As they did when they entered, the first women to graduate from Virginia Military Institute endured their final insult with style, honor and grace.
That’s more than I can say for their abuser, G. Gordon Liddy, convicted Watergate burglar and, more recently, conservative radio gasbag.
As two women, Chih-Yuan Ho, 23, and Melissa K. Graham, 21, sat for the first time among the 160-year-old academy’s 225 uniformed graduates in Lexington, Va., their ex-con commencement speaker declared a woman’s place to be behind the lines, to “free a man to fight.”
The armed forces “did it right” when women were used to assist male soldiers in World War II, Liddy said. They “did non-combat work that was vital, and they did it splendidly. It wasn’t broke, but we fixed it. We should put it back right.”
Not so fast there, Gordo. The decision to sexually desegregate military jobs was not done simply to please the lofty ideals of feminists. It has a practical side too.
After all, if the role of military women in World War II was to free a man to fight, the role of military women these days frees many a man to avoid fighting.
Here’s how it works: Equalized opportunities in the military for women have spurred dramatic increases in female enlistment. Conveniently, this has occurred at a time when military jobs increasingly call for high-tech skills that require more brain than brawn.
That has saved Congress from having to reinstitute a draft, a possibility for which few Americans have much stomach these days.
If the Pentagon suddenly decided to roll back those opportunities, many women would head for the exits as quickly as possible and fewer female recruits would take their places. Too many opportunities await women in the civilian world for very many to subject themselves to a system that declares them at the outset to be second-class workers.
Even at current levels of opportunity for women, the robust civilian economy has reduced male and female recruits to hazardously low levels. Capitol Hill, reflecting the obvious will of the people, seems eager to do anything other than institute a draft.
Some, like Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), have proposed shortening some enlistments to 18 months instead of the two- or four-year requirement for most military jobs. In a letter to armed forces chiefs, Warner cited a proposal by Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University sociologist, who is calling for a 15-month enlistment term.
More Top Picks Best Wood Cutting Boards
Although critics question whether that would allow enough time for the military to get enough use out of its recruits, the debate illustrates how desperate the enlistment situation is these days, just as the United States is considering sending ground troops into Kosovo.
Although Liddy has said in the past that he opposed allowing women to enroll at VMI, he declined to say anything on that topic in his speech other than “the issue of women at VMI is closed.”
So it is, and not just at VMI. A quiet revolution has taken place in recent weeks as women graduated for the first time from two of this nation’s most venerable military academies.
A week earlier, another state-funded military school, The Citadel, in Charleston, S.C., graduated its first female cadet, Nancy Mace, 21, three years after losing its court fight to remain all-male. She leaves behind 41 other women who are still enrolled at the college and about 50 new ones expected in the fall freshman class.
Better them than me. I did my part. I was a Vietnam-era draftee. I respect the need to answer my country’s call to arms. But I have no desire to see the draft return today, especially now that I am the father of an able-bodied lad who is almost 10.
If we truly need a military draft, so be it. Just let it be fair. There are immense virtues in sharing the burdens of national defense. The draft helped me and countless other young men to understand our fellow Americans from all sorts of backgrounds in ways we never otherwise would have known.
The political consequences of imposing a draft also make Washington think at least twice before committing American troops to any new overseas adventures. That burden was lost during the Vietnam years when it was too easy for the rich and well-connected to escape.
But, before we take the desperate step of bringing back the draft, there’s nothing wrong with giving all of our volunteers a chance, including our female volunteers. Our fighting men need to gain a better understanding not only of their fellow men, but of their fellow women too.