GI Jane, again: the Army tries to sneak women into combat, and some congressmen try to stop it.(AT WAR)

LAST year, the U.S. Army redesigned its combat brigades into "units of action": task-organized, self-contained organizations that include support troops--or forward support companies (FSCs)--embedded within them. The change was designed to make our troops more rapidly deployable. Unfortunately, it has been adulterated by a bow to political correctness that threatens to attenuate the military's effectiveness.

Current regulations prohibit women from ground combat--a prohibition that also applies to women in FSCs. Nevertheless, the Army, claiming that there are not enough men to fill positions in the FSCs, has begun to assign women to them. Army leaders claim that this change is consistent with current regulations, and that Defense Department rules bar women from FSCs only during moments in which those units are "conducting" combat. The implication is that women would be withdrawn from them before the onset of hostilities.

House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.) is not amused by this novel interpretation. Accordingly, he asked Rep. John McHugh (R., N.Y.) to introduce an amendment to the defense-authorization bill that bars women from serving in FSCs. This legislative effort is well founded. There are good reasons for women not to be involved in ground-combat support.

To understand these reasons, one must understand that the fundamental nature of war, so well described by Carl von Clausewitz 170 years ago, has not been significantly altered by technological advances. It is still, as Clausewitz wrote, a complex phenomenon, highly influenced by chance and uncertainty.

An important element of war is "friction," which Clausewitz described as "the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper." Clausewitz used the term "friction" to describe the cumulative effect of the small, often unnoticeable events that are amplified in war, producing unanticipated macro-effects:

 
   Countless minor incidents--the kind you 
   can never really foresee--combine to 
   lower the general level of performance, so 
   that one always falls far short of the 
   intended goal.... The military machine--the 
   army and everything related to it--is 
   basically very simple and therefore seems 
   easy to manage. But we should keep in 
   mind that none of its components is of one 
   piece: each part is composed of individuals 
   ... the least important of whom may 
   chance to delay things or somehow make 
   them go wrong.... This tremendous friction, 
   which cannot, as in mechanics, be 
   reduced to a few points, is everywhere 
   in contact with chance, and brings about 
   effects that cannot be measured, just because 
   they are largely due to chance. 

The military tries to reduce the natural friction of combat through training, discipline, regulations, orders, and what Clausewitz calls "the iron will of the commander." One particularly important way of countering friction is to promote unit cohesion. Unit cohesion in combat is far more than just "teamwork." Cohesion arises from the bond among disparate individuals who face death and misery together. This bond is akin to what the Greeks called philia--friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love.