Dark Night of the Soul: Does It Really Come To This?
Dark Night of the Soul: Does It Really Come To This?
"Just last night, a woman came to me and said her daughter wanted to join the military and could I give my unqualified support for her doing so. I could not."
The first wave of response to Sen. John McCain's comments during an Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday includes some to the left of center sharpening their proverbial knives. At the same time, it is actually tempting to agree with him. Part of that, of course, is the question of the armed service. For some, it doesn't need to be a woman asking about her daughter; that is,
anyone who actually
wants to join today's armed services ought to be disqualified for psychiatric reasons.
For others, well, that's the thing. While it is true the military is not your normal workplace, it seems problematic to prescribe this particular sexual assault prevention technique:
Stay out of the sector.
But before the liberals begin slicing and dicing, it is worth noting that McCain has not fallen back to a regular Good Ol' Boy stance. Senator Women-Love-Gorilla-Rape actually ended up making a relevant point:
Sen. John McCain, who built a potent political career on his record as a Vietnam veteran and ex-prisoner of war, on Tuesday told the leaders of every military branch he cannot in good conscience advise women to join the service as the military grapples to contain and curb its sexual assault epidemic.
"Just last night, a woman came to me and said her daughter wanted to join the military and could I give my unqualified support for her doing so. I could not," McCain, an Arizona Republican, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing examining whether all serious sexual crimes should be removed from the chain of command.
"At its core, this is an issue about defending basic human rights but it's also a long-term threat to the strength of our military. We have to ask ourselves: if left uncorrected, what impact will this problem have on recruitment and retention of qualified men and women?" McCain asked. "I cannot overstate my disgust and disappointment over continued reports of sexual misconduct in our military. We’ve been talking about this issue for years and talk is insufficient."
(Briggs)
And this in the wake of hearings this week that included military commanders insisting to Congress that the power to decide who gets charged for raping their fellow service members, and whether those found guilty should be punished at all, in the hands of individual military officers.
So perhaps before we leap to the most obvious criticism, we might consider the possibility of a splitting the hair.
It's not that I don't get
Megan Seling's point—
John McCain's Genius Solution to End Sexual Assaults Against Women in the Military: If you're a woman, just don't join the military. Problem solved. Thanks, Maverick!
—because, left as such, and given the Arizona Republican's history of dumb-assed attitudes toward women one can understand the temptation to keep it so simple, yes, that's approximately the right response.
But at the same time, McCain is also also:
• Asserting the human rights stake
• Asserting the corrosive effects of the behavior
• Acknowledging the fact that this is not a new problem
• Expressing his disgust at the failure to address the problem appropriately in the past
• Demanding some substantially transformative address of the problem
And coming from a guy who divorced a wife because she wasn't pretty enough after an auto accident, got a marriage license to his heiress second wife while he was still married to the not pretty enough wife, and even once told a joke about how women like being savagely raped by animals, hey, I'm going to call it a step forward.
He has plenty of time to prove his insensitivity yet again; I say it's okay this time to take what we can get.
Perhaps I would be a bit more deliberate in my sarcasm, but yes, I get the point, and I think it's a good one: This sucks, we've screwed it up badly, and, really, the smartest thing to do is probably stay the hell away until we've fixed it. Perhaps the only thing that would make it better is if the senior senator from Arizona, who has long been part of the legislative bodies aware of the problem but reluctant to fix it, could tack some form of, "And, yeah, sorry 'bout that," onto the end.
Of course this isn't the solution. But that's the point. This is the situation we have made, and if we must accept the possibility that yes, it really does come to this, well, that pretty much is a testament unto itself. I mean, let us consider the point:
Summoned to Capitol Hill, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the beribboned four-star chiefs of the service branches conceded in an extraordinary hearing that they had faltered in dealing with sexual assault. One said assaults were "like a cancer" in the military.
But they strongly opposed congressional efforts to strip commanders of their traditional authority to decide whether to level charges in their units.
Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially the panel's seven female senators, grilled the chiefs about whether the military's mostly male leadership understands differences between relatively minor sexual offenses and serious crimes that deserve swift and decisive justice.
"Not every single commander necessarily wants women in the force. Not every single commander believes what a sexual assault is. Not every single commander can distinguish between a slap on the ass and a rape because they merge all of these crimes together," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. ....
.... Dempsey and the service chiefs warned against making the dramatic changes called for in Gillibrand's legislation. Removing commanders from the military justice process, Dempsey said, would undercut their ability to preserve good order and discipline in their units.
"We cannot simply legislate our way out of this problem," said Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's chief of staff. "Without equivocation, I believe maintaining the central role of commander in our military justice system is absolutely critical to any solution."
(Associated Press)
It is important to the preservation of good order and discipline to leave in place a system that has unquestionably failed to preserve good order and discipline?
Really? I mean,
that is the argument against?
So before we begin to slice and dice, it is important to consider what Sen. McCain was referring to. The brass have made it self-evident that enlisting in the armed services requires extraordinary risks for women, and those on top of the extraordinary risks
any service member agrees to undertake. They have made it self-evident that these risks will persist in the foreseeable future.
There is a strong practical argument in favor of McCain's statement.
But that, in itself, is the problem. Yet, the senator also points to the human rights aspect. While it may be true that there is a strong practical argument in favor of McCain's point, that point is the human rights issue that must be solved.
Knives out from some of my ideological fellows; I must dissent. Even if he wasn't an old, misogynist bastard, McCain sort of nailed the problem as squarely as one can.
What happened on Tuesday in the Senate Armed Services Committee is an embarrassment to the services, a denigration of our society, and an acutely resolved snapshot of just how dangerous the situation really is. While it is functionally impractical to relieve every one of those commanding officers, that is what should happen.
____________________
Notes:
Briggs, Bill. "John McCain: Women should avoid military service until sexual misconduct crisis solved". NBC News. June 4, 2013. USnews.NBCNews.com. June 6, 2013. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...service-until-sexual-misconduct-crisis-solved
Seling, Megan. "The Morning News: Someone Heckles Michelle Obama, Dzhokhar Gets to Call Home, and John McCain Is a Genius (Not Really, Though)". Slog. June 5, 2013. Slog.TheStranger.com. June 6, 2013. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...and-john-mccain-is-a-genius-not-really-though
Associated Press. "Senators Blast Military Response To Sex Assaults". National Public Radio. June 4, 2013. NPR.org. June 6, 2013. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=188542801