Stardate 20011225.1735

(On Screen): Lt. Col. Martha McSally is a top fighter pilot who just finished a tour of service in Saudi Arabia. With her rank, she probably led a squadron, and may have been one of the top ranking US officers at that base. However, whenever she left the base and traveled into Saudi Arabia proper, she was under orders to wear the veil, to never go anywhere without a man, and never to travel in the front seat of a car, let alone to actually try to drive herself. Thus are the rules by which women in Saudi Arabia live. In an attempt to try to fit in and not offend the host country, all US servicemen live under various degrees of limitations even on leave. (For instance, no-one, male or female, is supposed to drink while there.)

Colonel McSally has now returned from that tour of duty, and a lawsuit is being filed on her behalf against the DOD claiming violation of her civil rights as a woman. I have extremely mixed feelings on this, but I tend to lean against the suit.

On a strictly legal basis, I'm not sure there's a suit here. It has to be understood that on a strict constitutional basis, "civil rights" as we think of them don't generally apply to the military. There are many things we take for granted which do not apply to them. For example, anyone in the military can have his belongings searched any time at all without a warrant. A soldier is not granted the same legal protections at court martial that a civilian would get in a criminal trial. Soldiers do not get to decide where they will live, nor what they will do: they're told, and they follow orders. All of this is necessary (and recognized by the Constitution and long judicial precedent) because you cannot operate an effective military if all the soldiers have those rights, and without an effective military the nation cannot survive. All rights are a balancing act, and the value of the survival of the nation trumps the value of individuals in the military having the right of free speech (which they do not; another thing they forfeit).

Even on leave, they are still subject to military discipline. Leave is not freedom; it's a temporary and limited vacation, and it can be granted with a large number of conditions. For example, a soldier on leave can be told where he's permitted to go, and where he is not permitted to go. He can be ordered to wear his uniform while on leave. (The "Off limits" sign became a fixture of Bill Mauldin's cartoons in Stars and Stripes during WWII.)

So can a serving woman officer of high rank be ordered to act differently off duty than a man would, of equal rank or lower? As a strict matter of military law, I think the answer is yes. Military law doesn't require fairness, and when an order has an obvious utility to it, it's just as binding as any other order.

And there was a good reason for it to be issued; it wasn't done to deliberately disgrace her. This order was neither capricious nor malicious. Colonel McSally and all the other women serving in Saudi Arabia were ordered to wear an abaya, a garment not dissimilar to the Afghan Burqa. By the same token, the first Americans to show up at Kandahar's airport to begin the effort of getting it operational again wore native clothes rather than camos. That's because part of any successful military operation is pacification of the population where the operation takes place. It is vital that they support you. If you can advance that simply by ordering your troops to wear funny costumes, it's cheaper in blood and money than fighting them.

I can understand her anger; it's not that everyone had to do it; it's only the women who did. Given how hard it's been for women to be accepted in the military anyway (a struggle Colonel McSally is only too familiar with) it must have seemed a slap in the face. But it's not like that.

Yes, the way that women in Saudi Arabia are treated is scandalous. It does not agree with our customs; we find it unacceptable. But if the US Air Force were to flaunt it, that would not change Saudi society or customs; all it would do is to make it harder for the Air Force to accomplish its mission in that theater.

Everyone serving in the military gives up civil rights because they know that it is necessary to serve the higher good of effective military operations which preserve the United States. Surely a career officer such as Colonel McSally must know that. We would definitely like to change the situation for women in Saudi Arabia if we can -- but this is not the way.

I believe that this lawsuit will be thrown out of court, and I think it should never have been filed.