The American Spectator

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The political issue of women in military combat is framed around older military doctrine assuming "safe" or "secure" interior lines of communications; our largest planning failure in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Original tactics having failed us; equipment and personnel assumptions that this "behind the lines" or "safety in the rear mentality" was finally no longer working -- we have had to quickly adjust our training, tactics, and vehicle protection, but NOT, however, for unknown reasons, our personnel practices of keeping women in direct lines of fire.

Such military luminaries as Ralph Peters, foretelling much of our current Iraq situation in his 1999 book Fighting for the Future addresses many of the deficiencies of the Army's fleet of over 100,000 fighting and logistics vehicles being unsuitable for 21st century urban conflict; our deficiencies in training and our Army's lack of enthusiasm for urban battlegrounds. He (Peters) speaks of a new enemy, a warrior class who will oppose us asymmetrically; mercilessly watching and waiting, on their soil, in their cities, streets and alleyways -- seeking out our weakest points and vulnerabilities. Our greatest weakness -- not being able to crush such a 21st century warrior class -- because we have an Army trained to fight against SOLDIERS -- and a political atmosphere that will not permit necessary steps to visit violence upon a non-uniformed warrior class who blends into the population. We have become the Redcoats fighting militias and frontiersmen of the 21st century.

Women soldiers in this environment have no safe haven. Whether a member of a maintenance company ambushed in convoy; a HEMTT driver delivering bottled water hit by an IED, a helicopter repair person mortared or rocketed at her "secure" base -- women cannot be protected or have a lesser threat given to them by battlefield location or job title. All support soldiers are equally vulnerable to the asymmetrical threat.

Having watched our forces leave Vietnam under a cloud of political confusion in the 1970s, our current enemies want to duplicate a scenario of an unending volume of body bags returned to the United States. A snag in their agenda -- is that our soldiers in this war are all volunteers. Apparently, draftee casualties invoke a political anti-war "tipping point" more quickly than causalities from a volunteer force. Such was observed not only from the Vietnam conflict, but also the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Voices on the anti-war American left have served us a diatribe of military service being a forced decision of economic necessity -- but such arguments failed to assist John Kerry in 2004. Even his threat of a draft couldn't push the anti-war message across.

It is not beyond reason that the left insists we keep women in combat to speed up an anti-war tipping point. A public assaulted by everyday violence -- mostly among males -- is slow to react politically to more of the same. Deliberately exposing women to combat caused casualties is yet one more strategic factor the left is using to sway anti-war political opinion -- while they gladly divert the argument to other tactical issues of readiness, combat effectiveness or gender discrimination.

p>Military personnel strength planners are having their hands full right now with recruiting problems and declining availability of our reserve forces to face continuous activation. The military's current dependence on females to make its' end strength numbers presents yet another challenge -- this one political -- on our ability to wage war upon Islamofascism. Our enemies would have it no other way! br> -- Mike Horn br> LTC, Military Intelligence, US Army, Ret. br> Combat Simulations and Modeling Manager br> PARKS Reserve Forces Training Area br> Dublin, California /p>

"It is hard to imagine conservatives sitting on their hands if Bill Clinton's military had begun embedding women in combat brigade units"

And yet, they did. The current makeup of the armed forces cannot be blamed on President Bush any more than the New Deal could be blamed on President Eisenhower. It happened before his watch and he has to deal with what he inherited. Secretary Rumsfeld had it right when he said that you go to war with the army that you have, not the army that you wish you had. The army that we had was drawn down and rebuilt by Clinton with almost no public debate.

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