With the exception of presidential candidate Rick Santorum and some other holdouts, most Americans no doubt are aware of the vital role women play on the front lines of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now even the Pentagon is officially acknowledging that.
Under new orders from the Pentagon, the military last week opened thousands of jobs to women closer to the front lines than ever before. The new policy is less a significant change than an acknowledgment of what already is occurring in combat situations.
Asked about the policy on CNN, Santorum said that while he favors giving women opportunities to do new things within the military, he thought giving women front-line roles "could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved."
He might mean that women were emotionally incapable of killing enemy combatants. Or maybe he means that male troops might be foolhardy if female troops are endangered or killed.
But Santorum was echoing an argument that has been made for decades to exclude women from combat and other dangerous jobs in the military. And it always has been a bogus contention.
To date, 144 women have died and 865 have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them in combat. Those women and thousands of others like them have faced the same dangers with the same courage and self-sacrifice as their male compatriots.
In a sense, references to front lines are outdated. In the type of wars our troops have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no real front lines. Everywhere outside of fortified compounds is a combat zone.
The new Pentagon rules belatedly concede that the distinction has blurred to the point of irrelevance. When women serve, they often are in harm's way.
Unfortunately, the new rules still bar women from serving in infantry, armor and special operations forces, which are considered the most dangerous combat jobs. Instead, they will allow women to perform many of the jobs they already are doing - but in smaller units, closer to the fighting and once considered too dangerous.
Women now officially will be allowed to do hazardous work as medics, military police and intelligence officers at the battalion level. They also can serve as tank and artillery mechanics or on rocket-launcher crews.
This is more than mere symbolism. In the military, combat experience often is crucial to moving up the ranks and assuming more responsibility.
The new rules don't go far enough. While they will open up 14,000 new positions across the military, more than 250,000 positions remain closed to women.
But this is progress. We hope it continues and that critics like Santorum don't succeed in slowing or halting it.
