As virtually everyone knows, the U.S. military is strained, largely due to a shortage of soldiers. In January, for the first time in a decade, the Marines missed their monthly recruitment goal. As a result, they've put hundred of new recruiters into the nation's communities, and are now offering re-enlistment bonuses of up to $35,000. The Army's recruitment effort fell 27 percent below its goal for February, the first time since 2000 that it failed to meet a monthly goal. In February, the Pentagon announced that five of the six military reserve components failed to meet recruitment goals for the previous four months.
The Army National Guard missed its recruitment goal for the first quarter of fiscal year 2005 by 30 percent. As a result, in March, the Army raised the maximum age for recruits to the Army Reserve and National Guard by five years, to 39. Major General Michael D. Rochelle, the commander responsible for Army recruiting, admitted earlier this month that owing to the war in Iraq, the Army faces its most difficult year for recruitment since the draft was abolished in 1973. Given the circumstances, it's hard to imagine that anyone would want to further handicap our armed services by reducing their numbers, but that's precisely what some conservative members of Congress tried to do.
Republican Representative Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recently inserted an amendment into a bill that would have drastically limited the number of female soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. His amendment was an attempt to alter a Pentagon policy first initiated in 1994 that restricts women from serving in direct ground combat units smaller than brigades, under the assumption that smaller units typically engage in greater combat with the enemy. The Pentagon policy excludes women from assignments to forward areas "exposed to hostile fire" in which there is a "high probability of direct physical contact with the hostile force's personnel.'' This prohibits women from serving in infantry, armor, artillery, special forces, or combat engineer units.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has interpreted the policy to permit assigning female soldiers to forward support companies. Since early 2004, the Army has been allowing female soldiers to serve in these companies, in an effort to improve efficiency in the provision of supplies and perform maintenance and repair duties. These units provide supplies, maintenance services and medical support to ground units. Women are also permitted to serve in transportation companies so long as they are not actively engaged in battle. They are also permitted to fly helicopters and attack aircraft that are performing support services. Representative Hunter's amendment would have altered the policy by restricting female soldiers to only rear support companies.
Although Democrats objected to the change, the Republican-controlled Armed Services Committee accepted the amendment. And conservatives attempted to strengthen it further, by issuing a second version of the amendment that would have made it illegal for a female soldier in any branch of the military to serve in forward support companies. In effect, this would have removed planning and strategy capabilities from the Pentagon, not to mention commanders in the field, and instead, allowed Congress to dictate how wars are fought. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon immediately criticized the proposed change. The Army informed Congress that it does adhere to the original 1994 policy. The Army also announced that if female soldiers were restricted to rear support companies, approximately 22,000 positions would have to be filled by their male counterparts. If the current recruitment numbers are any indication, this would be all but impossible.
The Army released a statement which called the proposed change "unnecessary" and noted that it "may lead to confusion on the part of commanders and soldiers." The statement concluded by affirming that ".women are an invaluable and essential part of the Army.." General Richard A. Cody, the vice chief of staff for the Army, cautioned that enacting the change "will cause confusion in the ranks and send the wrong signal to the brave young men and women fighting the Global War on terrorism." But even after such strong criticism from the Pentagon, Congressional conservatives refused to budge.
As a result, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to the House of Representatives and announced that he was opposed to the change. According to California Republican Representative David Drier, "Secretary Rumsfeld has made it very clear publicly that he doesn't support any change." Armed Services Committee Chairman Hunter agreed to a compromise amendment, which was passed by the House, that permits women to continue to serve in forward support companies, but requires the Pentagon to inform Congress 60 days in advance of changing the combat roles of female soldiers.
This effort to restrict the roles of women in the military is, in part, attributable to old-fashioned sexism. Conservatives simply dislike the idea of women serving alongside men, especially in a combat zone. This attitude is a vestigial holdover of the nineteenth-century view of women as the "weaker sex" that resurfaces from time to time. In 1996, then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrinch infamously warned against allowing women to serve in combat positions, explaining that "If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections."
The attempt to change the roles of female soldiers is also part of an ongoing effort by conservatives to shield America from the realities of the war in Iraq. An increasing number of people are questioning whether or not the invasion of Iraq has been worthwhile. And conservatives are attempting to stem this tide of discontent. The Bush administration has revealed their role in this effort, for example, by prohibiting the release of photographs of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to America. Conservatives would like to dissuade the country from further confrontations with reality by removing women from the battlefield. But it's too late. According to the Pentagon, 35 female soldiers have died in Iraq, and 280 have been seriously wounded.
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Gene C. Gerard taught American history at a small college in suburban Dallas, and is a contributing author to the forthcoming book “Americans at War,” to be published by Greenwood Press. His previous articles have appeared in Political Affairs Magazine, Dissident Voice, The Free Press, Intervention Magazine, The Modern Tribune, and The Palestine Chronicle and OrbStandard.
