American Civil Liberties Union

The combat exclusion rule ignores the reality of modern warfare. Women are already serving in combat, and at present, 139 women have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Less than three months after the Pentagon announced that it was loosening the rules that bar women from being assigned to ground combat units, the Marine Corps followed suit, taking important steps to open up previously restricted opportunities to women. Last week, the Marines announced that women volunteers would be allowed to attend the Infantry Officers Course in Quantico, Va., for the first time, and that enlisted Marine women would also soon gain access to infantry training. This week, Marine Corps General James F. Amos sent a message to all Marines explaining that the Corps would begin assigning women to a number of positions from which they had previously been restricted, including in artillery, tank, assault amphibian, and other staffs, for purposes of "research" on integrating women into the force. He also announced that the Marines will conduct quantitative research on how men and women Marines perform in tests such as marching with a heavy load and lifting a heavy machine gun.

Shannon Morgan was always a good shot, a skill she acquired growing up in rural Arkansas. As a member of a U.S. Army “Lioness” team of women soldiers in Iraq in 2003, she held her own in firefights and went out on patrols with both Army and Marine Infantrymen. Yet, official policy bars the armed services from assigning women to direct ground combat units in most situations, regardless of how well they perform under fire. Instead, when commanders want to put talented women soldiers on combat teams, they must do so by temporarily “attaching” them to those units, or sending them in a support role, rather than an official combat role. The result is that women soldiers, like Shannon, went into combat in Iraq with soldiers they hadn’t trained with and barely knew.