USA: Should the U.S. Allow Women in Combat?

The Pentagon has announced new rules that bring women in the military closer to the front lines but still don't allow women soldiers to serve in the infantry, special forces or other jobs that would send them directly into combat.

Even as it announced the new jobs opened to women and insisted that it was maintaining the prohibition on women in combat, the Pentagon acknowledged that in wars such as those conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan it has become nearly impossible to define “the front lines.”

In such conflicts, all troops are targets. The Pentagon said 144 women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's 2 percent of the total U.S. service members killed. About 280,000 women have served in those wars, about 12 percent of the total.

The new rules, which must be reviewed by Congress, allow women to take jobs such as tank mechanics that previously had not been open to them. In all, about 14,000 new jobs – mostly in the Army and Marines – will be opened to women.

Some women's advocates said the Pentagon didn't go far enough. Women need to be able to serve in combat roles, they said, to gain the kind of experience that would earn more of them promotion to top leadership posts in the military.

But the new rules also have critics, such as GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum. The former senator said, “I think that could be a very compromising situation where – where people naturally, you know, may do things that may not be in the interests of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.”

Sen. Santorum said he didn't mean women were too emotional but that it is a part of American culture for men to be concerned about protecting women.

Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain and the executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, an advocacy group for women in the military, said: “We were hoping for more.”

Ms. Bhagwati added: “We're not talking about opening up the infantry to every woman, but the women who do want to try these jobs, who are we to say that they can't? A lot of women will leave service early when they know their career path is limited.”

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