Women in Combat: Panama Stirs Debate

Twenty-five years ago, when Joseph Zengerle was a cadet at West Point, warfare was portrayed in classic fashion. The battlefield was clearly divided between front and rear, with sweeping red arrows to designate the enemy and blue arrows for friendly forces. And women, if pictured at all, were safely in the rear.

“Those textbooks are out of print now, considered rare books,” says Zengerle, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. “These days the colors are bleeding together. In the kinds of conflicts we’re engaging in now, there is danger everywhere.”

And the consequences of this change in the face of warfare are nowhere more visible than on the role of women in uniform. As the U.S. invasion of Panama demonstrated, it makes little difference what their technical job assignments may be, women in an active war zone are likely to be women in combat.

Although female members of the Armed Forces are still barred from jobs officially defined as combat, many experts say the distinction between combat and non-combat assignments is probably becoming artificial. During the last decade, as the services have opened more and more non-traditional assignments to women--including combat support positions--it was inevitable that women would eventually find themselves in hostile environments.

“You can sit in a lab, or in a staff room in the Pentagon and say: ‘This is more likely to be combat than that.’ But everything becomes combat,” said Lawrence J. Korb, who served as assistant secretary of defense for manpower, installations and logistics during the first term of the Ronald Reagan Administration.

“Panama is a turning point in the debate,” Korb said. “People can no longer pretend that women are not going to be in danger.”

Case in point: the image of Army Capt. Linda Bray, in fatigues, a rifle slung over her shoulder, that flashed across the nation after the military police unit she headed was involved in a fire fight with troops of the Panamanian Defense Force.

As a result of such episodes, the age-old argument about whether women can--and should--fight has begun again. And the argument is more than theoretical, because critics of the present ban contend its primary consequence is not to protect women but to deny them higher pay and promotions.

Women comprise roughly 11% of the nation’s 2.1-million active-duty military personnel. According to the Pentagon, 88% of all military job classifications are open to women. That translates into about 56% of actual positions, because of the large numbers of soldiers assigned to combat-related jobs barred to women.

Military occupation groups fully open to women range from transport pilot and missile silo officer to automotive and ship repair technician. Women are still barred from all the Army’s infantry, armor and artillery jobs, from serving on Navy submarines and surface combat ships and from flying Air Force fighters and bombers.

As a result of such distinctions, the Army says women who served in Panama will not be eligible for one of the Army’s most treasured decorations, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, because the units in which they serve are defined as non-combat.

“The combat label and the combat definition have driven women crazy in the service for years,” said Brig. Gen. Evelyn Foote, who joined the now-defunct Women’s Army Corps as an officer in 1960 and recently retired from her last post as commanding general at Ft. Belvoir, Va.

“I personally have never had the desire to be an infantryman or drive a tank, but if I wanted to--and if I were able to do every task it called for--I wouldn’t like it one darn little bit if people kept me out because of my gender,” she said in a recent interview.

Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, insists that if women are to be treated exactly like men in the military “then they have to be just as liable to be sent into combat as all men are.”

He said that he did not believe the women in Panama--who included 1,000 Army and Air Force women permanently stationed there and 170 military police who were deployed for the operation--were exposed to the same perils as their male counterparts.

It is a subject of such political sensitivity, that few believe the removal of the combat exclusion for women will come soon--although advocates believe that the visible presence of women during the Panama invasion has given the issue new momentum.

Last fall, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), a Pentagon advisory board created by Defense Secretary George C. Marshall in 1951, recommended that Army women be allowed to enter all fields--including combat--during a four-year test period.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), chair of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military installations and facilities, announced recently that she would draft legislation to provide for a similar experiment.

“In the past, when I’ve met with congressmen, they’ve all said they’re not going to deal with it until it becomes an issue they have to deal with,” said Meg Sternberg, the immediate past vice chair of DACOWITS.

“I’ve traveled all over the world and talked with thousands of women in the military, and at least 75% of them feel they ought to have the right to go into combat,” she added.

President Bush, asked about the DACOWITS recommendation at his press conference last Friday--and about the performance of women in Panama--replied that he was willing to “listen to recommendations from the Defense Department” regarding changes.

Schroeder said she was growing weary of definitions that did not reflect reality.

“We never had to deal with this fiction until Panama,” she said. “Then, suddenly, there are women on the screen in fatigues with rifles. It looks and sounds like combat--and they’re still saying ‘these are non-combat positions.’

“What it really comes down to is what women in the military have been telling us all along: that this is an economic situation,” she continued. “These classifications don’t keep them out of combat, but they do keep them out of promotions.”

Korb, who now directs the center for public policy education at the Brookings Institution, agreed with Schroeder that current policies serve to keep women from promotions and higher pay--but not necessarily out of combat.

“Women are being put in danger but denied the rewards that those in direct combat positions are entitled to in the service,” he said. “Who gets promoted in the Air Force? The fighter pilot. The woman is flying a tanker--she’s in just as much danger, but she can’t get the promotions.”

Zengerle, who served in Vietnam as a special assistant to U.S. forces commander William C. Westmoreland during the Tet offensive, has always been a strong supporter of women’s rights. But he admits to having mixed feelings about women in combat.

“We’re not accustomed to seeing blinded women hobble off planes with amputated limbs, or women in prison camps threatened with rape or torture,” he said. “Those prospects stir at our emotions . . . in ways that have a bearing on our national sentiments and our national will. We haven’t had to see that yet.”

Foote, the Army general, disagreed, saying that there have been numerous instances of military women killed and injured while on duty. She and others, including Pentagon officials, acknowledge women could have been killed in Panana, or even during the October, 1983, U.S. invasion of Grenada, where Foote said women flew supply helicopters.

“There were Navy women killed by terrorists in Naples,” Foote said. “There were women on the flight that crashed in Gander.” Nurses in Vietnam were killed and, during World War II, about 80 military nurses were captured by the Japanese and were prisoners of war for four years in the Philippines, she said.

“They all survived and came home,” she said. “But these facts continue to be brand new news to so many people who never see women in this context. Women have been casualties in all wars--there’s nothing new about that.”