Two top military leaders this week told Congress it’s time for all young women to register for the draft. What’s more shocking is, they have a point.
It’s an alarming sign of how far the women-in-combat football has moved without the public ever really noticing.
First off, draft registration has become purely symbolic: Today’s US armed forces need too many skills — and too much dedication — to have any use for involuntary conscripts.
It’s an important symbol, mind you — a hint that US citizenship might actually involve responsibility and even sacrifice.
And on that level, there’s some sense in requiring 18-year-old girls to register, just as 18-year-old boys do. After all, the Pentagon’s moving to open all combat roles to women.
“It’s my personal view in light of integration that every American physically qualified should register for the draft,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller testified before the Senate this week. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley ageed.
It’s that gender integration that slipped through without much notice, the culmination of a decades-long drive for “equality” — accelerated by the Obama administration’s equal-opportunity-at-all-costs instincts.
As Neller noted to reporters,“Now that the restrictions that exempted women from [combat jobs] don’t exist, then you’re a citizen of a United States. It doesn’t mean you’re going to serve, but you go register.”
It is, objectively, a fair point — one that belonged in the public debate about the role of women in combat that America never had.