The author takes a theater-specific, mission-specific anecdote and turns it into justification for a sweeping policy change. Among other issues that I have with this piece, I have a problem with the leading question that,
at least twelve countries around the globe allow women to serve on the front lines. Why are the U.S. and the UK behind the times? That’s like asking, “some high school baseball team has a girl playing left field, so why doesn’t the Boston Red Sox start recruiting women softball players?”
The US military, in terms of its degree of lethality and the manner in which it is used, is very difficult to compare to any other military. Even if one could find some close matches, American culture is unique and the role of women in the the US military is as much a function of the way in which we use our forces as it is a function of the attitudes of our society about the role of women in combat. If our infantry units did little more than set up base camps in safe areas, like many other western military units, then our society might have a different opinion of combat and, by extension, the role of women in combat. If we were continually threatened – or at least perceived that we were – with existential threats, like the Israelis, then we might demand more of all of our citizens, including women. But neither of those are the case for the US.
I hope that policy makers will look at the example given and recognize how narrow this set of circumstances is, and that those policy makers will be hesitant to consider it as a justification for making sweeping policy changes.
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