An Army of Jessicas: About women in combat: Let's fight. Hard

According to much post-war commentary, the Iraqi Republican Guard wasn't the only force decisively routed during Operation Iraqi Freedom: From coast to coast, editorial writers declare that the experiences of American military women in Iraq have defeated once and for all the critics of women in combat. The editorialists' battle flag is emblazoned with the image of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old Army supply clerk who was rescued by a Special Ops team after ten days as a POW. In USA Today, a commentator argued that Pfc. Lynch's ordeal alone proves "the time is right to blast through the armored ceiling that keeps women second-class citizens in the military." An Orlando Sentinel columnist sees her as conclusive evidence that "women can be as fierce as men."

These commentaries are generally ill informed and dishonest. They ignore the realities of our modern military and the civilian workforce, as well as human nature itself. Women already serve on combat aircraft and ships (but not submarines); many combat-support positions have been opened to women, and -- owing to Clinton-era changes -- the risk of close contact with the enemy no longer limits their assignments. The so-called armored ceiling prevents women only from serving in direct land-combat positions and special-forces units.

But advocates chafe at these remaining limits, and they are not above engaging in sleight-of-hand -- minimizing the feats of men and exaggerating those of women. In USA Today, Robin Gerber, author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, said Lynch proved her "sex's capacity for steely heroism"; while Lynch's gruesome ordeal as a victim of war's brutality is celebrated as an Audie Murphy anecdote, the unambiguous heroism of the men who rescued her goes largely unmentioned. Gerber credits a dramatic account of how Lynch, surrounded by enemy forces, "decided to fight to the death." This report first appeared in an April 3 Washington Post story that had its credibility questioned by the paper's ombudsman on April 20. Because there has been no confirmation of the original Post account -- which was provided by an "unnamed official" based on "battlefield intelligence," including Iraqi sources whose reliability hasn't been assessed -- the ombudsman concluded that "what really happened is still not clear." What is clear is that whatever the facts are surrounding Lynch's capture and detention, they will not be permitted to get in the way of her use as a symbol of women's fitness for the battlefield.

The successful integration of combat demands that men and women be treated exactly alike in the face of physical threats -- but it was actually Lynch's particular vulnerability that prompted a chivalrous response from the Iraqi lawyer who was moved to help when he saw her being slapped by one of her captors. "Don't worry," Mohammed whispered to Lynch, before he walked six miles to find a U.S. Marine patrol to alert. We can all be grateful that Mohammed hadn't been trained in current notions of gender equality in the modern military, where male chivalry is seen as a risk to national security. At the military's survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other enemy abuse of women.

Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times has no need for such professional training: He argues that women should be exposed to mortal danger so that men can be protected. Military women are, he wrote, "the most astoundingly modern weapon in the Western arsenal" because the Muslim world's "notions of chivalry make even the most bloodthirsty fighters squeamish about shooting female soldiers." Kristof sees women's skirts as an indispensable male accessory on the battlefield: He recounts that he asked a woman to share the front seat with him when he drove down a perilous road, on his theory that a sniper would hesitate to take a shot. Unfortunately, Kristof's theory failed one real-world test in the case of Pfc. Lori Piestewa, mother of two young children, who was found on the night of her comrade's rescue -- buried in a shallow grave along with eight other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance unit.

The public's aversion to violence against women explains its mixed feelings in the welcomed rescue of Jessica Lynch. What had she been made to endure, and should she have been allowed to wind up in that spot? But none of these mixed feelings were on display in the media's celebratory coverage. An Iraqi source gave a tip about Lynch's plight to an NBC reporter, and said Lynch had been tortured; the New York Post recounted this tip, leaving out any reference to torture. Snapshots of sanitized, yellow-ribbon moments reassure the public -- and hide the reality of violence against America's daughters and young mothers.

Before Jessica Lynch, there was the unwitting Capt. Linda Bray, who ably led a military-police unit during the Panama war. In securing a Panamanian Defense Forces dog kennel, Bray's soldiers came under sniper fire, but captured the kennel with no American casualties, and an enemy body count of six dead dogs. It took White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater calling the assault "an important military operation" and the Detroit News proclaiming her actions "worthy of a young Douglas MacArthur or George Patton" for the military to realize that its desire for favorable publicity had gotten out of hand.