Lynch. An American hero? C'mon!?

The BBQ Pit
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Your cite is itself incorrect - or more precisely, it’s confused. It refers to women in “non-combatant” jobs in WWII. Lynch is an actual full-time professional soldier, which is different - WACS and WAVES and the like in WWII wouldn’t have done what Lynch does. “Non-combatant” is not the same as a non-combat trade. A “non-combatant” is a legal and moral concept meaning people who are not legitimate targets of military force - civilians, POWs, the injured, shipwrecked sailors, and airmen baling from stricken aircraft are all noncombatants, or hors de combat. Lynch was, unquestionably, a combatant, by the laws of war; she was a uniformed soldier in a battle area, carrying a personal weapon, and the Iraqis were legally entitled to attack her. Once she was incapacitated and chose to surrender - I think we can agree two broken legs is a pretty fair degree of incapacitation - she became a noncombatant, of course.

It is true that Lynch doesn’t serve in a combat trade - she was in a maintenance unit - but that’s a difference in your role, not in your being a soldier. Actual soldiers can be roughly put into three groups:

Combat roles (Infantry, commandos, armor, recce, Marines, paratroopers)
Combat support roles (Artillery, antiaircraft, air assets, communications, intelligence, MPs, electronic warfare)
Service support roles (Maintenance, transport, medical, supply, etc.)

Lynch is Group #3, I would presume. (I was Group #2.) However, she’s still a SOLDIER, trained at at least a basic level to fight and carry weapons and such. Everyone in the Army is a soldier first and their specific role second.

As to her heroism, I strongly suspect the reports of Lynch singlehandedly mowing down hordes of Iraqi soldiers are BS. I can certainly believe she probably emptied her magazine - you may as well - but given the number of stories we’ve later learned were magnified 100 times by the initial excitement, it’s safe to say this likely was, too. Even if she did plug some poor bastard, it’s not as if you can even tell who’s getting hit by who in a wild firefight.

But, hey, she’s a soldier. She did her duty and got badly injured doing it. She gets a Purple Heart, at least.

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RickJay: Good post. I can see now that my first cite (re: non-combatant)was inaccurate. I agree with you 100% about her heroism, by the way.

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The word “combatant” is being used in two contexts, here. If you define a “combatant” as someone whose primary task it is to actually do combat (infantry, tankers etc.), then of course Lynch isn’t. This would appear to be the sense used by some journalists, and IMHO, it’s muddying the waters.

Because there is another setting, that of the laws of warfare. “Combatant” in this context means someone engaged in warfare - i.e. anyone in the armed forces or militia (with a few exceptions for medics, chaplains, shipwrecked sailors, soldiers under a flag of truce etc.).

Having a very clear definition of who’s a combatant is really important, because non-combatants are protected under the conventions, whereas combatants are legal targets. Knowingly firing on a non-combatant is a serious war crime.

Lynch is very much a combatant in this sense of the word. She’s wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon, taking part in the war effort and taking orders from her country’s military authority. And you can bet your ass she had a weapon.

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  • I would’ve been first, had it not been for the pesky hamsters!
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Klaatu Wrote: “As was touched on upthread, the media during wartime loves symbols. Lynch, being a photogenic young female soldier is the perfect symbol to be a media darling.”

Lynch is a cute, little blone with a pixie-like haircut. Awh. So wholesome. I wonder whether that has anything to do with he being a “media darling.”

I am not insulting her actions or desparaging her bravery; I am critiquing the media circus surrounding her. I wonder whether a broad-faced, bull-necked, 5’11" hispanic male would make the cover of Newsweek for doing what Lynch did.

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You raise a good point. I was merely pointing out the obvious.

Perhaps you might want to start a GD thread addressing the issues of which you speak.

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Samarm–

According to an article from yesterday (and other subsequent reports), Pfc Lynch did indeed suffer gunshot wounds.

But the funniest part of that Army Link News story you linked to was this:

If it weren’t for that Frame of Choice Program, poor Jessica would only see her parents as a blur!!!

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From here:

I’ve also head that it’s been confirmed that she has two gunshot wounds but I’m too lazy to looks for a cite. Isn’t it clear that she was tortured? Why isn’t anyone (the press, I mean) talking more about this? Was she tortured? Opinions?

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No. It is not clear that she was tortured. Not yet. But I would not be really surprised. Sadly, these things happen to POWs.

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I’m not so lazy after all. No gunshot wounds.

Still, what’s up with all the fractures?

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I can’t believe I’m the first one to ask this:

If it was a guy in that hospital, no one would be questioning his hero status. Why is it that her being female seems to INSTANTLY call her heroism into question? I mean, why do you ASSUME that she would stand passively by and be made a victim? If anyone had extra risk in that battle, it’s her - above and beyond the risk of beating, torture, and death, she had the added danger of not knowing if she’d be raped by her captors. Can you honestly say that you would passively accept capture knowing there was a distinct possibility that strange, unwashed men with guns might want to stick their schlongs into you and share bodily fluids? The Hussein regime has a history of using rape as a method of oppression, so I’d consider it a very real danger as a female POW. Knowing that, I’d be freaking Rambo too!

Ah but you guys so often assume we’re weak and passive. Either that or you can’t possibly conceive of the notion of a chick taking out several men before getting taken out herself.

Notice there aren’t any other threads on this board calling into question the heroism of any MAN on that field.

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Lynch’s sex has nothing to do with the question in the OP.

Similar questions have been asked about the crew of the P-3 that was forced down in China a couple of years back and of other people (male and female) who have been lauded as heroes for simply surviving assault.

(There is, actually, a long tradition of shame associated with being captured–even when the situation has been hopeless. S.L.A. Marshall noted that when he debriefed soldiers who had been overrun in Operation Market Garden (made famous by the books and movie A Bridge Too Far), he often had problems getting them to describe their experiences, as they felt shame in having been captured–despite the fact that their capture had occurred when they were faced with overwhelming superiority of troops and firepower and they had reversed their fortune by escaping.)

The question is not whether Pfc Lynch was brave, but whether we are profligate in bestowing the word hero on every person who suffers and survives.

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I think our kids do just fine in firefights, thank you very much. I know, a joke involving a poor brutalized* POW and youth violence. :smack:

To me she is a hero.

*I heard a report, FWIW, that her injuries were due to beatings while upside down.

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Morrigoon wrote:

I think what people are saying is that it’s the other way around. We would have been far less interested in the same behavior from a man, just as we are so disinterested in the courage of the informants and of the soldiers who went in to rescue her. The concern is that she’s being touted as a hero on the `pretty good for a girl’ scale, not on the same scale by which men would be judged.

I don’t see anyone assuming that. The prevailing assumption seems to be that a man would not have gotten such publicity in the same scenario. Maybe you disagree with that assumption, but that’s after all where the debate lies. No one is arguing that a woman isn’t or shouldn’t be capable of or willing to defend herself.

This seems to be the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The reason she is touted as a hero probably has a lot to do with the high potential for rape as a motivating factor. But the media have been understandably shy to openly discuss the issue. At a time when women are struggling for equality in the armed forces, emphasizing Lynch’s possible rape victim status would not only set women back, it would be personally mortifying for her and her family.

At the risk of being caught making an argument from silence, I think that the fact that this doesn’t seem to be widely talked about is an indication that people implicitly assume that the issue of rape will diminish the perception of her valor, not enhance it. If it turns out that she was raped, or fought like the devil because she feared being raped, that victim status is likely to trump her hero status.

As I often recommend in these debates, you might want to actually read the thread. You are beating a straw man. Nobody is actually taking the stand you’re decrying.

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My opinion, take it for what you want:

A hero is separated from the rest by rising above and beyond the call of duty, in performance of heroic acts.

Just doing your job and shooting at the enemy as long as you can does NOT make you a hero, but simply a good employee/soldier.

She DOES deserve some respect for surviving such an ordeal, but let’s be honest, there’s no Medal of Honor headed her way.

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I’m glad that she got home alive, and I hope that she has the support structure around her for when the media forget about her and move onto the next big story.

She coped incredibly well in what must be extrordinary circumstances, and did something that I’m not sure I can do. She has my respect. Maybe she is a hero. She certainly isn’t a coward.

just an interesting quote I saw in this thread

Would you extend that to members of the Iraqi army?

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How did I miss this thread last night? I thought I was the only one who had these thoughts.

FTR, I was in the USAF for 5 years until 99, and will (god willing) be back in this July.

I won’t totally retype what others have already said but I do think that the fact that she is a female is playing a strong part in her presentation by the media. I don’t think that a 5’11" hispanic man would have gotten anywhere NEAR this much attention from making it thru the exact same ordeal. I would bet that we would have heard something on the Today show or CNN about how “Special Forces rescue young american POW” and that would have been about the extent of it. I would bet my paycheck that no one in the US would be able to remember the guys name at the end of the week.

I also agree that getting captured and being rescued does not make someone a hero. It makes you a survivor, which is pretty badass as well, but not a hero. Not at all. I have never heard anyone use the word “hero” when talking about John McCain. Wasn’t he a POW for like 5 years?

Rape sucks in everyway, but I think in the realm of torture it is ALL equally vile. Rape is no more brutal than having your fingers cut off or your feet slashed up or any number of unspeakable things that happen when people are tortured. It is just another method. The fact that she “could have been raped” doesn’t make her situation any more dire because men “can be raped” and HAVE BEEN raped in these situations before, but alot of times it is with broken bottles up the ass and shit like that. So I am sorry if I don’t give her extra “hero points” for something that “could have” happened. It just pisses me off that people talk about this like it is the most evil thing in the world and that it can only happen to women.

The girl is brave. The girl is courageous. The girl is a survivor. A hero though? I don’t think so. Hell, she is getting a full ride scholarship from WV for it. Why don’t all military from WV get that?

No the guys that rescued her on the other hand. HELLS YES! That had to be some Rainbow Six style action on the ground that night. And we all know how bad Rainbow Six is eh?

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Of course not. They’re the bad guys. After all, they’re not soldiers, they’re “fighters.” I read it on cnn.com.

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Actually, they are the bad guys, you know, fighting for a tyrant, using women and children as human shields, shooting POWs.

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Until they surrender. Then they’re liberatees.