House Republicans retreated yesterday from a measure that would have restricted women's roles in the military in an effort to keep them out of combat.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Army leaders and lawmakers from both parties opposed the change, which would have frozen the jobs that women are allowed to fill related to military ground operations and would have required congressional approval for any change.
Yesterday's reversal capped two weeks of intense debate over women in combat that highlighted a gap between committee-room interpretations of a decade-old policy and the daily reality of road bombs and rockets that thousands of female soldiers face today in Iraq.
"In the history of this country there has never been a law limiting the assignment of women in the Army, and we will not do so now," Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), the only female military veteran in Congress, said on the House floor. She added in an interview: "We have men and women 6,000 miles from home doing a very dangerous job, and we should not do anything to indicate we do not appreciate their service."
At issue was a 1994 Pentagon policy that bars women from serving in direct ground combat units below the brigade level. Over the years, the Army has expanded the range of positions women are allowed to fill, placing them closer and closer to units whose central mission is combat. Some House Republicans have come to believe that the military is straying from its own stated policy and sought to rein it in by rolling back the places where women can serve.
But their efforts fizzled after top Army generals and other critics said the change would send the wrong message to women serving under fire in Iraq. Yesterday, as the House prepared to pass the annual defense authorization bill, lawmakers on both sides of the issue reached agreement on language essentially maintaining the status quo. The bill was approved 390 to 39.
The chief advocate of restricting women's roles, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), scaled back his own plan so that it simply would extend the time required for the Pentagon to notify Congress -- from 30 days to 60 days in session -- before it opened or closed positions to women.
In a statement, Hunter said the new language preserves his aim "to inject Congress into any policy changes" the Pentagon may propose on assigning women to "units such as infantry, armor and artillery."
"The women-in-the-military issue is past," said Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who also fought the proposal.
Opposition from Pentagon and Army leaders was intense. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said last week that it was "unnecessary" and could cause "confusion on the part of commanders and soldiers."
Rumsfeld made his disagreement clear in a Capitol Hill luncheon with Republicans from the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, lawmakers said. "He said he loves Duncan Hunter but on this one he was wrong and it should be taken out of the bill," Wilson said. Later Tuesday, Rumsfeld met with Hunter and they discussed "some language they could both agree to," said Hunter spokesman Joshua Holly.
The watered-down Hunter measure includes a requirement that the defense secretary review the implementation of the 1994 policy on women in combat.
Specifically, it said the review should focus on an ongoing reorganization of the Army to ensure that it complies with the 1994 policy. The secretary must report to Congress on the review by March 2006.
The Army's reorganization, which located mixed-sex support units with combat battalions, sparked the latest debate over the assignment of women by raising questions about whether the Army was abiding with the 1994 policy. Women are currently barred from infantry, armor and some artillery units but serve widely in logistics and combat support units.
In mid-March, a House subcommittee pushed through a Republican amendment that the Army said would have closed at least 21,925 positions in ground support companies to women.
Army leaders strongly objected to that, arguing that they were reviewing the role of women and that the issue was complex because battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan are "no longer linear."
Indeed, several foes of the Hunter effort to keep women out of combat argued that the 1994 policy -- which defines "direct ground combat" as engaging the enemy "well forward on the battlefield" -- makes little sense given that the insurgency in Iraq has no front lines. Tens of thousands of female troops have served in Iraq, with dozens killed, hundreds wounded and some decorated for valor under fire.
