Tinkering with the Social Engineering

Soon after reading the story on insufficient army recruits, I came upon one describing a study finding that the Army's policy barring the assignment of women to units whose primary mission is combat. The main problem, says the report's lead author, Margaret Harrell of the RAND Corporation, is that "the policies do not anticipate the style of combat experienced in Iraq, where there is no clearly defined battlefield."

I had noticed and wondered about this phenomenon myself, as I observe female soldiers manning posts that are clearly dangerous and requiring the maintenance of weapons in a "red" (loaded, safety off) state.

As of July 21, 76 servicewomen have died in Iraq, including 62 soldiers. I don't know whether this is too high -- if the only acceptable number of combat enemy-fire fatalities is 0 -- or too low. My intuition is that it's just about right. You don't want to see "equality" in casualties (see, e.g., human nature, biology, psychology, etc. -- imagine if half the "flag-draped coffins" the media wails about were our "daughters" rather than our "sons") but if women are allowed to serve at all -- which I believe they should -- it is unavoidable, if they are to get meaningful assignments, that they occasionally be exposed to dangerous situations.

It's a difficult issue, one with which the Defense Department has obviously struggled. I've neither see nor heard anything to suggest the need for a change of policy, other than perhaps operational tinkering around the edge to make unit-assignment rules more clear to commanders.