perfidy

Max Boot, author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (a fantastic book I can't recommend highly enough), has an op-ed in the LA Times about the dispute surrounding the role of women and gays in ground combat. If you'd asked me to guess how Boot came down on this issue, I'd have probably guessed he was against, but here he makes a strong argument for the integration of women and gays into frontline Army and Marine units.

But today, 212,000 women (15% of the active-duty force) play an integral role in the military. Keeping them out of combat is impossible, whatever the law says, because in a place like Iraq everyone is on the front lines. Thirty-five female soldiers have died in Iraq and almost 300 have been wounded.

Even as women have taken on roles once reserved for men, the disastrous consequences predicted by naysayers have not come to pass. In 2000, the late Col. David Hackworth wrote: "What the British longbow did to the French army at Crecy in 1346, the failed military policy on gender integration has done to the U.S. armed forces at the end of the 20th century: near total destruction." Yet in the last five years, "near total destruction" has been the fate not of the U.S. armed forces but the Taliban and Baathists they have battled.

... I also don't see why we are still barring all gays and lesbians from serving openly. Between 1994 and 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office, the military discharged 9,488 homosexuals, including 322 with badly needed knowledge of such languages as Arabic, Farsi and Korean. In other words, the fight against gay rights is hurting the fight against our real enemies. That's a compelling reason to change the law, even for those of us who used to be supporters of the gay ban.

I have in the past, like Boot, supported the ban on gays in the military. Like him, I was persuaded by the arguments of those opposing the ban that the mere presence of gay soldiers or marines would undermine morale and unit cohesion.

There certainly isn't any historical basis for banning gays from serving, and serving well. All the way back to the Sacred Band of Thebes, gays have often had a prominent role in combat. Our culture has had a long history of discrimination, if not revulsion, aimed at homosexuals; and it would not have made sense to sacrifice the fighting efficiency of the vast majority of straight soldiers to allow a relative few gays to serve. However, attitudes have continued to change, and I think that that argument no longer holds water, especially given the increasingly difficult task of maintaining recruiting levels, and attracting needed skills into the armed forces. We should eliminate all restrictions on gays serving in the military, and if necessary (though I think it won't be) implement the kinds fo policies that were used to integrate blacks back in the fifties.

Women are now in combat pretty much across the board. They are fighter pilots in the Navy and Air Force, and serve on warships in combat duty. They serve in support and combat service support roles in both the Marines and the Army, and the nature of the conflict in Iraq - largely absent of any traditional battle lines - means that they are on the front line no matter what DoD classification they have. That's all well and good. Boot's argument however, is that since they're already in combat, there's no point in making any sort of distinction at all. That's doesn't necessarily follow, though I admit that pulling women out of support units would be an enormous headache.

I don't think that women who volunteer for the armed services are necessarily lacking in the "fighting spirit" or "killer instinct" that male soldiers supposedly possess. A lot of evidence points to the fact that the majority of men in the armed forces are not natural born killers, and attempts to make them such are not very successful. Some sort of 80-20 rule seems to be operating - a large percentage of enemy deaths are likely caused by a relatively small number of American fighters. There is no inherent reason that women can't be in either group, and it is clear that both are needed for a successful military. (We might imagine that relatively fewer women will be in the natural killer category, but self selection would allow lots of them to end up in the military.)

My only real remaining problem with women in combat is the physical requirements, which are currently (to my understanding) significantly lower than for men. Raise those standards, at least for women wanting to serve in the Airborne or other elite units, and I'm cool with the whole project. I don't think the young straight men in the Army and Marines will have a problem with that, as long as they know their new comrades are going to be able to pull their own weight.

Really, we should do this not just because it fits in with our whole free-wheeling, I'm okay - you're okay American idiom. Just think about the salt and lemon juice rubbed into a paper cut feeling it would induce in an already pissed off jihadi to be captured by a squad composed largely of women and gays. That'll stick a spoke in their wheel.