PINKtank

Retired Col. Ann Wright writes her response to a recent scathing editorial in Tuesday’s Fayetteville Times on the military’s shameful downplay of high rates of male soldiers sexual assaulting, raping and murdering female soldiers.

The editorial was inspired by Wright — who served 29 years in the Army and in the State Department but publicly resigned in 2003 in protest to the Iraq war — and others who had been holding vigil Monday outside the gates of Fort Bragg.  Between December 2007 and September 2008, four U.S. military women were killed by military men nearby and near the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune, two military mega-bases in North Carolina. Three women were in the army.

The editorial agrees with the protesters’ outrage on the culture of violence not only within the military but in society at large. “The recent spate of murders underscores the fact that domestic violence remains a significant problem here. Whatever preventive action is being taken at Fort Bragg, it isn’t enough.”

Interesting that military officials spoke to the newspaper about how they plan to address the epidemic but, as Wright explains, but not the people holding vigil. “No one from military command authority nor from the prevention of domestic violence offices at Fort Bragg made the effort to come to the gates to talk about the ending the epidemic of violence.”

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