An article over at Master of None brings up an alarming question. Can women be disciplined as men are in today's US armed forces? If female soldiers have a built in disciplinary shield marked sexual harassment this would be a very dangerous long-term situation for both the effectiveness of the armed forces themselves and the safety of the armed forces to the larger civil society that created them. The military must be utterly disciplined or we risk falling into the problems that so many other nations have had, military coups. Discipline always slips in minor ways at first but once the culture of equally disciplined soldiers sharing a common rule book has been cast away, it is inevitable that other groups will want to carve out their own protected fiefs, and almost inevitable that one of those protected fiefs will eventually go bad.
The time process is very long on such things but if female soldiers are being held to a different disciplinary standard, the process is well underway.
Posted by TMLutas at May 27, 2004 09:51 AM