"Just a Scared Little Girl"

[Speedo]

Jessica Lynch had no business being in uniform-
The famous captive's story is about a scared little girl, not a soldier

KATHLEEN PARKER
Tribune Media Services


The real story within the "real" story of Jessica Lynch seems yet untold despite a made-for-TV movie and a book by former New York Times golden yarn-spinner Rick Bragg.

Both the movie, "Saving Private Lynch," and the book, "I Am a Soldier, Too" have sparked discussions about the young Lynch's relative heroism and what really happened to her 507th Maintenance Company.

Family members who lost sons and daughters during the same skirmish that resulted in Lynch's captivity have protested her "hero" status. To her credit, Lynch has declined the title, saying she was only a survivor. Other veterans have contested her being awarded a Bronze Star. Still others object to the enormous amount of attention being paid this single soldier when so many others have gone unnoticed.

The story as told through Bragg's inimitable I'm-just-a-country-boy-who-can-string-purdy-words-together is sweeter 'n Aunt Peaches' corn pone smothered 'n honey and goes down quicker 'n a bottle of Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. It ain't, in other words, "War and Peace."

Rather Lynch's story reads like the puddle-deep reflections of a girlie-girl filtered through the literary voice of John Boy Walton moonlighting as a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Charles "Resurrect the Draft" Rangel. It covers her childhood, her decision to join the Army, her Iraq experience and her homecoming -- all cast in the blue-collar light of Bragg's own famously humble origins.

We learn, for instance, that Jessica's bangs were always perfect and that she painted her toenails fuchsia with little sparkles. Hooah! We also learn that most kids in the Army are poor kids just like Jessi, sons and daughters of single moms, immigrants and blue-collar families who were trading "uncertain futures for dead-certain paychecks."

The book clears up a few of the myths of Lynch's ambush and capture that day last March when 11 others were killed, including her beloved "Roomy," PFC Lori Ann Piestewa, a single, 23-year-old mother of two. The young women were such close friends that Piestewa went to Iraq to keep Lynch company even though she was excused from duty because of an injury.

But make no mistake: The book is not the story of a soldier. It is the hijacked fairy tale of a scared, "prissy" little girl who wanted to be taken care of by loyal friend Piestewa, as well as by her soldier/boyfriend, and worried constantly about being left alone. One is left numbed by the single question that needs asking:

What the hell was Jessica Lynch doing in the U.S. Army?

As most know by now, Lynch wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. Joining the Army was simply a way to see the world and secure her college tuition. As a supply clerk, she wasn't likely to see combat -- or so she thought -- but war is tricky. As Lynch and other members of her company learned, taking a wrong turn can have lethal consequences.

No one can read of Lynch's excruciating, disabling injuries and her terrifying ordeal without being moved. But it is also moving to consider that had she been a male soldier, she probably would have been shot rather than taken to a hospital. There would have been no dramatic rescue, no movie, no million-dollar book deal.

Regardless of what did or didn't happen over there, Lynch's book, movie and notoriety are not wasted, but offer a cautionary tale: A 5-foot-4, 100-pound woman has no place in a war zone nor, arguably, in the military.

The feminist argument that women can do anything men can do is so absurd that it seems unworthy of debate. That some women are as able as some men in some circumstances hardly constitutes a defense for "girling" down our military -- and putting men at greater risk -- so that the Jessica Lynches can become kindergarten teachers.

Lynch is not so much "a symbol of Bush administration propaganda," as Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, as she is a victim of the PC military career myth sold to young women through feminist propaganda.

And though not a hero as America once anticipated based on early reports of a fictitious Rambo-style defense, Lynch has done something heroic by making clear that the military is not just another career choice. As an Army officer put it to me, "Our job is to take human life on behalf of the nation."

Too bad it took a broken little girl from West Virginia to remind us what we dare not forget again.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/7296847.htm

 

[Akka]

Well, two things :

- Leave her alone. We're stuffed with her story, and she's probably as well.

- Anyone that can pass the test to enters the military, enters. Anyone who can't, can't. Simple as that. Being a man or a woman should have nothing to do with that. Either you can do the job, or you can't.

 

[Speedo]

- Anyone that can pass the test to enters the military, enters. Anyone who can't, can't. Simple as that. Being a man or a woman should have nothing to do with that. Either you can do the job, or you can't.

I might agree if everyone were held to the same standards.

 

[sysyphus]

I'm happy that she made it home safely, who wouldn't after all.

Nonetheless, her enitre story from rescue to return is not more than a propoganda stunt to support an unpopular war. The exploitation by her own government is quite appaulling if you ask me.

There seems to be alot of people in modern western miltaries who enter thinking their just getting some kind of education subsidy and don't seem to grasp the concept of what being in the military really means.

Takes one right back to the old Python classic

"I want to leave the army sir", "why?", "Well, it's DANGEROUS!"

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by Speedo


I might agree if everyone were held to the same standards.

Well, it was not explicitely said, but I consider that the standards are uniques. They are the ones required to do the jobs, and are applied identically to all people who wish to take the job.

 

[jack merchant]

What a disgusting piece of character assassination.

Miss Lynch didn't ask for the publicity surrounding her rescue, didn't ask to be labelled a hero and even if we accept that she only joined the army to 'see the world and secure her tuition' there is no indication whatsoever that she ever did any less than what was asked of her in the course of duty, despite being a 'prissy, scared little girl'. Ms. Parker then imputes an argument to 'feminists' (women can do anything a man can do') that is rather overblown, and refutes it, interestingly, with very much the same logical error: just because some women can do the same a man can do doesn't mean all women can, but her counterpoint is that because one woman couldn't do what a man can, no women can !

Maybe miss Lynch's demythologizing the propaganda surrounding her rescue and her treatment by the Iraqi's didn't go over too well in some quarters ?

 

[Speedo]

Well, it was not explicitely said, but I consider that the standards are uniques. They are the ones required to do the jobs, and are applied identically to all people who wish to take the job.

Well of course a computer tech shouldn't be required to meet the physical standards that a ranger is, but I'm talking about in basic training, before any of that. The requirements for females are easier than for males.

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by Speedo


Well of course a computer tech shouldn't be required to meet the physical standards that a ranger is, but I'm talking about in basic training, before any of that. The requirements for females are easier than for males.

They shouldn't. Make them the same for everybody. That's what I mean with "uniques standards".

 

[Speedo]

Ms. Parker then imputes an argument to 'feminists' (women can do anything a man can do') that is rather overblown, and refutes it, interestingly, with very much the same logical error: just because some women can do the same a man can do doesn't mean all women can, but her counterpoint is that because one woman couldn't do what a man can, no women can !

I don't see where she says that. She states that because a few women can do it doesn't justify putting the men in greater danger because of the women who can't do it.

 

[jack merchant]

Well, for one thing, this article hasn't convinced me in the slightest that Miss Lynch 'couldn't do it', but more importantly Akka's point about having to be able to do the job in general still stands - consider for example the fact that a great many men have been put at risk because an overconfident defense minister decided to commit minimum force to an invasion without properly planning for the postwar occupation !