counterparts.
Truly,
Liz Mann
