White House chief of staff John Kelly’s comments about the sanctity of women actually harms women everywhere, Retired Marine Lt. Col. Kate Germano wrote Tuesday in the Washington Post.
“Kelly’s expressed views about women are troublesome and should not be excused or ignored … John Kelly doesn’t value women enough to make it a matter of principle not to work with Trump,” Germano wrote. His statement that “women were sacred” apparently implies that sexual harassment problems didn’t exist in his time, according to Germano, who added that Kelly’s words imply women are weak and need protection.
“You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases,” Kelly said at the news conference last week regarding the condolence phone call between President Donald Trump and Army Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow, wife of one of the four American soldiers killed in Niger on Oct. 4.
Germano said that Kelly using his son’s death in Afghanistan to describe the torturous military casualty notification process was “a teachable moment” and “a good lesson for the many Americans who have no personal connection with the military,” before launching into an attack on Kelly. (RELATED: The General Speaks: Kelly Urges Americans To Remember What Is ‘Sacred’)
“The service had the highest rate of sexual assault when Kelly was a senior officer in the Marine Corps,” Germano continued, adding that he perpetuates negative stereotypes about women in the military. “Generations of general officers like Kelly cultivated the exclusively male warrior Marine ideal at the exclusion of women.”
The former Marine commander also criticized Kelly for his opinion that Marine Corps boot camp should remind segregated by gender and claimed Kelly has “helped to perpetuate the culture of abuse and discrimination Marine women have faced for decades.”
The media and public have given Kelly a pass for years because he’s a Marine veteran, and it needs to stop, Germano concluded.
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