We salute the bipartisan group of U.S. representatives who stopped a misguided attempt to restrict the role of women in combat zones.
At a time when the Army can’t meet its recruitment quotas, the last thing it needs is to turn back the clock and limit the role of half the population.
The sensible congressionals (who know it’s 2005, not 1905) were led by Reps. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. and Ike Skelton, D-Mo.
An amendment to the $490 billion defense bill, proposed by Armed Forces Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would have required an act of Congress each time the Army wanted to open up new positions for women in combat zones. Hunter retreated and a milder amendment substituted last week extends a requirement that the Army notify Congress of intent to expand women’s roles in combat-zone jobs from the current 30 days to 60 days.
Hunter’s effort brought protests from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Army Secretary Francis Harvey, Army commanders, and members of Congress from both parties. Today’s military is 15 percent female, including about one in seven of the troops in Iraq. Hunter’s amendment could have kept women out of nearly 22,000 ground support jobs.
Under a 1994 Pentagon policy, women can’t serve in direct combat units below the brigade level, including infantry, armor, artillery and combat engineers. But they play a critical role in combat-zone support units.
Wilson, an Air Force veteran who is the only woman veteran in the House, termed Hunter’s original amendment “both unnecessary and unhelpful. … We risk precipitating a more severe manpower crisis than we already have.”
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., criticized the compromise, saying it “still greatly infringes upon the right of women to serve in combat alongside men.”
Thousands of women have served with valor and distinction. Nearly three dozen have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds more wounded.
Skelton, ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee, proclaimed, “The women-in-the-military issue is past.”
