D
espite the never-ending whining of the race victimhood lobby and the shrill bitching from the feminists, America is no longer a country that needs to cut special deals with minorities and women because of our racist, sexist ways. (As Sonia Sotomayor may soon find out.)
The case-closer to the unhappy era of affirmative action in America is, without a doubt, Rear Admiral Michelle Howard. “Michelle Howard who?” I thought when I first heard the name via Huffpo this a.m., after which I quickly clicked through to a lengthy profile on Essence. (Can’t leave HuffPo fast enough!)
Rear Admiral Michelle Howard is, to dispense with the blather quickly, the U.S. Navy’s first black woman admiral. Yay. Now we won’t have to ever use that discriptor again; she’s euthanized it. Here’s the more important part, from the Essence piece:
Rear Admiral Michelle Howard awoke on April 8 to sunshine, the rolling swells of the Indian Ocean, and the beginning of another day looking for pirates. No one could have predicted just a few days later she would be embroiled in a major international crisis, and saving a man’s life from the deadly forces of Somali pirates.
Howard, 49, had just officially transitioned from a desk job in Washington, D.C., where she was senior military adviser to Donald Winter, secretary of the Navy, to the helm of the USS Boxer, a large deck assault ship patrolling off the Gulf of Aden, otherwise known as “Pirate Alley,” in the Arabian Sea.
Now the Boxer had become Howard’s flagship, where she is the first African-American woman and second female to head a Navy strike force. And in this role she oversees a dozen warships and a contingent of 1,000 Marines, as well as runs the international Combined Task Force 151 with another 14 warships.
When Howard received word that the containership Maersk Alabama had been attacked and boarded by pirates and its American captain, Phillips, was taken hostage, she immediately devised a tactical plan with her team to save his life.
When the Navy Seal snipers took out Capt. Phillips’ captors, they were under the command of Adm. Howard. And when Capt. Phillips returned home to the embrace of his wife and kids, it was because of the tactical plan Adm. Howard had devised. And I don’t know about you, but I never heard peep one about this until today.
Now, I suppose there are some crazed leftists out there that will confront this same set of facts and scream hysterically that America is a sexist, racist country for not glorifying Adm. Howard’s role in these dramatic events. But they miss the point. To us, Adm. Howard is just Adm. Howard, a consummate Navy professional doing the job she was sent out to do, and doing it as a Navy officer, not a black woman Navy officer.
She has made me prouder to be an American, because her quiet, competent work shows that we are the world leader in utilizing the talents of our best, no matter what their race, gender or heritage may be.
