[3 articles]
G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16women.html
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: August 15, 2009
As the convoy rumbled up the road in Iraq, Specialist Veronica Alfaro
was struck by the beauty of fireflies dancing in the night. Then she
heard the unmistakable pinging of tracer rounds and, in a Baghdad
moment, realized the insects were illuminated bullets.
She jumped from behind the wheel of her gun truck, grabbed her
medical bag and sprinted 50 yards to a stalled civilian truck. On the
way, bullets kicked up dust near her feet. She pulled the badly
wounded driver to the ground and got to work.
Despite her best efforts, the driver died, but her heroism that
January night last year earned Specialist Alfaro a Bronze Star for
valor. She had already received a combat action badge for fending off
insurgents as a machine gunner.
"I did everything there," Ms. Alfaro, 25, said of her time in Iraq.
"I gunned. I drove. I ran as a truck commander. And underneath it
all, I was a medic."
Before 2001, America's military women had rarely seen ground combat.
Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates.
But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, often fought in marketplaces and
alleyways, have changed that. In both countries, women have
repeatedly proved their mettle in combat. The number of high-ranking
women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably
along with their status in the military.
"Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the
Army by leaps and bounds," said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army
colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus
while he was the top American commander in Iraq. "They have earned
the confidence and respect of male colleagues."
Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden
from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging
work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy.
Women are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry,
armor, Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing
support jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead
some male troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with
them in battle.
Yet, over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders have
resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers for
crucial jobs, like bomb disposal and intelligence. On paper, for
instance, women have been "attached" to a combat unit rather than "assigned."
This quiet change has not come seamlessly and it has altered
military culture on the battlefield in ways large and small. Women
need separate bunks and bathrooms. They face sexual discrimination
and rape, and counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones.
Commanders also confront a new reality: that soldiers have sex, and
some will be evacuated because they are pregnant.
Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have
done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled
streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of
explosives, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have
proved indispensable in their ability to interact with and search
Iraqi and Afghan women for weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural
reasons. The Marine Corps has created revolving units "lionesses"
dedicated to just this task.
A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy
directly in total disregard of existing policies.
Many experts, including David W. Barno, a retired lieutenant general
who commanded forces in Afghanistan; Dr. Mansoor, who now teaches
military history at Ohio State University; and John A. Nagl, a
retired lieutenant colonel who helped write the Army's new
counterinsurgency field manual, say it is only a matter of time
before regulations that have restricted women's participation in war
will be adjusted to meet the reality forged over the last eight years.
The Marine Corps, which is overwhelmingly male and designed for
combat, recently opened two more categories of intelligence jobs to
women, recognizing the value of their work in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In gradually admitting women to combat, the United States will be
catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries
allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those
pushing boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited
women for the infantry and sent them to Afghanistan.
But the United States military may well be steps ahead of Congress,
where opening ground combat jobs to women has met deep resistance in the past.
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a
group that opposes fully integrating women into the Army, said women
were doing these jobs with no debate and no Congressional approval.
"I fault the Pentagon for not being straight with uniformed women,"
said Ms. Donnelly, who supported unsuccessful efforts by some in
Congress in 2005 to restrict women's roles in these wars. "It's an
'anything goes' situation."
Poll numbers, however, show that a majority of the public supports
allowing women to do more on the battlefield. Fifty-three percent of
the respondents in a New York Times/CBS News poll in July, said they
would favor permitting women to "join combat units, where they would
be directly involved in the ground fighting." The successful
experiences of military women in Iraq and Afghanistan are being used
to bolster the efforts of groups who favor letting gay soldiers serve
openly. Those opposed to such change say that permitting service
members to state their sexual orientation would disrupt the tight
cohesion of a unit and lead to harassment and sexual liaisons
arguments also used against allowing women to serve alongside men.
But women in Iraq and Afghanistan have debunked many of those fears.
"They made it work with women, which is more complicated in some
ways, with sex-segregated facilities and new physical training
standards," said David Stacy, a lobbyist with the Human Rights
Campaign, which works for gay equality. "If the military could make
that work with good discipline and order, certainly integrating open
service of gay and lesbians is within their capability. "
From Necessity, Opportunity
No one envisioned that Afghanistan and Iraq would elevate the status
of women in the armed forces.
But the Iraq insurgency obliterated conventional battle lines. The
fight was on every base and street corner, and as the conflict grew
longer and more complicated, the all-volunteer military required more
soldiers and a different approach to fighting. Commanders were forced
to stretch gender boundaries, or in a few cases, erase them altogether.
"We literally could not have fought this war without women," said Dr.
Nagl, who is now president of the Center for a New American Security,
a military research institution in Washington.
Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since
2001, more than 220,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women.
Like men, some women have come home bearing the mental and physical
scars of bombs and bullets, loss and killing. Women who are veterans
of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars appear to suffer rates of
post-traumatic stress disorder comparable to those of men, a recent
study showed.
Men still make up the vast majority of the 5,000 war deaths since
2001; nearly 4,000 have been killed by enemy action But 121 women
have also died, 66 killed in combat. The rest died in nonhostile
action, which includes accidents, illness, suicide and friendly fire.
And 620 women have been wounded.
Despite longstanding fears about how the public would react to women
coming home in coffins, Americans have responded to their deaths and
injuries no differently than to those of male casualties, analysts
say. That is a reflection of changing social mores but also a result
of the growing number of women more than 356,000 today who serve
in the armed forces, including the Reserves and the National Guard,
16 percent of the total.
Over all, women say the gains they made in Iraq and Afghanistan have
overshadowed the challenges they faced in a combat zone.
"As horrible as this war has been, I fully believe it has given women
so many opportunities in the military," said Linsay Rousseau Burnett,
who was one of the first women to serve as a communication specialist
with a brigade combat team in Iraq. "Before, they didn't have the option."
Although women make up only 6 percent of the top military ranks,
these war years have ushered in a series of notable promotions. In
2008, 57 women were serving as generals and admirals in the
active-duty military, more than double the number a decade earlier.
Last year, Ann E. Dunwoody was the first woman to become a four-star
Army general, the highest rank in today's military and a significant
milestone for women. And many more women now lead all-male combat
troops into battle.
The Army does not keep complete statistics on the sex of soldiers who
receive medals and tracks only active-duty soldiers. But two women
have been awarded Silver Stars, one of the military's highest honors.
Many more women have been awarded medals for valor, the statistics show.
To be sure, not all women in the military embrace the idea of going
into combat. Like men, a few do what they can to try to get out of
deployments. Military women and commanders say some women have timed
their pregnancies to avoid deploying or have gotten pregnant in Iraq
so they would be sent home. The Army declined to release numbers on
how many women have been evacuated from a war zone for pregnancy.
In addition to the dangers, military life is grueling in other ways,
especially for mothers juggling parenting and the demands of the
military, which require long absences from home. And while the
military is doing more to address the threat of sexual harassment and
rape, it remains a persistent problem.
Bending Rules, Shifting Views
The rules governing what jobs military women can hold often seem
contradictory or muddled. Women, for instance, can serve as machine
gunners on Humvees but cannot operate Bradleys, the Army's armored
fighting vehicle. They can work with some long-range artillery but
not short-range ones. Women can walk Iraq's dangerous streets as
members of the military police but not as members of the infantry.
And, they can lead combat engineers in war zones as officers, but
cannot serve among them. This was the case for Maj. Kellie McCoy, 34,
a wisp of an officer who is just over five feet tall. As a captain in
2003 and 2004, she served as the first female engineer company
commander in the 82nd Airborne Division and led a platoon of combat
engineers in Iraq.
On Sept. 14, 2003, her four-vehicle convoy drove into an ambush. It
was attacked by multiple roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades
and small arms fire. Three soldiers were wounded in the ambush. As
one of the wounded stood in the middle of the road, bloody and in
shock, Major McCoy ran through enemy fire to get him, discharging her
M4 as she led him back to her vehicle. Then, she and the others
returned to the "kill zone" to rescue the remaining soldiers.
Insurgents shot at them from 15 feet away. But eventually, all 12
soldiers piled into one four-seat Humvee and sped away.
Major McCoy received a Bronze Star for valor and, most important for
her, the admiration of her troops. "I think my actions cemented their
respect for me," she wrote in an e-mail message from Iraq. "I worked
hard to earn their respect."
As an officer, Major McCoy's assignment followed both the letter and
the spirit of the regulations.
But in other cases, the rules were bent to get women into combat positions.
In 2004 and 2005, Michael A. Baumann, now a retired lieutenant
colonel, commanded 30 enlisted women and 6 female officers as part of
a unit patrolling in the Rashid district of Baghdad, an extremely
dangerous area at the time.
On paper, he followed military policy. The women were technically
assigned to a separate chemical company of the division. In reality,
they were core members of his field artillery battalion. Mr. Baumann
said the women trained and fought alongside his male soldiers.
Everyone from Mr. Baumann's commanders to the commanding general knew
their true function, he said.
"We had to take everybody," said Mr. Baumann, 46, who wrote a book
about his time in Iraq called "Adjust Fire: Transforming to Win in
Iraq." "Nobody could be spared to do something like support."
Brought up as an old-school Army warrior, Mr. Baumann said he had
seriously doubted that women could physically handle infantry duties,
citing the weight of the armor and the gear, the heat of Baghdad and
the harshness of combat.
"I found out differently," said Mr. Baumann, now chief financial
officer for St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota. "Not only could
they handle it, but in the same way as males. I would go out on
patrols every single day with my battalion. I was with them. I was
next to them. I saw with my own eyes. I had full trust and confidence
in their abilities."
Mr. Baumann's experience rings true to many men who have commanded
women in Iraq. More than anything, it is seeing women perform under
fire that has changed attitudes. But some experts say the hostility
toward women in the military was fading on its own. Many young men
today have grown up around female athletes, tough sisters and successful women.
As the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan sinks in, some experts and
military officers believe that women should be allowed to join
all-male combat units in phases (so long as job-specific physical
exams are created to test the abilities of men and women).
For New Warfare, New Roles
War is different today, they say. Technology has changed the way some
of these jobs are done, making them more mechanized and less
strength-dependent. Warfare in Iraq involves a lot more driving than walking.
What is more, not all combat jobs are the same. Handling field
artillery or working in Bradleys, for example, are jobs more suited
to some women than light infantry duties, which can require carrying
heavy packs for miles.
Still, most women in the military express little, if any, desire to
join the grueling, testosterone-laden light infantry. But some say
they are interested in artillery and armor.
Any change to the policy would require Congressional approval, which
lawmakers say is unlikely in the middle of two wars. But women in the
military and their allies want their performance in combat to count
for something.
"We have to acknowledge it because the military is like any other
corporation," said Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of
California and the senior woman on the House Armed Services
Committee. "If you are not on the front lines doing what is the main
purpose of your existence, then you won't be viewed as someone who
can command."
Military women said they were encouraged by the words of
Representative John M. McHugh, the nominee for Army secretary, who
just four years ago supported a failed push in Congress to restrict
the role of women in combat zones.
At his Senate hearing in July, Mr. McHugh, Republican of New York,
sought to allay concern. "Women in uniform today are not just
invaluable," he said, "they're irreplaceable." He added that he would
look to expand the number of jobs available to them.
In Mr. Baumann's view, the reality on the ground long ago outpaced the debate.
"We have crossed that line in Iraq," he said. "Debate it all you want
folks, but the military is going to do what the military needs to do.
And they are needing to put women in combat."
--------
Full participation for our 'sisters-in-arms'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121103271.html
By Donna McAleer and Erin Solaro
Saturday, December 12, 2009
By this time next year, U.S. troops will have been in Afghanistan
longer than the Soviets were. The United States has been engaged in
combat in Afghanistan and Iraq longer than in any previous war. Not
factoring in the increase in soldiers going to Afghanistan that
President Obama announced last week, some 220,000 American women have
engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the past eight years, more than 2 million U.S. servicemen and
servicewomen have served together in situations and for durations
that have never existed in previous conflicts. Whatever issues remain
to be resolved, the feared "disasters" did not materialize. There
have been no epidemics of rape, no waves of "get me out of here"
pregnancies, no orgies and no combat failures. In short, our men and
women in uniform have behaved as military professionals.
Yet while U.S. women are fighting on all fronts of the war on
terrorism and are regularly engaged in combat operations, there are
still barriers to their work and promotion.
In Afghanistan, for example, female troops are underutilized.
Explanations vary. Tom Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New
American Security and former Post reporter, noted in a recent article
that one of the chief barriers to fully utilizing servicewomen in
counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan is not Afghan but
American attitudes. Women are thought to make up about half the
Afghan population, and female soldiers and Marines have reportedly
had more success gaining access to Afghan women than male troops have had.
Rather than assuming that we should not impose our values on Afghans,
why not consider the possibility that Afghans of both sexes might be
tired of barbarism and could be delighted to see civilization backed
by armed men -- and women? Perhaps they would take up arms to that
end. An internal Marine assessment of its "female engagement teams"
that has been discussed in recent weeks on military Web sites quoted
an Afghan village elder as saying, "Your men come to fight, but we
know the women are here to help."
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced in October that he and Adm. Gary
Roughead, chief of naval operations, were close to finalizing plans
for the integration of women into the submarine fleet as early as
2011. There has been no feminist agitation for bringing women into
the submarine fleet, one of the elite naval positions, as permanent
crew. Indeed, organized political feminism as we remember it from the
1970s through the 1990s committed suicide on Sept. 12, 2001, when it
refused to call women to the colors in this odd war we are fighting
against Islamic fundamentalism. Nor has internal agitation based on
limited manpower been reported.
Is it possible we are seeing the beginnings of a top-down campaign to
end the 1994 policy that has excluded women from assignment to
direct, sustained ground combat?
If so, we are likely to hear much chatter soon about sex on
submarines and alternate use of limited bathroom and berthing space
on notoriously cramped vessels. Common sense and courtesy should go a
long way toward resolving such issues. And why should anyone object
that those are unreasonable expectations of sailors? No one who
cannot deal in a civilized manner with female comrades-in-arms and
shipmates needs access to a rifle, much less torpedoes or nuclear weapons.
These concerns are at the core of the issue of dropping the remaining
restrictions against servicewomen (and, for that matter, the "don't
ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay and lesbian troops from
the services). Twenty-five percent of military jobs are not open to
women, and those jobs lead disproportionately to higher command. Yes,
it's true that few men become commandant of the Marine Corps or
sergeant major of the Army, but men can. Military women, however,
need not aspire to the pinnacle of their profession.
This issue is profoundly moral. Combat is the core of the profession
of arms. The military has an absolute right to expect servicewomen to
engage in combat, as female Americans have been doing in Iraq and
Afghanistan for years. It should be a matter of personal honor and
institutional integrity for the military's senior (male) leadership to say:
"Servicewomen long ago earned the right to be treated as our
sisters-in-arms. To that end, we urgently petition Congress to drop
all remaining restrictions against them. As for the men within our
ranks who disapprove of this: The man who hurts or disrespects our
sisters-in-arms, excuses their rapes and harassers or collaborates
with their assailants is not our brother."
Our century will become only more violent. American women and gays
have a stake in the survival of our republic, and the military will
continue to need to draw on their strength, intelligence and courage.
It is time the military acknowledged them and welcomed them into the
profession of arms, rather than using, ignoring or discarding them.
--
Donna McAleer, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, is the
author of the forthcoming book "Porcelain on Steel: Women of West
Point's Long Gray Line." Erin Solaro is the author of "Women in the
Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military,"
based on her research during embedded tours with troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
--------
Allow me to hold the door open for women so they can register for draft
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/allow-me-to-hold-the-door-open-for-146548.html
Ken Herman, AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Dec. 24, 2009
Thanks to folks who fought the injustice, many legal and societal
barriers that locked women out of many opportunities have fallen
during my lifetime.
The glass ceilings have not all been shattered, but, compared with a
generation or two ago, we're infinitely closer to that goal. At long
last, it's now relatively rare to see newspaper stories about the
first woman to do something (though there still is that White House
something). Pay equity remains elusive, but women are involved most
everywhere. It's right, and it's about time.
So how come they don't have to register with Selective Service when
they turn 18? Maybe I missed it, but when was the
parade/demonstration in which women demanded to be equal with males
when it comes to potential mandatory military service?
Oh sure, women successfully have pushed to be allowed to do far more
than they used to do in the military, and more than 230,000 of them
have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Impressive number.
Like their male brethren, each of those women volunteered to serve
our nation. Again, impressive.
But here's the difference when it comes to men and women and the
military: Only men have to register with the Selective Service. And
therein lies one of the great dilemmas that would crop up should we
ever reinstate the draft, a concept that has gained some currency as
folks realize how little of a shared sacrifice the current wars have been.
Despite the draft talk, I detect little momentum for its reinstatement.
But that's not the point of today's exercise. The questions at hand
are these: Why don't females have to register with Selective Service?
If there was a draft, would we want to exclude females? Would it be
legal or fair to exclude women?
It's an issue that has been litigated several times. In 1981, the
U.S. Supreme Court said there was nothing unconstitutional about a
male-only draft. A subsequent challenge filed on behalf of four men
and one woman also went nowhere. A federal judge, citing the 1981
decision, said it's up to Congress, not the courts, to decide how
best to provide for the common defense.
That second suit died just about the same time that Rep. Charles
Rangel, D-N.Y., filed legislation which also died that would have
required women to register with Selective Service.
A little history: The draft ended in 1973. Draft registration ended
two years later. Registration was reinstated in 1980 by President
Jimmy Carter when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. (See how all
of this is connected?)
The Selective Service notes that Carter sought authority to
"register, classify and examine women for service in the Armed
Forces." Congress didn't buy it. A Senate Armed Services Committee
report cited the ban on women in combat, a notion that ignores the
reality that there are plenty of non-combat military jobs that need
doing. The committee also mentioned "congressional concerns about the
societal impact of the registration and possible induction of women."
In 1994, President Bill Clinton brought the topic up again when
female military roles were expanded. The Defense Department resisted
female registration but concluded "the success of the military will
increasingly depend upon the participation of women."
Afghanistan and Iraq have proven that to be an accurate prognostication.
Current Defense Department rules ban women from assignments where
direct ground combat is the primary function. In traditional warfare,
that can be a bright-line boundary. But it's not so bright in our
current wars that have ill-defined front lines. It's a reality that
has put many women in harm's way in combat support roles such as
convoy drivers and gunners. The Associated Press reports that at
least 120 women have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 650
have been wounded. It is important that we note and honor that sacrifice.
So here's where we stand on military service: Men must register and
would have to serve if the draft is reinstated. Women do not register
and can't be required to serve if the draft is reinstated.
Anybody see gender equity here? What color ribbon do I wear to
display my support for gender equity when it comes to mandatory
military service?
--
kherman@statesman.com; 445-3907
.
