Prejudiced Patriotism

By TAD BARTIMUS

Patriots defend each other's right to disagree, to fuss and to argue, to point fingers and call names, to express ourselves, to try and make our country better without reprisal as long as we don't infringe on anyone else's rights.

In the 226 years since America's original patriots signed the Declaration of Independence, many good men -- and women -- have fought for these freedoms.

One of those good women was Irene Englund. On Flag Day, she became the first Woman Air force Service Pilot (WASP) buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Getting her there required a fight.

Because Irene Englund was one of the 1,047 women recruited by the Army to fly military aircraft on domestic missions during World War II, Julie Englund assumed her mother was entitled to be buried at Arlington along with her father, a World War II Navy lieutenant who'd been laid to rest with full military honors.

Not so, said her -- our -- government.

WASPs didn't gain veterans status until 1997, after a few dedicated congresswomen and men pushed to rectify what many patriots felt was a great injustice. Before then, the women pilots' heroic wartime service had gone nearly unrecognized. And this despite the 60 million miles they flew for the Army, and the deaths of 38 women Army pilots in the line of duty.

Julie Englund is dean of administration at Harvard Law School. She was determined to change her government's sexist policy of discrimination.

"The 1,074 WASPs served their country with equal dedication and devotion," Julie Englund wrote in the Washington Post on behalf of her mother and the nearly 500 surviving World War II women pilots. "It would be a shame to treat the Greatest Generation as if it were only male."

Speaking about our current war, our First Lady Laura Bush said, "The fight against terrorism is for the rights and dignity of women." Surely she meant American as well as Afghan women.

Why, then, when more than 200,000 women are serving in uniform -- nearly 15 percent of our soldiers, sailors and airmen -- was our highest-ranking female fighter pilot humiliated because she challenged an order requiring all American military women serving in Saudi Arabia to wear a head-to-toe black robe and be accompanied by a male when they were off a U.S. base?

After protesting the directive internally for several years, Lt. Col. Martha McSally sued on grounds the policy discriminated against her gender and religion. She's a Christian.

McSally's lawsuit prodded the Department of Defense to modify its rules to "strongly" advising women to wear the abaya. Now Congress has taken up McSally's cause. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill prohibiting the military from requiring or even encouraging U.S. servicewomen in Saudi Arabia to wear abayas; the legislation now goes to the Senate.

In a recent interview with Salon, Lt. Col. Martha McSally said that after she filed her lawsuit, "I was continuously undermined and berated for my disloyalty and poor leadership. You name it, I've heard it all."

McSally is an Air Force Academy graduate who's flown combat missions in the no-fly zone over Iraq, instructed pilots deployed to Kosovo, and directed search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan. Recently transferred at her request to a low-profile desk job in Arizona, she believes her once-brilliant career crashed and burned because she fought for equal rights within the military.

The intolerable retaliatory treatment of McSally and the lack of recognition of Irene Englund and the other WASPS make me ashamed of my country and its leaders. What do Americans fight for if not equal rights under the law?

Thanks to a daughter's determination, the women military pilots of World War II can finally rest in peace at Arlington National Cemetery. It took half a century to get them there. Surely, Lt. Col. Martha McSally shouldn't have to wait that long for justice.


© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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