By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

A twenty-nine vehicle convoy of American supply trucks rumbled through the streets of South Baghdad. Military assistant drivers were alert. Their weapons were at the ready. Their eyes scanned side streets and roof tops. The noise of the powerful motors and clanking equipment drown out most other sounds. "Thump. Thump, thumppppppp." Suddenly the gates of hell opened. Bullets cascaded against the trucks in an avalanche of gun fire. Just as quickly, like the cavalry of old, three Military Police Humvees, each with three soldiers, raced to the rescue. The MPs were from the 17th MP Company, Kentucky National Guard, citizen-soldiers guarding fellow Americans.

The MPs dismounted from their vehicles to better engage the enemy. Reaching a berm with a good field of fire, Sgt. Hester took out the gunner on the enemy machinegun position. The MP's attack caused the enemy to shift their attention from the convoy to the MPs. Three of the MPs were wounded but MPs continued their counterattack. They charged the trenched enemy position continuing to draw fire away from the convoy and on to themselves. Sgt Hester started lobbing grenades into the enemy trench with an M203 grenade launcher. Hester and the remaining MPs closed with the enemy and cleared the trench. Twenty-seven enemy soldiers were killed and seven were captured. The convoy was saved.

This is not a Hollywood drama. This is for real. Three MPs were awarded the Silver Star for their gallantry under fire. The Silver Star is the nation's third highest award for bravery. Those National Guardsmen honored were: Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester; Ssg. Timothy Nein and SPC Jason Mike. Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester is the first woman since World War II to be so honored.

Historically, the necessities of war have swept away old habits and prejudices. American women have always gone to war but until recently, they did not get credit for it. Before World War I women were not, for the most part, allowed to be enrolled as soldiers, but would accompany the army acting in what would today be called service support. They were at the winter encampment at Valley Forge. They followed their soldier husbands to remote frontier posts during the Indian Wars. They cooked, cleaned, mended, and tended the sick. In desperate times, they shouldered muskets. Added to these long suffering women were women who masqueraded as men to fight. There are documented instances in both the American Revolution and the Civil War of women who pretended to be men to join the army. It is estimated that over 400 women served as soldiers during the Civil War in this manner. During the Civil War, however, Dr. Mary Walker obtained a commission in her own right as an assistant surgeon and served with distinction during the war. She was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service and remains today the only woman to be so honored.

At the beginning of World War I over 20,000 nurses were mobilized. It might surprise some to learn that there were more American women in Europe supporting the military during World War I than there were members of the United States Marines. When the war was over, women did not qualify for veterans' benefits and their sacrifices were, in large part, ignored. Women again volunteered to serve during World War II. Their contribution to the war effort became invaluable. They were not supposed to be in combat or in areas of danger, but war is war and women were killed by hostile action. After World War II a small number of women remained in the Armed Forces in separate corps such as the Women's Army Corps. Women were not taught combat skills. They were supposed to be nurses, clerks, or work in administration. Vietnam caused a re-evaluation. There were no front lines in Vietnam. The enemy was not fussy about who they killed. In the aftermath of Vietnam, women were fully integrated into the armed forces and the special women's corps was disbanded.

Just as the civilian world resisted giving women access to careers long dominated by men, there was resistance to opening jobs in the military to women. Jobs that were seen as "dangerous" or those that resulted in "direct combat" were closed to women. There were lingering feelings that women were just not up to handling weapons. America, it was said, would not tolerate seeing its daughters come home in body bags.

With the integration of women into the army, basic training for women became the same as that for men. Women were now inextricably parts of the companies they trained with. Of the 697,000 troops deployed during the first Gulf War in 1991, 33,300 were women. They served with their fellow soldiers sharing the heat, dust and danger.

Thousands of women have deployed in defense of our country since the attacks on America in 2001. Thousands of women Reservists and National Guardsmen have left their jobs and families to serve their country. Some have come home in flag draped coffins. In June, the Marines suffered the largest single loss of female troops when a vehicle filled with explosives was run into a convoy of women Marines. At least four were killed and eleven wounded in the fire fight that followed. The female Marines and Army MPs have proved invaluable in Muslim countries where cultural norms would not tolerate male soldiers searching women for weapons or explosives.

In May, some Republicans in Congress introduced legislation to limit the jobs open to women in the military based upon some concept that women should not be in combat areas or have jobs that expose them to danger. It was an insulting and out-of-touch move. Women in the military, like men, are all volunteers. Women are as patriotic as men.

An amazing thing happened when this proposal was made in Congress. The armed forces closed ranks and defended their women soldiers.

"Everyone in a combat zone is subject to being shot at, seriously injured or killed, " wrote retired LTC Gordon Fowkes in a letter to the Army Times, "The question of women in combat is whether they get the right to shoot back."

There has been a paradigm shift in war which many Americans are unaware of. The last land war in the United Stated took place 140 years ago. The last time Washington, DC, was attacked was during the War of 1812. America has, for most of its history, been protected by its oceans. That is no longer so.

When the cafeteria staff reported to work at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, they entered a war zone. When the stewardess closed the hatch at Logan Airport on that morning for a trans-continental flight, they had closed with the enemy. When hundreds of women, from file clerks to executives started work at the World Trade Center that day, they were on the front lines. When the sun set on September 11th, all across New York and New Jersey, parents who had worked at the World Trade Center did not pick their children up from day care centers. The only reason Americans did not see hundreds of women in body bags was that the heat of the fire incinerated them.

When airline pilots asked to be armed, they were acknowledging that civilian airliners are part of the combat zone. The pilots simply wanted the right to shoot back.

Some will argue that the prior regime in Iraq did not plan the World Trade Center attack.

How much support, if any, Iraq gave to radical Muslims is debatable. One thing is for certain: Iraq was a symbol of an autocratic state that did not hesitate to kill hundreds of thousands of its own people for political reasons. With the slaughter of Kurds, Iranians and anyone who Saddam Hussein did not like, the country was up to its armpits in blood and the cycle of violence that has spilled out of the Middle East to all parts of the world. There is much about the current war on terror that needs to be part of the public debate. This author has been quick to criticize the treatment of prisoners and the erosion of civil liberties cause by the so-called Patriot Act. The fact is we are already in Iraq. The time for discussing whether or not we should have gone there is academic. Our presence in Iraq has been a magnate for every lunatic fringe group who wants to kill Americans. It is better that we face these people in Iraq than in New York.

Americans have the right to openly criticize our government or its policies. Groups that publicly engage in civil disobedience or hold protest rallies to get attention are not engaging in the political process or in public debate. There are numerous outlets to voice one's opinion. Public protests geared to generate arrests and media sound bites are not indicative of intellectual strength. They are epitomized by the Cambridge, Massachusetts, protestor who repeatedly yelled "F... the Army" for fifteen minutes while a small boy whose father had been killed in Iraq recited the pledge of allegiance in a public memorial service.

In this era of global communications, such exhibitionism simply encourages the radicals in Iraq to bigger and better atrocities in the belief that the American public will tire of the business and pull out before the job is done. Should we do that, the most violent members of that society will take over. More and more, the targets of these incredibly violent people are hospitals, markets and the infrastructure necessary to the well being of the Iraqi people. These are not freedom fighters. Should they prevail, they will export their band of hate across the world.

Our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are providing a valuable service for America. The American public needs to continue to show its support for our troops.

Women are playing a large role in national defense. By their actions, the women engaged in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting to rest another myth of inferiority. Women soldiers will be coming home wearing the same Combat Action Badge, as male solders wear.

I would like to be the fly on the wall if some day Leigh Ann Hester goes to her local police department to ask for a pistol permit. I can visualize the scene. Some desk bound police officer looks up at her over his coffee and says, "Now little lady, what to you want to have a gun for? You know the bad guys are more likely to take it away from you than you will be able to use it for self defense. Guns aren't good for self defense. Why don't you get a rape whistle?"