thepoliticalnotebook:

New rules for women in the military: Reading and responding to the Pentagon’s new report. I, as promised, read the official Pentagon report to Congress on the changes being made to the status of the military’s female servicemembers. I already covered the briefing yesterday, but just to recap, it was a bit of an incoherent mess and those conducting the briefing made it clear that the Pentagon didn’t have much justification for not granting at least further opportunities to women, much less lifting the combat restriction entirely (like Australia has). 

As per the Pentagon’s 1994 policy decision, women are not allowed to be assigned to ground-combat units below the brigade level. Women could essentially not be assigned to positions in any unit whose primary purpose was ground combat. Now, because as the Pentagon rightly notes, “The modern battlespace, however, without clearly defined boundaries, logically requires that the Department revisit this prohibition.” Positions are now open to women at the battalion level (battalions make up brigades, see the linked Wiki articles for further elaboration).  Women remain barred from actually serving in the infantry or armor or special forces units as before. The idea of “co-location” restrictions have also been done away with, for the same reasoning. Women were previously restricted from serving in positions that would require them to serve alongside combat forces, even if they were not serving in them. The DoD is also planning to develop gender-neutral physical standards, although they are pretty unclear about when that happens and what that will look like.

The Pentagon says that women’s performances in these new jobs, from intel analyst to tank mechanic, will be the basis for the “process.” The “process” is further DoD consideration of integrating women into combat. In other words, women are being unfairly asked to prove themselves more than they already have. 

I don’t believe that women should be content with being thrown the bone of 14,000 more job opportunities when they’ve proven themselves so eminently capable over the past decade. And they shouldn’t be asked again to prove that they can fulfill their military obligations on the front lines, because while they may have been technically excluded from such “front line” experience over the past decade, we all know that they have been very much in the thick of it. The Pentagon doesn’t need to observe them, and they don’t deserve to continue being tested to see if all of a sudden they reach their lady limits by being asked to fulfill dangerous obligations in war zones. They already do that.

I will recognize that I’m glad the Pentagon acknowledges that because of the ways in which we now fight wars, that excluding women from the so-called “front lines” (of which there are none) is no longer feasible. I’m in some ways willing to be glad that we are no longer denying certain obvious elements of this situation, and that the Pentagon is considering further steps beyond what we see here in this report (but only vaguely describing this “process”). But I’m not willing to be content at this limited motion towards recognizing the incredible courage and capability that women have shown over the past decades. 

A final note. Rick Santorum, who is obviously a knower of all things military, thinks this a Very Bad Idea (he should know all about those, I imagine). Because apparently, mixing ladies and men in a war zone can only lead to horrible, dangerous things like emotions. He says “I think that’s not in the best interests of men, women or the mission.” He’s absolutely wrong, although we know that isn’t even remotely a new experience for him. First, off what knowledge of the way women operate in combat is he working? What interests are these? And second, the idea that emotion has no place on the battlefield is utterly ridiculous. That is all the energy I am going to devote to him, but go read what Spencer Ackerman had to say about it.

Edit: It’s important to note, which I mistakenly failed to originally, that the real limiting factor here, which the Pentagon notes waaayyyy at the end of its report, happens to be the draft. My criticisms here should be taken as criticisms of the rhetoric, the waffling and the lack of actual presented commitment to the process. I might take this a bit differently if the Pentagon began its justifications with noting the obstacle presented by society’s unwillingness to have women be drafted or other unwillingness to throw away the draft entirely (that’s my vote) and not treating women’s perceived lack of abilities as obstacles. 

Photo: Members of a USMC Female Engagement Team during a patrol in Marja, Afghanistan in 2010. Photo by Cpl Marionne T Mangrum. Via the USMC Flickr.