There are apparently people in Congress who want to leave all the dying (and killing) to the menfolk. This March 12 Washington Post article gives the basics. These articles, a wide-ranging feature from the Post on women and ground troops and this article from CNN on carrier pilots give the reality that women are an integral part of combat.

I’m going to leave aside all those trivial arguments about equality and respecting the patriotism of women. This is just another sign that a lot of conservatives in this country don’t really believe women deserve equal respect, much less equal rights. Let’s cut to the idiocy here. The administration’s foreign policy doesn’t have a chance in hell if the role of women in the military is scaled back. The U.S. may not have the manpower to succeed as it is.

Of course, all of this could be just theater for the religious right. Make some stern pronouncements. Screw over the careers of a few women to show you mean business (see the second Post article). Then rest assured that the military leadership will revert to the status quo by changing a few classification definitions.

Wow, I’m glad we’re spreading freedom, equality, and respect for women to the Middle East.

Chris Bray - 5/14/2005

This maneuver strikes me as yet another sign that a certain kind of contemporary American conservative doesn't recognize the degree to which he can't have all of the things that he wants. It's a global crusade for Western civilization, but let's purge women from combat support jobs and fire military intelligence analysts with rare and hard-won language skills because we don't approve of their sexual orientation.

Purge the ranks, and spread them farther.

These folks have absented themselves from the simplest levels of reality.