Sending Women to Front Lines

No one in the debate on women in combat seems to be addressing the most crucial issues--love, sex, and family. Simply put, in times of desperate danger, most soldiers will place the safety of their loved ones ahead of the welfare of their comrades or the execution of their military duties.

The relatively gentle discipline exercized by the U.S. Army has no chance of compelling a soldier to value the lives of comrades more than the life of a woman he hopes to marry. Nor will the darker side of relations between the sexes be suppressed. Sexual harassment, jealousy and infidelity will have lethal consequences. Whatever the actual frequency of fragging was in Vietnam, it would be dwarfed in the unisex infantry.

All this had become clear to the Israelis when, in 1948, during the War of Independence, women were removed from combat duty. Let’s learn from them and not make the blue-collar people who make up most of the Army pay for the fantasies of the intellectual class.

STEPHEN ZEIDER

Arcadia