Women in battle: A distraction for men?

“The Army ain’t what it used to be,” said John H. Cushman Jr. in The New York Times. Soldiers have been saying that for decades, and it’s truer than ever, now that the Pentagon has unveiled a new policy that allows female members of the Army to take support roles alongside combat infantrymen on the front lines—jobs such as tank mechanic, combat medic, or radio operator. The policy stops short of placing women in direct, ground-combat roles, even though women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq have sometimes come under fire and shot back. Nonetheless, social conservatives are objecting, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum voiced their concerns last week when he said that women serving on the front line could prove a distraction to men. “Men have emotions when [they] see a woman in harm’s way,” he said. “It’s natural. It’s very much in our culture to be protective.”

Santorum “has a point,” said Elizabeth Reintjes De Angelo in The Washington Post. As a former Navy officer, I can tell you that most military women do not want to fight on the front lines. We prefer to serve in essential support roles away from the theater of war, where our skills are often superior to men’s. Why “deny men and women their differences?” Front-line combat isn’t just any job, said Elaine Donnelly in National​Review.com, and the military is not “just another civilian ‘equal opportunity’ employer.” Direct combat missions demand a level of aggression and physical strength “beyond the capability of almost all women.” Pretending otherwise, for the sake of gender equality, will put lives at risk.

Don’t underestimate our troops, said Julia Goralka in The Washington Times. When rockets and bullets are raining down on your foxhole, you don’t worry about the gender of your comrades, or their sexual orientation, either. American soldiers, “whether male, female, gay, or straight,” are highly skilled professionals trained to react responsibly under fire. The reality is that in Iraq and Afghanistan, women have already been unofficially serving in combat roles out of sheer necessity, said J. Bryan Lowder in Slate​.com. They’ve proved fully capable, which is why the Pentagon is making it official. If some male soldiers find the presence of people different from themselves troubling in some way, they’ll need to get over it. “Unit cohesion” is just another term for “personal prejudice.”

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