Until now. To understand why these scandals are breaking out, you have to look at life in the barracks. Recruits and drill sergeants are young people, thrown together at a time of their lives when sex is much on their minds. Meanwhile, the army’s male-dominated, combat-oriented culture exacerbates the tensions. I spent 15 years in the army, and I know that as long as women are not treated as equals, the army will continue to have two classes of soldiers. And men will keep treating women without the respect they deserve, even when both are wearing the uniform.
Sex between a recruit and a drill sergeant has always been an army taboo. The relationship has been a sacred trust: a partner, godparent and taskmaster all wrapped into one. But is the army giving people the tools they need to ward off temptation–especially the NCOs, who are often only a few years older than the recruits? You have a bunch of kids far from home, in close quarters, under stress. Sex is what many of them do to cope. Visit most college campuses and you’ll see the same thing. The rules banning improper sex in the ranks have been in place for years, but soldiers know that recruits and sergeants sometimes slip into consensual relationships. Rooting this out is a matter of vigilance and cracking down on the leadership.
It may be harder to change the army’s core culture. Women will never be considered equal members of the team until they can do equal jobs. The army gets its senior leaders from the combat-arms branches; women are excluded from direct ground combat. The party line is that there are tremendous opportunities for women, and there are–if you want a secondary role. If you would like to fix trucks or fly helicopters, you can have a wonderful career. But you’ll never reach the highest levels of leadership. Having separate castes provokes tensions. The only way to eliminate that is to choose the best soldier for each job–including combat–regardless of gender.
True, there is a greater willingness to confront sexual harassment now than there was in my West Point days. Back then, there was no place to turn, no mechanism to even lodge a complaint. But even now every day is a fight. There’s no simple formula. We are good at changing behavior in the army: we take civilians and make them soldiers. Now we have to try to do the hardest thing of all: fundamentally change a culture that, sadly, produces revolting stories of harassment and rape.
