An Army of Jessicas: About women in combat: Let's fight. Hard.

According to much post-war commentary, the Iraqi Republican Guard wasn't the only force decisively routed during Operation Iraqi Freedom: From coast to coast, editorial writers declare that the experiences of American military women in Iraq have defeated once and for all the critics of women in combat. The editorialists' battle flag is emblazoned with the image of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old Army supply clerk who was rescued by a Special Ops team after ten days as a POW. In USA Today, a commentator argued that Pfc. Lynch's ordeal alone proves "the time is right to blast through the armored ceiling that keeps women second-class citizens in the military." An Orlando Sentinel columnist sees her as conclusive evidence that "women can be as fierce as men."

These commentaries are generally ill informed and dishonest. They ignore the realities of our modern military and the civilian workforce, as well as human nature itself. Women already serve on combat aircraft and ships (but not submarines); many combat-support positions have been opened to women, and -- owing to Clinton-era changes -- the risk of close contact with the enemy no longer limits their assignments. The so-called armored ceiling prevents women only from serving in direct land-combat positions and special-forces units.

But advocates chafe at these remaining limits, and they are not above engaging in sleight-of-hand -- minimizing the feats of men and exaggerating those of women. In USA Today, Robin Gerber, author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, said Lynch proved her "sex's capacity for steely heroism"; while Lynch's gruesome ordeal as a victim of war's brutality is celebrated as an Audie Murphy anecdote, the unambiguous heroism of the men who rescued her goes largely unmentioned. Gerber credits a dramatic account of how Lynch, surrounded by enemy forces, "decided to fight to the death." This report first appeared in an April 3 Washington Post story that had its credibility questioned by the paper's ombudsman on April 20. Because there has been no confirmation of the original Post account -- which was provided by an "unnamed official" based on "battlefield intelligence," including Iraqi sources whose reliability hasn't been assessed -- the ombudsman concluded that "what really happened is still not clear." What is clear is that whatever the facts are surrounding Lynch's capture and detention, they will not be permitted to get in the way of her use as a symbol of women's fitness for the battlefield.

The successful integration of combat demands that men and women be treated exactly alike in the face of physical threats -- but it was actually Lynch's particular vulnerability that prompted a chivalrous response from the Iraqi lawyer who was moved to help when he saw her being slapped by one of her captors. "Don't worry," Mohammed whispered to Lynch, before he walked six miles to find a U.S. Marine patrol to alert. We can all be grateful that Mohammed hadn't been trained in current notions of gender equality in the modern military, where male chivalry is seen as a risk to national security. At the military's survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other enemy abuse of women.

Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times has no need for such professional training: He argues that women should be exposed to mortal danger so that men can be protected. Military women are, he wrote, "the most astoundingly modern weapon in the Western arsenal" because the Muslim world's "notions of chivalry make even the most bloodthirsty fighters squeamish about shooting female soldiers." Kristof sees women's skirts as an indispensable male accessory on the battlefield: He recounts that he asked a woman to share the front seat with him when he drove down a perilous road, on his theory that a sniper would hesitate to take a shot. Unfortunately, Kristof's theory failed one real-world test in the case of Pfc. Lori Piestewa, mother of two young children, who was found on the night of her comrade's rescue -- buried in a shallow grave along with eight other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance unit.

The public's aversion to violence against women explains its mixed feelings in the welcomed rescue of Jessica Lynch. What had she been made to endure, and should she have been allowed to wind up in that spot? But none of these mixed feelings were on display in the media's celebratory coverage. An Iraqi source gave a tip about Lynch's plight to an NBC reporter, and said Lynch had been tortured; the New York Post recounted this tip, leaving out any reference to torture. Snapshots of sanitized, yellow-ribbon moments reassure the public -- and hide the reality of violence against America's daughters and young mothers.

Before Jessica Lynch, there was the unwitting Capt. Linda Bray, who ably led a military-police unit during the Panama war. In securing a Panamanian Defense Forces dog kennel, Bray's soldiers came under sniper fire, but captured the kennel with no American casualties, and an enemy body count of six dead dogs. It took White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater calling the assault "an important military operation" and the Detroit News proclaiming her actions "worthy of a young Douglas MacArthur or George Patton" for the military to realize that its desire for favorable publicity had gotten out of hand.

Overplaying women's exploits permits proponents of gender-integrated combat to discount the masculine traits that the history of warfare shows to be vital to military success. In an article for the Buffalo Law Review, Wayne State law professor Kingsley R. Browne examines the historic link between masculinity and warfare. "Be a man" was the core value by which combat soldiers judged each other, according to Samuel Stouffer's classic study of soldiers in World War II; as Browne notes, Northwestern professor Charles Moskos -- America's leading military sociologist -- explains that one of the few ways to get men in combat to behave so irrationally as to risk getting killed is to appeal to their masculinity. A study of the Spanish Civil War found that the greatest fear of men facing combat for the first time was that they would turn out to be cowards. Historian S. L. A. Marshall found that a man in combat will overcome his fear and do what's required because he risks losing "the one thing that he is likely to value more highly than life -- his reputation as a man among other men." Browne concludes: "If the need to prove one's manliness is an essential motivator of combat personnel, what motivates women?"

These fundamental differences in the nature of men and women can't be wished away. They are the chief reason women have a clear preference for jobs that are safe: In 1995, the ten occupations with the highest risk of death -- ranging from fisherman or logger to roofer or truck driver -- were less than 10 percent female, with most less than 5 percent. But women now make up 15 percent of the military, and surveys indicate that only about 10 percent of them are interested in serving in combat. This tallies with social science, which reports that males take risks even when it's a bad idea to do so, while females are disinclined to take a risk even when it's a good idea.

The heroes of 9/11 provided a rare opportunity to celebrate the masculine traits that drove those firemen -- not "firefighters" -- into the burning towers to do the dangerous, demanding, dirty work of men. "These are the men who will fight our wars," President Bush declared when he visited the recovery scene in lower Manhattan. There are only 36 women among the 11,000-member force of New York's Bravest. With the risks firemen face so obvious, and the prospect that even New York Times columnists might have to count on their reckless bravery, there have been no outraged questions about why there wasn't an appropriate gender ratio among the 343 dead heroes.

Although proponents of combat integration assert that they want to see women meet the same physical standards as men in the military, the armed forces -- under pressure to integrate the ranks -- have modified their training. For example, since it was integrated, West Point has developed a formula of "equivalent effort" that has male cadets obliged to complete an obstacle course in 3:20 minutes, while female cadets are allotted 5:30. Men receive the same grade for doing 72 push-ups in two minutes as women do for performing 48. Scores on fitness tests throughout the military are now similarly "gender-normed." The physical qualifications for specific jobs have also had to be changed to accommodate the lesser physical strength of women. A 1985 Navy study found that large majorities of women were unable to perform any of the eight critical shipboard tasks that virtually all men could handle. To help keep things shipshape on the gender front, the job of stretcher carrier in the Navy, once a two-man job, was redefined as a four-person task.

In her 2000 book, The Kinder, Gentler Military, Stephanie Gutmann recounted how the harsh demands of basic training have been largely eliminated to make the experience more female-friendly. With basic training now gender-integrated in all the services except the Marines, the emphasis is increasingly on self-esteem and positive motivation. Recruits are shown videos that reassure them that "anybody can get through boot camp" and that it's "O.K. to cry." A commission appointed by defense secretary William Cohen, chaired by former senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, concluded that basic training should be separate because integrated training resulted in "less discipline, less unit cohesion, and more distraction from training programs."

And there are considerations just as important -- indeed, that strike closer to home -- than military readiness. When an unprecedented number of women -- including single mothers and dual military couples -- were deployed to Desert Storm in 1991, a bill was introduced in Congress to prohibit the deployment of parents whose children risked being orphaned. An AP poll at the time found that 64 percent of the public agreed that it was "unacceptable for the United States to send women with young children to the war zone." The war ended before Congress acted, but the public was clearly concerned about the unequal sacrifice faced by the 80,000 children with a single parent, or both parents, in the service. Single custodial parents in the military are disproportionately female, and the public clearly saw a distinction between the sacrifices of mothers and the sacrifices of fathers. Someone must fight our wars, so fathers will inevitably be at risk; but must young mothers be exposed to such danger?

Although single custodial parents are not eligible to enlist, once they are in uniform generous subsidies and accommodating assignment policies can encourage single parenthood. In Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military (1997), feminist author Linda Bird Francke approvingly noted that the military's family benefits make the services "a particular mecca for single parents." In 1989, the Navy had twice as many single parents, proportionately, as the civilian population. Although one study found that the re-enlistment rate for women dropped by 69 percent once they became mothers, for many vulnerable single mothers the military provides a tempting safety net of benefits, including health care and housing.

The proponents' last-ditch argument is that if women want to serve in combat, it's discriminatory to deny them; it's like the rank discrimination that once segregated blacks in the armed services. But there were no biological differences to justify the unequal treatment of black soldiers. As Kingsley Browne points out, the exclusion of women is more parallel to the exclusion of older people from active service, based not on prejudice, but on group generalizations resting on biological fact: Even the most fit 35-year-old man is not eligible for enlistment. The "equal opportunity" argument winds up being a call for special treatment. Women can't be expected to meet the same physical qualifications as men, and the advocates want military women to be assigned to combat only by their own choice.

Even in today's volunteer force, men in noncombat positions are frequently involuntarily assigned to combat, and women would have to face the same possibility. Charles Moskos explains: "To allow both sexes to choose whether or not to go into combat would be the end of an effective military force. Honesty requires that supporters of lifting the ban on women in combat state openly that they want to put all female soldiers at the same combat risk as all male soldiers -- or that they don't."

But in the military's gender wars, honesty has been the first casualty.