Military officers pledge more difficult to fight for women after Higseth’s speech
Even before his mandate as the best civilian in the Pentagon, Defense Minister Beit Higsith’s statements about the service of female soldiers raised fears between many of them about their future. for him A letter to senior leaders in America On Tuesday, they fed them, as he stressed that all American forces should be held on “the highest male standards.”
He said: “I do not want to serve my son alongside the forces outside the form, or in the combat units with females that cannot meet the same material criteria for combat men.” Women officially have been working in military combat jobs for nearly a decade.
After the speech, a general who was in the audience and asked not to disclose his identity by speaking frankly, that she was shocked through the professional career of nearly 800 science officers. Many traveled all night after being called by the Minister of Defense to attend personally and his clothes.
Why did we write this
High -level women say they are the gains that they spent in their career in building. Despite the speech of Defense Minister Beit Higseth on Tuesday, they are determined to continue to serve their country.
But when she and her employees at the airport waited for their journey to their home base, she said she was concerned that Mr. Higseth “creates policies that help women and other minorities from the army.”
It is a source of concern shared by many high -ranking military men and women as they watch the gains they have in building their career, and while they are sad about the losses within the ranks of younger women who were hoping to direct them.
“They are very smart,” the general says. “It is very innovative. It’s so bold,” says the general. She adds that many of them are determined to continue.
The general says: “If you leave and leave other women, what remains?”
“They have done a great performance.”
Before he became the Minister of Defense, Mr. Higseth did not hide from his doubts about women’s military service. “I am just straight, I should not have women in combat roles,” said last year in Podcast. “On the history of mankind, men in these situations are more capable.”
On Tuesday, the leaders who were promoted “based on their race, based on sexual shares, encouraged the so -called historical early” that made the American army “less capable and later.”
Soon after his assertion as minister through a vote 51-50, Mr. Higseth Al-Admiral Lisa Franchiti, the first officer to rise to the supreme work of the Navy as head of marine operations, as well as General Charles K.
Less than 24 hours after his inauguration, President Donald Trump ended the Admiran Linda Vagan, who became the Coast Guard commander the first woman to lead a branch of the armed forces. “Now, those of us who left, we have no example we are looking for,” the general says.
By April, the official records of some of the first women and black forces operating in the army – in some cases temporarily – were removed from the Pentagon sites.
Colonel Ellen Harring, who was in one of the first classes of women, says that “Higseth” did everything in his power to erase the stories of minorities, including women – to erase their achievements, to release them, to get rid of them.
In 1990, the secretary was chosen as a normative year for material standards. Did the criteria change “due to softening, weakening, or sex -based pursuit of other priorities?” He asked loudly on Tuesday. “In 1990 it appears a good place to start like.”
Critics say that the choice of the year was not a mistake. In 1991, Congress first began abolishing laws that prevent women from serving in combat flying. By 2013, lawmakers canceled laws that prevent women from fighting, and in 2016, after three years of study, all the functions of the front lines were officially opened for women.
Meanwhile, about 300,000 soldiers were deployed in America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere since 2001. During the same time, about 1,200 were wounded or killed in the fighting.
Retired General Peter Chiarili was used to lead the American combat operations in Iraq in 2006 and worked as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army from 2008 to 2012.
It was also examined in the Minister of Defense’s speech as a kind of officers that the Trump administration no longer wants to serve. “With Chialis, Makinziz and the Milase,” said Mr. Higseth, referring to the four -star generals of Kenneth “Frank” McKenzi, who led the US Central Command, and Mark Millie, former head of the joint chiefs of staff, both of whom served in Mr. Trump’s first state.
General Chiarili, who retired from the army in 2012, remembers that early in Iraq, there is still pressure from Congress to reduce the role of women in fighting.
“This creates a big problem for me,” he told Al -Sharaf newspaper on Wednesday. The United States was fighting an Iraqi rebellion and needed paramedics, and many of them were women, to be appointed to more dangerous locations.
He says: “I encouraged our leaders to move forward and do so, to put women in these positions,” he says. “They have done great.”
Religious tones?
There was concern among some military officials about the religious tones they saw accompanying Mr. Higseth reservations.
In August, Mr. Higseth republished it on the X account, a CNN chip, which includes a priest, Doug Wilson, who is often described as a Christian national.
In the CNN report, Mr. Wilson said he does not believe that women should hold leadership positions in the army.
A statement issued by a spokesman for the Pentagon after the publication of Mr. Higseth X said that the Minister of Defense is “a proud member of the church” dependent on communication with the evangelical evangelical churches, which Mr. Wilson shared in its founding, and “highly estimated many of the writings of Mr. Wilson and his teachings.”
Patrick a. Ulbright/US Army/AP
“Since Mr. Higseth, the Minister of Defense, has received the Military Freedom Foundation” Tsunami “,” says Mickey Winstein, a former Air Force officer, Air Force lawyer, the former Air Force Foundation, and the Military Foundation. Groupfounder.
He says that the complaints related to sexual discrimination in the army are about three times higher than it was last year.
“There was progress”, “said a former priest of the army, who spoke against the background of” there was progress “, as the Pentagon was hated by women and military sexual assaults in the years that passed on women on the front lines. But in the Trump administration, men seem to be more free to say and do whatever they like.
It is now working as what is known as the ecclesiastical supporter, and it is a federal poor communication between the churches and the Ministry of Defense. He says that many of the priests they bear are women who feel fear, and are distinguished.
Cecilia Bradford, a priest in the Army Reserve, says that she came as a “face to face” with their fellow priests “who did not believe that women should be in the ministry.”
But it is also driven by being convinced that it can make a difference. She says now, she wants to “make sure we are continuing.” She adds that the male field is controlled by “for a long time”, “If we don’t leave a mark, it may return to that.”
This is a source of concern shared by the general who was in the fans of Mr. Higseth’s speech. “We have worked very hard,” she says to attract and preserve women in the army, “she says. The Trump administration is “actively acting against what I worked for, and my mind blows.”
During his speech, Mr. Higseth described the work that his ministry has accomplished in the past months “to remove social justice … the garbage that has hit” the army. “No more identity, Dei offices, men in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or sex illusions,” said.
At the same time, he was seemed to try to provide some reassurance, stressing that both racism and sexual harassment are “wrong and illegal.” He added that the violations “will be imposed without mercy.”
He also said that the American forces “are the best ever in the world” and that defense officials are “very great value [their] impact.”
As far as the combat jobs go, “if women are able to achieve this, excellent. If not, then this is what it is. If that means that there are no qualified women for some combat jobs, then this week.” This is not intent, but it may be the result. “
Dr. Harring says that there are women who qualify between many who have already exceeded the neutral standards between the sexes, pointing to 170 women currently working in Rangers, the elite branch of the army’s operations forces.
“What [Mr. Hegseth] “Do not recognize or admit,” she added, which is that once you finally allow women, many women, many of them, have succeeded in doing all the things that women believe cannot do. “
Employee writer Anna Mulrin Group told Brussels.