Scott Brown pushes for combat role for women

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- Breaking with many leaders in his party, Republican Senator Scott Brown today urged Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to allow women to serve in combat, saying the nation has an “obligation” to provide greater opportunities for female troops who have sacrificed as their male counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brown, a lieutenant colonel and 32-year veteran of the Massachusetts National Guard, told Panetta in a letter that the recent decision to permit women to serve closer to the front was a positive step but didn’t go far enough.

“We have an obligation to expand the professional opportunities available to women, especially considering their sacrifices,” said Brown, a member of the Armed Services Committee, citing the 140 female troops who have died in combat since 2001. “Doing so in my view would improve military effectiveness, not detract from it.”

He also argued that women might otherwise be held back from promotion.

“Closing these opportunities to women affect[s] their ability to develop a career path in the military and advance to higher ranks,” Brown wrote.

Earlier this month, Panetta modified a 1994 policy to open nearly 14,000 positions to women, including as mechanics and radar operators for combat units. In some cases, the ruling will also permit women to serve as intelligence officers and communications specialists in front-line units.

However, women are still barred from serving as infantry soldiers, in tank crews, or as part of special force teams.

Panetta vowed to study the issue further in the hopes of lifting as many gender-based restrictions as possible.

But Brown has now joined a growing chorus of lawmakers, most of them Democrats, who want Panetta to go further without delay.

“We should not waste time endlessly studying this issue and getting bogged down in bureaucratic red tape,” Brown told Panetta today.

It is a position that runs counter to rhetoric from some leaders in his party who have criticized the Pentagon’s efforts.

For example, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum recently set off a minor firestorm when he criticized Panetta’s decision.

“I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people may naturally do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved,” Santorum told CNN.

Yet multiple experts say the debate is increasingly irrelevant as the line between combat and support troops has steadily blurred in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where terrorists and insurgents wielding roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, and suicide vests operate within the civilian population. Women have been killed in combat in both wars and on numerous occasions exchanged fire with and killed insurgents.

The military has also relied on Female Engagement Teams that serve with special forces and that enlist the help of the female population in Afghanistan to help identify enemy forces. Brown highlighted those teams in his letter to Panetta as evidence that the Pentagon can “take a more aggressive approach to offering additional opportunities to our women in uniform.”

Brown faces a stiff challenge for reelection this fall from former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, and his stance could help him with some voters, according to Elisabeth Armstrong, assistant professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College in Northampton. “It is an issue for women voters because it is a way to say these are positions women now have access to.”