Army Plays Games With Women-in-Combat Rule

The battlefield has changed, but land combat realities have not. When an infantry soldier is wounded under fire, his ability to survive may depend on a single male support company mechanic who can lift and carry him to life-saving emergency care, A female mechanic trained with "gender-normed" standards could not do the same. Under the Army's equivocal plan, there might not be any support soldier nearby at all. So much for "train as we fight" and the concept of "unit cohesion," which depends on mutual trust for survival in battle.

Doublethink definitions have consequences. The Army's revised collocation rule sets a new precedent for all land combat support units subject to Defense Department regulation. Absent intervention, this will affect all Special Operations Forces and eventually the Marine Corps. The "Women in the Army" blueprint even presumes to eliminate multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and Stryker brigade reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition (RSTA) squadrons from the list required to be all male.

'Growing' Careers

Why is this happening? More than one general has told me that the objective is to "grow" the careers of female officers, including their own daughters. This is careerist groupthink, which cannot justify incremental changes that will force the majority of enlisted women and men to pay the ultimate price.

A May 2004 Pentagon briefing speculated about insufficient "inventory" of male soldiers for the combat support companies, but presented no data to support that concern. If there are shortages of men, officials who retained genderbased recruiting quotas for women-including Defense Under secretary David Chu, his deputy. Charles Abell, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, and Personnel Vice Chief Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck-should be held accountable for their failure to plan ahead.

The military needs sound leadership on personnel policies, not problematic decisions by default. Members of Congress should insist on compliance with the law requiring advance notice of proposed policy changes, including the effect of the revised collocation rule on women's exemption from Selective Service registration. Officials might claim that the new wording is "pre-decisional" (even though it appears in the Army's official magazine Soldiers). If that is so, immediate revocation should not be too difficult.

The ultimate responsibility to bring the Army back into compliance with law and policy resides with the commander in chief, President Bush, and secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The time for principled leadership is now.

Elaine Donnelly, a contributing editor of HUMAN EVENTS, is president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that specialties in military personnel issues.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Apr 4, 2005
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