WASHINGTON — Operation Enduring Freedom is involving women in ways not seen before in American warfare.

American women fighter pilots are dropping bombs on Afghanistan; women are working on Psychological Operations campaigns designed to convert Taliban soldiers to American allies; women officers captain Navy ships and serve as military police; and female soldiers in camouflage fatigues and toting M-16s are among the National Guard who are monitoring airport security nationwide.

Some feminists at the Pentagon would like to see the women on front lines, also, including direct line-of-fire combat positions. But critics say such a move could risk lives of service men and women by reducing the combat effectiveness of U.S. troops, and add to the problems that women, especially those with children, routinely encounter in military life.

Christine Camara is one such soldier. A captain in the Oregon Air National Guard reserve, her life changed radically on Sept. 11 when her telephone rang a few hours after the massacres at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The mother of two sons, a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old, found herself suddenly working 16-hour shifts commanding the security force at the Guard's Portland air base.

“One day I'm with my kids 24/7,” she told the Oregonian newspaper. “All of a sudden I'm lucky if I see them an hour a day.”

And life for her husband, Stanley Camara, a furnace repairman, changed too. “It's kind of goofy that the husband is staying at home and the wife is out there defending the country,” he told a reporter. “But that's the way the ball rolled. I'm very, very proud of her.”

Camara said she was excited about being deployed somewhere further off, perhaps the Middle East.

But, “this isn't the way I intended it,” the 27-year-old told a reporter. “After having kids my goals changed. My ideas changed.”

Under the Clinton administration, many personnel policy changes were made including, in 1994, retraction of the “Risk Rule,” designed to exempt women from especially dangerous missions. The definition of “direct ground combat,” from which women remained excluded, was restricted to mean “being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact” with hostile forces and to being situated “well forward on the battlefield.”

According to Maj. James Cassella of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, with these changes, “over 90% of military fields became open to women.”

Today there are more than 200,000 women in the nation's armed forces (14.7% of all active-duty personnel) but they do not serve in the direct combat arms of the Army and Marines — including infantry, armor and field artillery. There are no female soldiers among the Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force troops currently in Afghanistan, and they do not fly Black Hawk helicopters on Special Operations missions.

There are some, however, who would like to see women on the most dangerous assignments. A Pentagon panel, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, known as DACOWITS, consisting of 33 mostly female civilian members, has recommended women be allowed to fly Special Operations helicopters.

Cassella said the Special Operations Command declined to have women flying Black Hawks because the operations entail close coordination with ground troops and a high risk of hand-to-hand combat. A DACOWITS recommendation that women be deployed in submarines was also turned down by the Navy this year, on grounds that it would be too costly to retrofit submarines to accommodate women's privacy.

Other DACOWITS recommendations concern expanded on-base childcare and gynecological services for women. “Women have served proudly ever since the Revolutionary War,” said DACOWITS spokesman Cassella. “We think it enhances readiness and it also has the additional benefit of opening women's career opportunities.”

Problems

“So much of this debate focuses on individuals and career goals,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness in Livonia, Mich. “Individuals don't go to war. Units go to war.”

Donnelly cites lower physical standards, high attrition rates among women, and decreased discipline, morale and cohesion among mixed-gender troops, as reasons that women ought not to be allowed into direct combat positions.

Indeed, while no one doubts women's intelligence or patriotism or devotion to duty, critics of women in combat cite data on women's lesser physical capabilities. The U.S. Army has found that the average female recruit has 59% of the upper body strength of the average male recruit, and 72% of lower body strength.

The British service's “Combat Effectiveness Gender Study” concluded this summer that women should continue to be barred from serving in “direct-fire close-combat roles” after finding that 70% of women, in contrast to 20% of men, were unable to carry 90 pounds of artillery shells over a fixed distance.

And 48% of females failed a test requiring a 12.5-mile march, with 60 pounds of equipment, followed by target practice simulating conditions under fire, compared to only 17% of males. Other British field tests found that women soldiers under fire were unable to dig into hard ground.

“Women do not have an equal opportunity to survive or to help their fellow soldiers survive,” said Donnelly, adding that feminist social engineering efforts have lowered the bar for physical requirements of recruits, and reduced war-fighting capacity. “There is no gender norming on the battlefield,” she stressed.

Cassella insists all the services “have standards and we expect those standards to be met.” But “gender norming” or “gender integration” has affected physical training in at least some military fields. The Washington Times reported in August that the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, canceled a mandatory weekly training run because a female officer complained it was “demeaning” and that slower runners like herself were ridiculed.

Southern Command's Commander Kelly Spellman told the Register the matter was still “under investigation” and the command had not yet reinstated the training run.

At the Infantry Officers’ Basic School at Fort Benning, too, mixed gender exercises had reportedly been canceled in November, allegedly due to rain.

Another concern is deployment. “Women are 3.5 to four times more non-deployable as men,” said Donnelly, and those figures rise during war. During Desert Storm the USS Acadia was dubbed “the Love Boat” because 36% of women on board were non-deployable due to pregnancy. Most of them were not replaced.

Some feminists want women's roles in the army to expand, even if most women don't want them to. Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen recently advocated that America step out of its “time warp” and force women to register for the draft. Women's exemption from combat is “an astonishing anachronism, really” she wrote.

Archbishop O'Brien

Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of the Archdiocese of the Military Services, USA, said he is unaware of any specific Catholic teaching regarding women's role in the military.

“The Church's instinct will favor whatever will protect the dignity and rights of the individual human beings,” he said. “The general rule in moral theology is not to automatically categorize. Women should not be penalized or pre judged where they show themselves equally capable.”

That said, Archbishop O'Brien added, “I don't think our experience as a country, as a culture, has seen an identical role for women in the work force, and especially in the military.

Women in combat would not be in the framework of that culture. The idea of forcing a draft on women is not just unjust but a great disservice to our country and a step backwards for our culture.”

Archbishop O'Brien said the military should reconsider its “come one, come all as long as you're 18” policy, and respond instead to the full dignity of men and especially of women, who often have abortions or defer having children altogether to pursue military careers.

Women should be encouraged to think long and hard before enlisting, the archbishop continued. He has seen so many struggle under “tremendous strain” when they are posted abroad without their children for lengthy absences. “What does that do to the children?” he asked.

Marriages are strained too, and the military is put in a difficult position to accommodate women and their children. Concluded the Archbishop: “We also have to consider what is best for the strength of the future of our family here.”

Celeste McGovern writes from Portland, Oregon.