Core valuesCore values
Lieutenant Kelly Flinn, the United States' first female B-52 pilot, has agreed to accept the Air Force's offer of a general discharge rather than face court martial for having an affair with a civilian. Air Force secretary Sheila Widnall said that Flinn was being discharged to protect the Air Force's core values.
These core values seem to apply only to women; men's core values are something totally different. Out of the 140 naval and marine aviators who were referred for disciplinary action for sexual misconduct and sexual assault, none were court-martialled. All received non-judicial punishments such as verbal and written reprimands and fines.
The US Army staff sergeant and private first class who had sex with a 12-year-old girl was discharged from the army rather than being court-martialled. Of the 12 people referred for prosecution for sexual misconduct in the Air Force since the start of 1997, five have been women, even though women are only 16% of Air Force personnel.
It is clear that the core values referred to by the Air Force secretary are about enforcing a code of moral conduct that rigidly controls women's sexuality, while allowing men to do as they please.
When we look back to the hype of a few years ago surrounding the banning of gays from the army, we are given further clues to the meaning of these core values. Anything that poses a threat to the monogamous, heterosexual nuclear family is seen as a threat to the moral fabric of the righteous armed forces.
But who are the US military leaders to talk of core values and to claim the moral high ground? Where is the morality in dropping bombs on innocent civilians, in threatening or invading small countries to coerce their governments and protect US business interests, in amassing and being prepared to use nuclear weapons (many carried on B-52s) that could easily destroy all human life? What were the core values involved in the bombing of Hiroshima, Vietnam, Cambodia, Baghdad?
Morality as defined by the Air Force is not the right of all people to dignity, to sexual freedom and to integrity. Morality is, on the one hand, a sanction for whatever twisted acts the US government wants carried out, and on the other, a whip for those who do not conform. How else do we explain the condoning of sexual assault and rape of village women during the war against Vietnam, but the discharging of a female pilot for having an affair with a civilian?
A message to Lieutenant Flynn: I sympathise with you for the sex discrimination you are facing, but haven't you ever wondered about a system that says you're not moral enough to participate in mass murder?
By Sujatha Fernandes