TOM WARD - Draft girls for combat?

I recall as a new father of three young daughters, back in the early 1990s, in the time of the Iraq-Kuwait War and Operation Desert Storm, my concern for my girls as the United States abandoned its longtime policy of keeping young women out of harm’s way during wartime.

I remember thinking that as women took on more and more important roles in the military, that eventually “volunteers” would make their way to the front lines and combat duties.

For all of this – for volunteers – I had no quarrel. If a young woman feels compelled to defend our country, I accept her decision – and the decision of all of our soldiers, sailors and air”men” – with gratitude. But I feared that in time, the walls that kept women out of harm’s way would come down in yet another misguided effort at social engineering. I feared more than anything that someday, my daughters would be forced to register for the draft, and face conscription all the way up to combat duties they might not wish to perform.

My girls dodged that bullet. Now all accomplished professionals and in their mid-to-late 20s, they are probably beyond the reach of the military, unless the unthinkable happens.

Your daughters, however, your giggling little girls in Brownies, your brave or timid girls on the soccer fields, the little sweethearts you get to dance with at what used to be called “father-daughter dances” – your little girls might not be so lucky.

Last week, the House Armed Services Committee, run by Republicans and Rep. Duncan Hunter or California, approved a measure requiring women to register for the draft. Republicans, including Hunter, voted 29-5 against it; Democrats voted 27-1 for it. Only a few months ago, President Obama’s Defense Department lifted all gender-based restrictions on front-line combat units. The measure is now part of the full defense budget beginning Oct. 1.

So soon enough, girls will likely be forced to register for the draft, whether they ever have even thought about serving or not. And in a national emergency, it is possible the draft could be reinstated and girls sent to the front lines because “all gender-based restrictions on front-line combat units” have been removed by Obama.

We have been blessed as a nation to not have any war resembling World Wars I and II for more than 70 years now, and time (and poor teaching of history) have erased from us the recollection of German phosgene and chlorine gas spreading over the fields of France and into Allied trenches, or the horrors suffered by our brave men running straight into enemy machine guns at Normandy and Iwo Jima. Even more recently, our nation’s conscripted men lived in the jungle mud in Vietnam for a year at a time against an enraged and well armed guerrilla force. More than 55,000 died.

This is what we now want to force on young girls?

I am not a Sen. Ted Cruz fan. As a presidential candidate, he’s finished. Still, last February, the question of drafting women came up in a New Hampshire debate. In those debates, with a dozen candidates or more, Cruz never got a chance to answer the question. But a few days later, he remarked: “The idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think, is wrong. It is immoral. My reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?”

Women have served our nation’s military with distinction for decades. And while they weren’t on the front lines in most cases, they certainly were still in harm’s way. More than 60,000 Army nurses served in the U.S and overseas during World War II. The Women’s Army Corps had more than 150,000 women serve as WACs during the war in both Europe and the Pacific.

They did not, however, rush headlong into blazing enemy gunfire.

Rep. Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, said: “I actually think if we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, we should be willing to support a universal conscription.”

Call me sexist. Call me old fashioned. I don’t give a damn. I will be forever grateful my daughters weren’t conscripted to clear the streets of Fallujah. I will pray for your little girls, and I will pray for peace.

Ward is publisher of The Valley Breeze newspapers