Sign of the Times

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON -- Two female soldiers filed suit on Wednesday to scrap the U.S. military's restrictions on women in combat, claiming the policy violated their constitutional rights.

Command Sergeant Major Jane Baldwin and Colonel Ellen Haring, both Army reservists, said policies barring them from assignments "solely on the basis of sex" violated their right to equal protectio under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

"This limitation on plaintiffs' careers restricts their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits," the women said in the suit filed in U.S. District Court.

This is one of those sticky issues that is difficult to discuss in our politically correct world because the opposing view is immediately cast as sexist, patriarchal, etc. An Ad hominem argument, when done in a crafty way, cloaked in the appealing rhetoric of equality and rights, is a powerful tool that can automatically discredit a view and a person as backwards and prejudiced. "You're obviously sexist, so anything you say on the subject is irrelevant." (The pro-lifers face similar, nasty tactics from the pro-abort crowd. "You're anti-choice, anti-woman, and you don't care about girls who are raped.")

The fact is, there are totally legitimate, reasonable arguments for preserving the restrictions on women in combat. Kate O'Beirne penned an excellent article on this subject for National Review in 2003 entitled "An Army of Jessica's: About Women in Combat: Let's fight. Hard." Here's an excerpt:

Overplaying women's exploits permits proponents of gender-integrated combat to discount the masculine traits that the history of warfare shows to be vital to military success. In an article for the Buffalo Law Review, Wayne State law professor Kingsley R. Browne examines the historic link between masculinity and warfare: "Be a man" was the core value by which combat soldiers judged each other, according to Samuel Stouffer's classic study of soldiers in WWII; as Browne notes, Northwestern professor Charles Moskos--America's leading military sociologist--explains that one of the few ways to get men in combat to behave so irrationally as to risk getting killed is to appeal to their masculinity. A study of the Spanish Civil War found that the greatest fear of men facing combat for the first time was that they would turn out to be cowards. Historian S.L.A. Marshall found that a man in combat will overcome his fear and do what's required because he risks losing "the one thing that he is likely to value more highly than his life--his reputation as a man among other men." Browne concludes: "If the need to prove one's manliness is an essential motivator of combat personnel, what motivates women?"

A 1985 Navy study found that large majorities of women were unable to perform any of the eight critical shipboard tasks that virtually all men could handle...In her 2000 book, The Kinder Gentler Military, Stephanie Gutmann recounted how the harsh demands of basic training have been largely eliminated to make the experience more female-friendly. With basic training now gender-integrated in all the services except the Marines, the emphasis is increasingly on self-esteem and positive motivation. Recruits are shown videos that reassure them that "anybody can get through boot camp" and that it's "O.K. to cry." A commission appointed by defense secretary William Cohen...concluded that basic training should be separate because integrated training resulted in "less discipline, less unit cohesion, and more distraction from training programs.

And MacKubin Thomas Owens touched on some excellent points in an article he wrote a few years back:

The presence of open homosexuals (and women) in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros will be unleashed into an environment based on philia, creating friction and corroding the very source of military excellence itself. It does so by undermining the non-sexual bonding essential to unit cohesion as described by Gray. Unlike philia, eros is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, protectiveness, and favoritism, all of which undermine order, discipline, and morale. These are issues of life and death, and help to explain why open homosexuality and homosexual behavior traditionally have been considered incompatible with military service.

These are all serious, substantial arguments that deserve have a fair hearing in the debate over women in combat roles in the military.