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The Air Force's top civilian official said Friday she supports requiring young women to register for a potential military draft as Congress heads toward a divisive debate over whether to erase gender restrictions from Selective Service. Air Force Secretary Deborah James said there's no reason women shouldn't have to sign up just as men between the ages of 18 and 25 do. Women have never before been required to register in the United States and including them in a draft pool has outraged social conservatives. "My opinion as an American is that we should have a Selective Service," James said during the taping of an interview for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program. "It's an insurance policy for the United States and I think women should register just as I think young men should register."
Air Force Secretary Deborah James, right, testifies during a Jan. 27 congressional hearing
The annual defense policy bill the Senate is scheduled to consider next week includes a draft registration requirement for women. The provision calls for females to sign up with the Selective Service within 30 days of turning 18 -- just as men do -- beginning in January 2018. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, said they will fight to have the provision removed from the bill. They said far more research is required before such a significant change is made.
Republicans stripped a provision requiring women to register from the House's version of the defense policy bill. They replaced it with a measure to study whether the Selective Service is even needed at a time when the armed forces get plenty of qualified volunteers, making the possibility of a draft remote. However, opponents of expanding the draft may be unable to halt the momentum in favor of lifting the exclusion, which was triggered by the Pentagon's decision late last year to open all front-line combat jobs to women. After gender restrictions to military service were erased, the top uniformed officers in each of the military branches expressed support during congressional testimony for including women in a potential draft.
Air Force Secretary Supports Draft Registration for Women | Military.com
The Senate was wrapping up an annual defense bill that calls for opening the Selective Service to women despite opposition from some conservative lawmakers. Meanwhile, the House reached an opposite outcome in May when Republicans successfully blocked a measure integrating the draft. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cried foul, claiming the issue did not get adequate debate. Now, as Congress pushes ahead with its annual defense budget, the House and Senate face brokering a compromise between lawmakers who are deeply divided over requiring women between 18-25 years old to register with Selective Service -- and potentially forcing them to the front lines of future wars. "I am the father of two daughters. Women can do anything they put their minds to ... But the idea that we should forcibly conscript young girls into combat to my mind makes little to no sense," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. "I could not vote for a bill that did so, particularly a bill that did so without public debate."
Cruz was among conservatives who rallied around a proposal by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to strip the draft language from the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. But lawmakers never got to weigh in. Senators agreed Friday to move forward on the massive $602-billion military policy bill without considering Lee's change. His staff said there was virtually no chance it would receive a vote. The defense policy bill was expected to be passed by the Senate as early as Tuesday. The chamber's push to open the draft is backed by many Democrats as well as Republicans.
A Marine Corps drill Instructor commands a recruit to run in place during a function in Van Nuys, California
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, cited wide support within the military for the change and said women senators on his committee believe it would be a step toward equality. "The fact is that every single military leader in this country, both men and women members of the uniformed military leadership of this country, believe that it is simply fair," McCain said. Military brass began to weigh in on the draft issue earlier this year after the Defense Department moved to fully integrated women into all combat roles. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter ordered 225,000 all-male positions -- the last that excluded women -- would be open to female troops.
In February, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said there is no longer justification for exempting women from the Selective Service and other military leaders have since voiced the same conclusion. All eligible men between 18-25 years old must register for the draft. But the House slammed the breaks on draft integration last month with its version of the annual defense budget bill.
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Much like the term "fireman" has evolved to "firefighter" and "policeman" to "police officer," an engineman could be called an engine technician and a yeoman could be called an administrative specialist. "This is one more step in how our force has changed," Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said in an interview Friday. "Our force has evolved, our force is different. And I believe it's stronger and better." Some Army and Air Force titles end in "man," too, but the services aren't considering changing them. The names are historically significant, and the focus now is on bringing women into the jobs rather than on what to call them, both services said. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ordered the military in December to open all military jobs to women, including the Marine Corps and special operations forces like Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets.
During a visit to Newport, Rhode Island, in late May, Carter was asked by The Associated Press whether job titles that end in "man" should change throughout the military. Carter spoke about the benefits of opening jobs to women to make "full use of the wonderful talents of half of the population of the country." "Signifying that in all appropriate ways is, I think, exactly that, very appropriate and needed," he said. Carter said that he didn't offhand have a good alternative for titles that were stripped of "man," but that someone smart was going to figure it out. Mabus called in January for a review of Navy and Marine titles. There are nearly two dozen in the Navy that end in "man" and roughly a dozen in the Marines.
Female recruits stand at the Marine Corps Training Depot on Parris Island, S.C.
Mabus said he wants titles that more accurately convey who is doing the job and what the job is. "In the overall scheme, it's a small thing, but I think it's important because it's what sailors and Marines call each other, and words do matter," he said. Mabus, who is reviewing the services' recommendations now, said the Navy and Marines will announce changes this summer. Some iconic titles will stay the same, and others will change to make the jobs easier to understand outside of the military, which will help when sailors and Marines are looking for civilian jobs, he added.
For example, few civilians know what a hospital corpsman does, Mabus said. A corpsman could be called a medic or an emergency medical technician, much like "messman" was previously changed to culinary specialist, he added. A female yeoman told a senior Navy official that "administrative specialist" would be a better title than yeoman, Mabus said. Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain, said that there are fairly easy substitutes for many of the titles, and that they should be brought up to date. "It's time for us to let go of telling women, 'You're just included. We don't call you out by sex, but just know you're part of mankind,'" said Manning, a senior fellow at the Service Women's Action Network. "When you hear that 'man' at the end, the image is a male image."
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