Right to Choose

A Marine team was involved in providing a service to the residents of a township here, and their activity had been fully coordinated with city officials. The service the Marines provided necessitated interaction, on a personal level, with a large percentage of the township’s population. One of the Marines on the team was female junior NCO (often referred to as a Woman Marine—WM—by other Marines, though only when gender is relevant to the reference). Over the several days during which the Marines worked in the town, the WM averaged six marriage proposals a day from various residents. These proposals came from men of wide ranging income and status, and ranging in age from 18 to 60. The best dowry offer was, if I remember correctly, a steer (OK, a bull, I guess steers are only in Texas) and a few goats.

Here’s the way the average encounter happened: the interested man would approach the eldest/senior ranking male in the Marine team, and indicate his interest in marriage to the WM (whom he had as yet never spoken to, discovered her name, or ANY information about her). Instead of acting as the head of a household and negotiating the bride price for the WM, as would be expected of the eldest male in what was obviously a social/cultural ‘community’ by construct, the Marine leader would explain that the WM was fully capable of making her own decision in this regard, in fact it would not only be improper but illegal for him to negotiate anything on the WM’s behalf, as she had the same right to autonomous decision making within the bounds of the law as pertaining to her own life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the Marine leader himself did. Many of the would-be husbands, faced with the obstacle of conducting business (determining the bride price) with a woman, particularly the very woman that was the object of the business, were deterred. Many others, however, approached the WM, and very carefully extolled the many benefits that would result from her accepting the position of first, second, or third wife in the would-be husband’s household.

I would argue that the extent to which Coalition Forces are ‘victorious’ in the Global War on Terror has as much to do with the attitudes, perceptions, and values that accompany the views with which all concerned parties view each other as a result of GWOT interaction, as it does with the price of oil, international politics or universal commerce.

Semper Fi, Jon G.