Feminists Propose Change in Military Authority
SINCE its creation six years ago, the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), which represents feminists in the military and supports the idea of women in combat, has become an influential and well-funded lobbying group. Its director, Anu Bhagwati, a graduate of Yale and former captain in the Marines, is a media celebrity, appearing on many major news shows and testifying before Congress, decrying the systematic inequities of military life. Bhagwati is especially visible now that sexual assault in the military is the pervasive topic of the day. Concerning that issue, you may wonder why anyone, man or woman, is in the armed forces who is not capable of defending himself from assault. You may also wonder why an Asian woman has such power and influence over our military. (Can you imagine an American woman of comparable influence with regard to the Indian or Japanese military forces?) But if you do, you are not in step with the mission of our armed forces, which is on some levels not to protect America, but to fight it tooth and nail and raze its historic culture to the ground. The military has become our enemy. The latest success of SWAN is the Military Justice Improvement Act, which was introduced in the Senate yesterday. The bill would restrict the jurisdiction of military commanders over sexual assault cases, many of which would be determined by "professionals." According to SWAN's press release, “The current commander-based system is…




