Military officers vow to fight harder for women after Hegseth speech
Even before his mandate as the best Pentagon civilian, the remarks of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on the service of women soldiers have aroused concerns among many of them concerning their future. His speech to the best American commanders fed them on Tuesday because he stressed that all American forces should be held in “the highest male standards”.
“I do not want my son to serve alongside troops which are out of shape, or in combat units with women who cannot respect the same physical standards of arms as men,” he said. Women have been officially used in military combat jobs for almost a decade.
After the speech, a general who was in the public and asked anonymity to speak frankly, said that she had been struck by the professional stoicism of her around 800 colleagues from flag. Many had traveled overnight after being summoned by the defense secretary to attend in person and in dressed uniform.
Why we wrote this
High -ranking women say they look at the earnings they have spent their careers building. Despite Tuesday the speech of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, they are determined to continue to serve their country.
But while she and her staff were waiting at the airport to their return flight to their base, she said that she is worried that Mr. Hegseth “creates policies that will help inaugurate women and other minorities in the army”.
It is a concern shared by many high -ranking soldiers and women while looking at the gains they have spent building their erased career, and while crying the losses in the ranks of younger women than they hoped to supervise.
“They are so intelligent. They are so innovative. They are so daring, ”says the general. And many are determined, she adds, to continue.
“If I leave and other women leave,” says the general, “when is he?”
“They played beautifully”
Before becoming defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth did not hide his skepticism about the military service of women. “I am immediately saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” he said last year on a podcast. “Above human history, men of these positions are more capable.”
On Tuesday, he criticized leaders who were promoted “on the basis of their race, on the basis of gender quotas, based on first so-called historical” which had made the American army “less relevant and less fatal”.
Shortly after being confirmed as secretary by a vote of 51-50, Mr. Hegseth dismissed the ADM. Lisa Franchetti, the first officer to recover from the employment of the navy as chief of naval operations, as well as General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who was president of the chiefs of joint staff and the first black officer to direct a branch of the American armed forces.
Less than 24 hours after its inauguration, President Donald Trump put an end to the administrator Linda Fagan, who, as commander of the Coast Guard, had become the first woman to direct a branch of the armed forces. “Now those of us who stay, we have no models to admire,” explains the general.
By April, the official recordings of some of the first black women and troops to serve in the army have been deleted – in some cases temporarily – Pentagon websites.
Mr. Hegseth did “do everything he could to erase the minority stories, including women – to erase their achievements, to dismiss them, to get rid of them,” said Retirement Colonel Ellen Haring, who was in one of the first classes of women to graduate from the American military academy and is now a principal researcher among women with international security.
The secretary chose 1990 as a reference year for physical standards. Have the standards changed “due to a sunset, weakening or sex of other priorities?” He wondered Tuesday aloud. “1990 also seems good to start.”
The choice of the year was not an error, according to criticism. It was in 1991 that Congress began to repeal laws prohibiting women from serving in combat aviation. In 2013, legislators had repealed the laws prohibiting women from fighting and, in 2016, after three years of study, all front -line jobs were officially open to women.
In the meantime, some 300,000 women’s troops have been deployed in American wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 2001. Meanwhile, around 1,200 have been injured or killed in combat.
The retired general Peter Chiarelli was used to order American combat operations in Iraq in 2006 and was vice-chief of the army from 2008 to 2012.
It was also checked in the discourse of the Secretary of Defense as the type of officer that the Trump administration no longer wants to serve. “Going out with the Chiarellis, the McKenzies and the Milleys,” said Hegseth, referring to the four-star generals Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who led the American central command, and Mark Milley, former president of the joint staff chiefs, who both served the first mandate of Mr. Trump.
General Chiarelli, who retired from the army in 2012, remembers that at the beginning of his time in Iraq, there were still pressure from the congress to limit the role of women in the fight.
“It created a huge problem for me,” he told Monitor on Wednesday. The United States was fighting an Iraqi insurrection and needed doctors, many of whom were women, to be assigned to more dangerous positions.
“I encouraged our commanders to move forward and do it, put women in these positions,” he said. “They have played beautifully.”
Religious nuances?
Among some military officials concerning certain military officials concerning the religious nuances they see accompanying the reserves of Mr. Hegseth.
In August, Mr. Hegseth republished his account X a CNN segment which presented a pastor, Doug Wilson, who is often described as a Christian nationalist.
In the CNN report, Wilson said he did not think that women should hear management positions in the army.
A declaration by a spokesperson for the Pentagon following the publication of Mr. Hegseth indicated that the Secretary of Defense “is a proud member of a church affiliated with” the communion of the reformed evangelical churches, which Mr. Wilson co-founded and “appreciates many many writings and teachings of Mr. Wilson”.
Patrick A. Albright / Us Army / AP
Since Mr. Hegseth became a defense secretary, the military Religious Freedom Foundation received a “tsunami” calls, explains Mikey Weinstein, former officer and Air Force lawyer, and the group’s founder.
Complaints concerning sexism in the army are also about three times higher than last year, he says.
A former army chaplain who spoke of backgrounds said “there had been progress” when the Pentagon has taken misogyny and military sexual assault in the years that followed women on the front line. But in the Trump administration, men seem to be freer and do what they like, added the old chaplain.
It is now used for what is called an ecclesiastical endorser, a connection between the federal government between the churches and the Ministry of Defense. Many of the chaplains for which he is responsible are women who feel “frightened and they are victims of discrimination,” he said. “Women start prematurely a career or choose not to continue it at all.”
Cecilia Bradford, chaplain of the army reserve, says that she came “face to face” with her chaplains “who did not believe that women should be in the ministry”.
But she is also motivated by the conviction that she can make a difference. Now, she said, she wants to “make sure we continue”. The domain has been dominated by men “for so long”, she adds, “that if we do not leave our imprint, it could very well come back.”
It is a concern shared by the general who was in the public of Mr. Hegseth’s speech. “We worked very, very hard” to attract and keep women in the army, “she said. The Trump administration “works actively against what I worked for, and it blows my mind”.
Mr. Hegseth, during his speech, praised the work that his department has done in recent months “to withdraw social justice … of the garbage that infected” the army. “More months of identity, dei offices, guys in dresses. More cult of climate change. No more division, distraction or gender delusions,” he said.
At the same time, he tried, it seems, to offer some assurance, stressing that racism and sexual harassment “are false and illegal”. The offenses, he added, “will be mercilessly applied.”
He also said that American female troops “are the best in the world” and that defense officials ” [their] impact.”
Regarding combat jobs, “if women can do it, excellent. Otherwise, that’s what it is. If this means that no woman qualifies for certain combat jobs, whether it is so, “he added this week. “It’s not intention, but it could be the result.”
There will be women who will qualify among the many who have already exceeded non -sexist standards, explains Dr. Haring, pointing to the 170 women who are currently serving as rangers, an elite branch of the army’s special operations forces.
“What [Mr. Hegseth] Does not recognize or recognize, “she adds,” have you finally let women compete, many, many, many women have managed to do everything he thinks that women cannot do. »»
The writer Anna Mulrine Grobe reported in Brussels.
