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Old 08-19-2017, 09:18 AM
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Arrow Senate Votes to Require Women to Register for the Draft

Senate Votes to Require Women to Register for the Draft
By: By JENNIFER STEINHAUER 6/14/16
RE: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/u...t.html?mcubz=1

A Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in February on the subject of women in the military. On Tuesday, the Senate approved a military policy bill that would require women to join men in registering for the draft. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Update, April 27, 2017: Since this article was published in June 2016, the military policy bill was restructured and the language requiring women to register for selective service was removed. The bill passed with language calling for a review of the current rules. Read more in our fact check of viral claims to the contrary.

WASHINGTON — In the latest and perhaps decisive battle over the role of women in the military, Congress is embroiled in an increasingly intense debate over whether they should have to register for the draft when they turn 18.

On Tuesday, the Senate approved an expansive military policy bill that would for the first time require young women to register for the draft. The shift, while fiercely opposed by some conservative lawmakers and interest groups, had surprisingly broad support among Republican leaders and women in both parties.

The United States has not used the draft since 1973 during the Vietnam War. But the impact of such a shift, reflecting the evolving role of women in the armed services, would likely be profound.

Under the Senate bill passed on Tuesday, women turning 18 on or after Jan. 1, 2018, would be forced to register for Selective Service, as men must do now. Failure to register could result in the loss of various forms of federal aid, including Pell grants, a penalty that men already face. Because the policy would not apply to women who turned 18 before 2018, it would not affect current aid arrangements.

“The fact is,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, “every single leader in this country, both men and women, members of the military leadership, believe that it’s fair since we opened up all aspects of the military to women that they would also be registering for Selective Services.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1981 that women did not have to register for the draft, noting that they should not face the same requirements as men because they did not participate on the front lines of combat. But since Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said in December that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women, military officials have told Congress that women should also sign up for the draft.

“It’s my personal view,” Gen. Robert B. Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, that with the complete lifting of the ban on women in combat roles, “every American who’s physically qualified should register for the draft.”

While most Republican senators — including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and the women on the Armed Services Committee — agree with the move, it has come under fierce attack from some of Congress’s most conservative members.

“The idea that we should forcibly conscript young girls in combat to my mind makes little sense at all,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the father of two young daughters, said on the Senate floor last week.

After voting against the bill on Tuesday, Mr. Cruz said in a prepared statement: “I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat.”

The debate will now pit the Senate against the House, where the policy change has support but was not included in that chamber’s version of the bill.

In April, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, offered a provision related to women and the draft for the House version of the defense policy bill to highlight the issue, even though he opposes the idea — then voted against his own amendment. It passed with bipartisan support but was stripped from the final bill in a procedural move.

“If he didn’t do this in the committee and spur the national debate, who was going to do it?” Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunter’s chief of staff, said. “So, mission accomplished.”

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, made a mild attempt to strip the language from the Senate bill on the floor after the Armed Services Committee overwhelmingly rejected a similar effort, but his amendment never received a vote.

The two bills will now be reconciled in a conference committee between the House and the Senate, where a contentious debate is expected.

“It may well be a topic of great controversy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. “But it should not be.”

Military experts say that even if the efforts to compel women to enlist fails in Congress, the issue is not going away.

“I think the change is inevitable,” said Nora Bensahel, a military policy analyst at American University’s School of International Service, “whether in this debate or through the courts. It just seems that now that you have women allowed to serve in any position in the military, there is no logical basis to say women should not be drafted.”

Conservative groups, which threatened to target senators who voted for the policy bill, reacted with anger on Tuesday to the bill’s passage. “Allowing our daughters to be forced into combat if there is a draft is a clear example of Washington placing more value on liberal social engineering than military objectives and preparedness,” one such group, Heritage Action for America, said in a news release.

But supporters of the policy change say opponents are oversimplifying the issue. “What people don’t seem to understand is just because there is conscription, that does not mean that all women would serve in the infantry,” Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, said. “There are many ways to serve our country in the event of a national emergency.”

The Senate is expected to hold its ground as conservative members defend the status quo. Mr. McCain, whose family has a long and storied history in the military and whose daughter-in-law is a captain in the Air Force Reserve, said to Mr. Cruz on the Senate floor: “I respect the senator from Texas’s view. Too bad that view is not shared by our military leadership, the ones who have had the experience in combat with women.”

Follow The New York Times’s politics and Washington coverage on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.
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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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Old 08-19-2017, 09:21 AM
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Follow up:

Do Women Have to Register for the Draft? No. But Misinformation Spreads.
By LINDA QIU - APRIL 26, 2017
RE: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/u...t.html?mcubz=1

Women do not have to register for the United States draft. And no American has been pressed into involuntary service since the last draft, during the Vietnam War.

However, the viral spread of a 10-month-old New York Times story has potentially given millions of internet users misleading impressions to the contrary. Following the web traffic and social media commentary around the article illustrates how a hot-button cultural issue can be taken out of context and amplified by hyperpartisan bubbles, inflaming passions and spreading misinformation.

On June 14, 2016, The Times published a story online with the headline, “Senate Votes to Require Women to Register for the Draft.” The story reported on the approval of a budget amendment by the Senate. The final version of the bill, which President Barack Obama signed six months later, in December, did not include the provision.

In late January 2017, the article was shared by several Facebook pages in the military community, leading to an increase in traffic. In April, after President Trump launched a strike on a Syrian air base, fan pages for Senator Bernie Sanders spurred a smaller spike in readership. In total, nearly 2 million people have clicked on this 2016 congressional procedural story, making it one of the 100 most-read Times stories of 2017 so far. And Google Trends data shows an obvious bump in searches for questions like “Do women have to register for the draft?” around the spikes in viral social sharing.

A scan of the thousands of comments left on the different Facebook posts reveals obvious confusion. Some readers, responding only to the dated headline, are under the impression that Congress recently voted to draft their daughters or, alternatively, to finally move the army toward greater gender equality.

Planting the seeds of passion

In a way, the ideological confusion online channels the passion that brought the issue under congressional consideration in the first place.

The Obama administration opened combat roles to women back in December 2015, stirring a national conversation that, as demonstrated by the article’s resurgent popularity, has continued to this day.

Representative Duncan D. Hunter, Republican of California, introduced the initial amendment to expand the draft to women in April 2016, but voted against it. Mr. Hunter introduced it to “force the conversation” in Congress about the administration’s new policy, said his chief of staff, Joe Kasper.

Though the amendment passed 32-30 in the House Armed Services Committee, Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the committee, told The Times it was clear it would not survive a vote by the full House. So the provision was taken out of the House version of the bill. And while the amendment passed the Senate, it was ultimately stripped out of the final Senate version of the bill as well. Instead, the final law, as passed in December, established a national commission to study the draft’s “utility and future use.”

Old story, new context

Fast forward to this month. Mr. Trump ordered airstrikes in Syria amid heightened tension with North Korea and Russia. The liberal Facebook page “Bernie Sanders Lover” shared a link to the June story without additional comment.

The page’s administrator, Chris Friend, told The Times that he was reminded of the earlier story and shared it with his readers after the Syria strikes for a reason.

Mr. Friend said he understood that the amendment was stripped from the final legislation, “but to me, it is a bigger story that it was included in the first place and that people missed the story. Personally, I’ve been feeling a ramp-up for a large-scale conflict for a while now.”

While Mr. Friend had a bigger picture in mind, he said that many of his readers were incensed by the article, suggesting that a “white, male, dominant, Christian, warmongering” Congress wanted to send “your sons and daughters to fight for Trump’s cause.”

Mr. Friend, essentially, had given old news a new context — a not uncommon phenomenon in the digital age, said Peter Adams, senior vice president for educational programs at the News Literacy Project.

Multiple studies have shown that most news consumers seldom read entire articles. For many, in this new and continuously expanding information landscape, a glance is enough to confirm existing biases and emotions.

“They think they know what it’s about, based on the headline,” Mr. Adams said. “Fear can drive people to share quickly and not think as much or be as critical. That’s where it gets its virality.”
__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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