01/26/2013
DoD ends Combat Exclusion for Women
WREI's Capt. Manning Widely Quoted in Media
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced plans to lift the ban on women serving in ground combat units, removing one of the military's last major gender barriers and opening up more than 2,30,000 combat jobs to females January 24.
"It's about time," Capt. Lory Manning, USN (ret.), director of WREI's Women in the Military Project, told the New Your Daily News. “I'm astonished that they're doing it the right way. Hooray!" she added in and interview with the Omaha World Herald
WREI's Women in the Military Project has long joined military women in calling for an end to the official ban, which, for all practical purposes, had been overtaken by events as women 'under cover of euphemism' have been in harm's way in all U.S. wars, especially in the 'wars without front lines' in Iraq and Afghanistan. The combat exclusion had also been a hot topic at the biannual WREI/Alliance for National Defense Women in the Military Conferences.
So it's no surprise that Capt. Manning, was called on for expert commentary by the national media when news of the combat exclusion's demise surfaced.
See Capt. Manning on CBS News here
Here are some excerpts from that interview:
Lory Manning, the director of the Women in the Military Project and the Women's Research and Education Institute proclaimed "Hooray" Wednesday evening after learning the pentagon is about to lift its ban on women in combat.
"It's important because we have been trying to integrate women fully in the military since 1948. For 65 years there has been a slow progression of what women have been allowed to do in the military.
This is the last stop on the road. Women are now fully integrated into the military. This is what this means," she told WUSA-9.
Manning is a retired Navy captain who spent 25 years in the service after enlisting in 1969, and volunteering for service in Viet Nam, an offer that was refused.
The ban on women in combat limited her navy career.
"It not only was a hinderance, it made me less able to do my job," she said.
"(It was) totally frustrating. I was in the Navy and I wanted heart and soul to go to sea."
Manning would fly to aircraft carriers to consult on military issues, but was forced to fly away at night because she was not allowed, as a woman in the Navy, to stay on board.
"It's ridiculous, particularly when the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are allowed to stay overnight because they are not in the Navy,"she said.
She has a simple explanation for the decision to change the policy.
"It's been made because women have earned it. Women, for the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been in ground combat, and it's been a slow time coming but the services and our civilian leadership is finally recognizing them and saying 'yes, what you've done has been good. It's helped the country. Let's make it official. Let's open it all to you. You've already proved you can do it,'" she said.
What of the critics who have expressed concerns about the change?
The same concerns have been raised repeatedly, she says: Were women strong enough, would fraternization in the ranks compromise the mission, and would the American public support women on the front lines?
"Those things are always raised and have never, ever been right," she says
Asked if women will volunteer for combat assignments, Capt. Manning told Newsmax:
"If you asked someone in 1985 about going to sea, she would have been thinking, 'Girls don't do that and so I don't want to do that,'" Manning said.
"But when push came to shove, they did it, they loved it."
