Gay soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been able to serve openly since September 20th, 2011

Which means that many programs geared toward military families are not providing the full range of benefits to certain married service members, just as they don’t provide the full benefits to those service members who are not married. Higher dependent rates for Basic Allowance for Housing, Family Separation Allowance and many other benefits are among those currently inaccessible by gay married couples.

The federal government’s current stance on DOMA is that it will not defend the statute in court, leaving it open to groups to challenge it before the courts uncontested. Currently, there are several briefs working their way through the system, and one is already in federal appeals court. Just because the government won’t defend this law doesn’t mean that it’s a shoo-in, however. The law is up in the air, and probably depends as much on the upcoming election as it does on its slow crawl through the judiciary.

However, for gay service members who are currently serving, there are many benefits still available:

1. Service Members Group Life Insurance. SGLI is, well, life insurance for service members. It pays out $400,000 if a service member is killed, regardless of whether the tragedy occurs in combat. Any service member can designate anyone to be their beneficiary, in either a lump sum or 36 equal payments. Thus, gay service members can designate their partners if they wish.
2. Post Vietnam-era Veterans Assistance Program. VEAP is a program for service members to save extra money for education or vocational training. For every $1 they elect to take out of their paycheck, the government will put in $2. What makes this benefit different than the Post-9/11 GI Bill is that it’s a matched savings account, not an entitlement – and since it’s the service member’s money, it can be given to anyone, not just a dependent.
3. All-volunteer Force Educational Assistance Program. AVFEAP is a supplemental education assistance program used in concert with the GI Bill. It also assists with service members who are transitioning out of the service and into education for a new job. Since it’s a direct payment, service members can use it for their non-married partners’ education or training.
4. Death Gratuity.  The Death Gratuity is a lump sum of money that’s paid by the government to cover funeral expenses and other costs attenuating the death of a service member. If a service member dies stateside and not in a combat situation, the amount is $12,420. If the service member dies in a combat zone, the amount is $100,000. Like SGLI, anyone can be designated the beneficiary of this benefit. Usually, it goes to the Person Authorized Direct Disposition (also known as the PADD.) This is the person who is legally in charge of arranging for funerals, wakes or other ceremonies – and who is legally charged with disposing of the departed’s remains.
5. Final Settlement of Accounts. This is any unpaid pay and allowances a service member is owed at the time of their death, including their basic pay, Basic Allowance for Housing, Basic Allowance for Sustenance, Hazard Pay and any other money that the service member has coming from the government. These can be designated to anyone, and are not limited to dependents.
6. Wounded Warrior Designated Caregiver. Under the Wounded Warrior Act, service members can designate anyone they wish to be charged with their caretaking in case they’re rendered physically unable to do so through military service. The link is to the full text of the Wounded Warrior Act.
7. Thrift Savings Plan. The Thrift Savings Plan is an automatic deduction from service members’ accounts, usually elected during basic training, that transfers up to 5% of the service member’s paycheck into a special savings account. Since it’s the service member’s own money, it can be withdrawn upon leaving the service and used for non-dependents if needed.
8. Survivor Benefit. This is a monthly annuity paid to a designated survivor of a member if they die on active duty. For a full explanation, it’s best to click through to the link, as this is one of the more complicated off all the benefits in the package given to Americans serving in the military.
9. Casualty Notification. If a service member is wounded or killed, they may designate a partner or anyone non-dependent to be notified by the military. Conversely, a service member may also elect that the military not notify someone in particular. This is usually done if a loved one is in poor health and it could be potentially dangerous for that person to learn of the service member’s death or injury.
10. Escorts for Dependents of Deceased or Missing. Anyone is allowed to travel in conjunction with dependents if a service member is killed or goes missing. Gay military families with children are able to travel together as a family in this unfortunate circumstance, and there are a few other situations in which the partner of a gay or lesbian service member would be able to travel under this, as well. Escorts are arranged through the assigned Casualty Assistance Call Officer (CACO.)
11. Designation of Persons Having Interest in Status of a Missing Member. Like the Casualty Notification, a gay or lesbian service member can designate their partner if they are determined to be Missing in Action by the military.
12. Veterans’ Group Life Insurance. VGLI is the same benefit as SGLI, but it is paid to veterans who elect to continue paying for the coverage, rather than service members on active or reserve duty.
13. Person Eligible to Receive Effects of Deceased Persons. Anyone, not just a dependent, can receive the possessions of a service member who dies while on active duty. These include uniforms and anything else that belonged to the service member (and was not part of a gear issue) at the time of their death. This is also arranged through the CACO.
14. Travel and Transportation Allowance for Attendance at Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Events. Partners of gay and lesbian service members can be reimbursed mileage, airline tickets, per diem, lodging and other travel costs incurred while traveling to and from Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program functions. The exact specifications for what will and will not be paid – and what can and can not be reimbursed – are in the highly unreadable Joint Forces Travel Regulations (Volume 2) so it’s best to get in touch with the administrative/manpower office for a full explanation of these benefits.

For any of the benefits that are not linked, it’s because it’s not an expansive program, but a simple right that doesn’t have a wealth of web resources explaining it.  Many of the benefits listed above are actually legal rights that are exercised during a service member’s administrative audit, when he or she has to fill out a Record of Emergency Data and an SGLI form. These are supposed to happen annually, but service members can go to their administrative shop at any time and request to have an audit performed on their service record book and other documents.

The legal status of DOMA may not be settled for years, so benefits that are currently only available to married heterosexual service members won’t be opened to gay folks until the courts have worked through all of the challenges to the law. Until then, gay service members will have to continue planning their finances and retirements in the same fashion they have since long before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed. However, the stigma of designating a partner has now been legally repealed, so service members can enjoy the above benefits without fear of reprisal.

Did I miss any on this list? Let me know in the comments.

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The latest budget might have some military families on the run.

As discussed recently on these pages, the Department of Defense (DoD) is facing severe budget cuts in upcoming years. Events over the past few weeks have changed the nature of the discussion and solidified some of the unknowns (the “known unknowns”; sadly the “unknown unknowns” still lurk in the shadows). Here’s an update on the budget situation and how it affects military families.

On February 13^th of this year, the DoD released President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta is quoted in the official press release as saying, “[The budget] is…a signal of the department’s commitment to our men and women in uniform and their families.”  A summary of the proposal released by the DoD may make families wonder if the Secretary has a different take on “commitment” than do they.

According to the DoD, the “Armed Services will be re-sized by 2017,” re-sized being a polite euphemism for “cut”. The Army is slated to lose 72,000 personnel (13% of their current number), the Marine Corps 20,000 (9.9%), the Navy 6,200 (1.9%), and the Air Force 4,200 (1.3%). Reserve and National Guard cuts are also scheduled.

While those numbers look disproportionate (because they are, nimrod, you’re thinking), if seen as a percentage of the services’ manpower today they provide a even starker picture:

The Army has 39.5% of the total current manpower, but absorbs 70.3% of the total cut, the Marine Corps has 14.2% of current manpower but absorbs 19.5% of the cut, the Navy and Air Force have 22.9% and 23.4% of the current force respectively, but each absorb 6.1% (Navy) and 4.1% (Air Force) of the total cut.

Sounds like a good time to wear blue, doesn’t it?

These disproportionate changes in manning reflect a new focus for the Department of Defense as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down. As reported in Defense News, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefield said, “we made a very conscious decision … in August that we were not going to do what the department traditionally has done in a time when we were drawing down, and that is just hand out proportional cuts to the services.”

The article goes on to report “DoD officials levied specific cuts based on the results of a comprehensive strategy review, which puts more emphasis on military operations in the Pacific region and fighting on a contested battlefield.”

In an understatement worthy of Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde, Admiral Winnefeld is also quoted as saying “I believe intuitively that you’ll find the Air Force and the Navy probably did a little bit better proportionally and financially.” Whether the Admiral delivered this remark with a straight face is not recorded.

Personnel cuts aren’t the only cuts in store for military families. The Miami Herald reports:

“Service members also will face increased health care fees, deductibles and co-payments phased in over several years, although the Pentagon didn’t offer specifics. Military-age retirees who make more than $45,179 annually – a pension usually reserved for officers – will see their health care costs nearly quadruple, from $600 annually in fiscal year 2013 to $2,048 in 2017.”

A review of the DoD’s summary shows it has this to say on the subject:

“…the Department proposes changes in military healthcare – largely through increases in TRICARE enrollment fees, new Standard/Extra and TRICARE-for-life enrollment fees, and increases in pharmacy co-pays. None of the fee proposals in the budget would apply to active Service Members, survivors of Service Members who died on active duty, or retirees who retired due to disability. Basic pay raises will be slowed in the years beyond FY 2014, which will give military members time to plan for lower increases. Total savings in military pay and benefits amount to about $29 billion over the next five years…

Military retirement comprises another significant portion of military compensation. No changes are proposed in the FY 2013 budget, and both the President and the Secretary believe the retirement benefits of current Service Members should not be affected. However, the Department is recommending that Congress establish a commission to conduct a comprehensive review of military retirement.”

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Military families take note: the President’s budget proposal includes increases in health cares fees that appear to apply to dependents and veterans, cuts in future pay raises for active duty (and subsequently retired) personnel, and a proposal for a “comprehensive review of military retirement.”

This is worrisome for the military family. And I’m no expert, but “comprehensive review” sounds an awful lot like when my wife says, “we’ll see.” It sounds neutral, but it probably means something other than what I want… Also, although the proposals miss active duty personnel, no one stays active duty forever…

Senator Carl Levine and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta outside a Senate hearing in February.

Hopes of changes in the budget will likely come to nothing, in the opinion of the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith of Washington. According to Defense News, Rep. Smith said, “whatever rhetoric comes out of the armed services committee, Republican or Democrat, the House is going to pass a budget with these numbers. There is not going to be any debate in the armed services committee about what the numbers will be.”

Sequestration, a concern from our earlier article, “is not going to happen,” according to Rep. Smith. Representative Smith’s comments were later seconded by Senator Carl Levine of Michigan in a Reuters article. This reassurance of the end of the already-nebulous threat of sequestration will likely come as little relief to military families facing the concrete reality of the cuts on the table.

Of additional concern to military families, there has been additional talk in Washington about bringing back the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. Initially, pundits dismissed the suggestion as the Secretary of Defense playing politics with Congress, but the threat has materialized, and the lines appear to have been drawn.

In a Feburary 1st, 2012 article in Defense News, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey is quoted as saying, “If we’re adjusting the size of the force, we think we should ask Congress for a BRAC.” The proposal was attacked in no uncertain terms by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon of California.  “Kill it. That’s going to be our approach,” said Rep. McKeon when asked about the BRAC request.

Military families who are uneasy with the President’s budget have allies in Congress. “I consider this budget to represent unacceptable risk to our national security,” said Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as quoted by Reuters. The article continues: “Senator John McCain [Arizona], the panel’s senior Republican, charged Obama’s defense budget put ‘short-term political considerations over our long-term national security interests’ and expressed concern about cuts in military personnel, aircraft and ships.”

So, there you have it, a saga whose winners and losers have yet to be cast, although on first (or second or third) glance it doesn’t appear that the “winners” will include military families. So what can we do other than worry?

• If you have not yet written your Senators and Representatives about these issues, now is a good time to do so. It is best for them to hear from you before they vote on legislation. You can find contact information for Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and for Representatives at http://www.house.gov/representatives/
• If you belong to any lobbying groups (the Military Officer’s Association of America, the Non-Commissioned Officers Association of America, the Navy League, the American Legion, etc.), make sure they know your views also.
• Op-ed pieces and letters to the editor of your local paper will add your voice to the debate. If you’re active duty, remember to follow the rules about respect and political activity discussed in an earlier article.

We as military families can do little else. The machinations of the White House and the Congress are a bit above our pay grades. My advice from the last article was “keep calm and carry on,” but these budget developments are a big cause for worry for a large segment of our military family. Stay tuned to militaryfamily.com for updates on this still-fluid situation.

As reported by The Washington Post’s Christian Davenport today, the counselor learned that Duvall had ended up on the campus of Virginia Tech. Duvall was told to stay put because help was on the way. A police officer arrived soon after and took Duvall to a psychiatric facility. There, he was treated for depression. He started to have a positive outlook on his life.

However, after he was released from the hospital, Duvall, who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1995, discovered he had other problems. Problems with the law. He faces four federal counts for the manufacture and possession of his homemade gun. These counts could lead to 40 years in prison.

Mental health advocates and veterans groups are infuriated by this. If Duvall is prosecuted, they say, it could have a horrible effect on veterans in crisis who are considering suicide. Duvall’s public defender has filed a motion for dismissal because his client was calling a confidential hotline and prosecuting him would be a major violation of trust. Under government regulations, VA counselors have an obligation to contact law enforcement when there is an imminent threat. However, the VA has made efforts to keep veterans out of jail through the Veteran Justice Outreach Initiative, launched in 2009. They say it is designed “to avoid the unnecessary criminalization of mental illness and extended incarceration among veterans.”

Timothy Heaphy, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, is also feeling the heat from veterans groups. He is in charge of the office that is pursuing the charges against Sean Duvall and, interestingly, he is the son-in-law of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. Many argue that if anyone should be sensitive to veterans’ issues, it should be Heaphy.

Duvall is reportedly doing much better. He has a new job and apartment, and he sees a counselor. Currently, a judge is weighing whether to allow the case to proceed to trial or to dismiss the charges against Duvall. If the case goes to trial, veterans have vowed to pack the courtroom in uniform.

Anyone in crisis should always seek help. Never let anything stop you. Here at Military Family we offer Operation Reach Out, a free suicide prevention app for smartphones. It is available on iTunes and the Android Market.

I had someone propose an interesting question to me the other day regarding Tax Returns. The basic question went something like this: “I’m a full-time student on the GI Bill and I have zero income. Should I file a tax return?” My first thought was, “No you have no requirement to file a tax return.” But then I asked a few more questions.

This individual was attending a private university here in the National Capital Region and his GI Bill did not cover the entire amount of his Qualified Education Expenses (tuition and fees). He was paying for the additional expenses with a loan.

So, what should he do? He should file a tax return because he might get a refund even though he had no income and had no income taxes withheld. Here is how:

1. All of his income from the GI Bill, like all other VA benefits, is tax-free including the allowance he receives for living expenses.
2. Even if you take a loan to pay for the additional Qualified Education Expenses (those the GI Bill does NOT cover), those expenses are accounted for in the year you pay for the expenses, not the when you pay the loan.
3. The individual is in his first four years of college and therefore is eligible for the American Opportunity Credit.
4. A portion of the American Opportunity Credit is refundable. This means you can receive more in credit than you paid in taxes. The maximum amount that you can receive is 40% of the total credit.
5. The American Opportunity Credit is 100% of the first $2,000 in Qualifying Education Expenses and 25% of the next $2,000 in Qualifying Education Expenses for a total of $2,500. So, the maximum refundable credit is $1,000.

That is a pretty good deal in regards to your education, but there is one other hurdle. If you are younger than 24, the IRS says the following:

You do not qualify for a refund if items 1 (1.1, 1.2, or 1.3),  2, AND 3 below apply to you.

1. You were:
1. Under age 18 at the end of 2011
2. Age 18 at the end of 2011 AND your earned income was less than one-half of your support
3. A full-time student over age 18 and under age 24 at the end of 2011 AND your earned income was less than one-half your support
2. At least one of your parents was alive at the end of 2011
3. You are filing a return as single, head of household, qualifying widow(er), or married filing separately for 2011.

The IRS states that scholarships do not count as support received. IRS Pub 970 doesn’t specifically state anything concerning whether VA benefits count as support. But based on an example in Chapter 1 of Pub 970, it appears that the VA benefits might not count as support received. As always, consult with your tax advisor to determine how you particular situation should be handled.

The GI Bill is a great benefit. For those who are using it at a private or out-of-state school, you might also get some help from the tax code. Don’t forget to see if you qualify.

Curt Sheldon, EA is a Fee-Only Financial Planner and Enrolled Agent based in Northern Virginia.  He can be contacted at (703)542-4000, (800)928-1820 or Curt@CLSheldon.com

IRS CIRCULAR 230 NOTICE: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, we inform you that any U.S. tax advice contained in this communication (or in any attachment) is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed in this communication

The information contained in this blog is for general financial education and should not be construed as individual financial advice. Please consult your own financial, tax or legal advisor prior to applying any principles discussed here to your own financial situation.

Photo by the author.

Veterans are a deserving group. Perhaps I have a bias, as you cannot swing a stick in my family without hitting a veteran (and I am a veteran myself), but I doubt even in the depths of the Liberal Arts department at Brown or Berkeley will you find an American who would disagree that veterans are worthy of our respect. There exist elements in our society who would use veterans, or the respect they’ve earned, as a vehicle for their own purposes. I believe this is despicable, and I hope you will, too.

What is this guy on about, you’re wondering? I, gentle reader, am on about groups or people who mislead the public using veterans as their medium, or groups who are less than transparent about their motives or goals. Less diabolically, some groups have noble motives, but those motives simply don’t align with yours. As veterans and supporters of veterans, it is incumbent upon us to be wary of the cachet we’ve earned. It isn’t always easy.

Consider the case of the “Veteran’s Rights Coalition” (VRC).  You’re on board with that one, aren’t you? The name speaks to you, doesn’t it? Who could possibly oppose veteran’s rights? Not so fast! Type “Veteran’s Rights Coalition” into your favorite search engine and look at the first eight entries. Why does “tobacco” occur in every entry? What does tobacco have to do with veteran’s rights?

A perusal of the Legacy collection at the University of California, San Francisco turns up some interesting reading.  The collection contains over 20 million pages of documents from tobacco companies, turned over as part of a massive settlement some years ago. According to a document found there, The U.S. Veterans Rights Coalition: An Overview of An Effective Grassroots Lobbying Organization,

“The Veterans Rights Coalition was founded in 1989 by three West Virginia veterans leaders in response to then-U.S. Veterans Secretary Edward Derwinski’s decision to ban indoor smoking at all 172 VA hospitals nationwide . The veterans leaders, led by former West Virginia Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander John Payne, were outraged that elderly and frail veterans were being forced outdoors into often unpleasant conditions in order to exercise their right to smoke.”

Whether or not actually smoking is an unpleasant condition I leave to your own judgment, but here you have an organization with a benign name created as an extension of the tobacco companies’ efforts to resist smoking bans. The good name earned by veterans was being used by a former commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in a thinly veiled service to the tobacco industry. It is worth noting the ban in question had been in place at non-government hospitals since the early 1970s, both as a health protection measure and to cut down on the massive fire risk.

The Veterans Rights Coalition branched out, as further searches will tell you. In 2000, the VRC filed a memo with the Federal Communications Commission in support of the digital TV standards debate then going on. Whether veteran’s rights were in any way connected to digital television I leave to you to decide.

The VRC also, according to a letter from Bob Jones, a former Executive Director of AMVETS (American Veterans), former Deputy Assistant Secretary of

Tobacco companies have used military imagery to sell their product for decades.

Defense for POW/MIA, and former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, was interested in Asbestos legislation. This would on its face seem to be benign, and veterans were certainly exposed to asbestos, but as far back as 1983, can you guess who also had a hand in helping to draft Asbestos legislation? Top marks if you said “the tobacco industry.” A letter to the Tobacco Institute from a lobbying firm in Washington, DC requests “comments and suggested refinements” on pending Asbestos legislation. (NB – it bears explaining that the tobacco industry has long supported tangential causes, such as asbestos, “sick house syndrome”, flammability of pajamas and mattresses, and others as a “smoke screen”, pun intended, for the adverse effects of smoking)

Please do not dismiss this as an anti-smoking rant. It isn’t. The Veterans Rights Coalition is simply an easy example based on research I conducted under Dr. Ruth Malone of UCSF, studying links between tobacco companies and the military. There are other examples of groups misusing (in my estimation) their links to veterans. This is simply one with which I am very familiar.

What about veteran’s groups whose aims and policies aren’t necessarily nefarious, but also aren’t very clear? An advertisement for a state senate candidate in West Virginia appeared in the Hinton (WV) News on October 29, 2002.  Alongside the “Veterans United for a Better Government” and “West Virginia Veterans Association” in endorsing the candidate were the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the American Federation of Teachers, the United Mine Workers, and something called the “Chiropractors Independent Political Committee.”  I have heard of inclusive politics, but considering that a 2009 Gallup poll showed that 67% of veterans reported being either “Republican” or “independent”, this particular coalition is a “tent” the size of South Dakota. Did the veterans in those organizations realize they were supporting a candidate that was endorsed by such traditional liberal/Democratic groups? There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it seems incongruous to say the very least.

Consider, too, the Military Officer’s Association of America (MOAA). Until 2003, MOAA was “The Retired Officer’s Association” (TROA). The change came about, according to MOAA’s website, to more accurately reflect the makeup of the membership of the organization. As of 2002, 30,000 of 386,000 members were active duty (just under 8%). According to a press release by MOAA, “TROA officials say that the new name better reflects the total membership composition and what the association does for all of them.”

While that may be true, it bears considering that there are many issues where the best interests of veterans and the best interests of active duty members do not always coincide. Access to health benefits, access to facilities, retirement monies – in each of these areas what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily what’s good for the gander. How does MOAA approach these issues, and how does that approach accurately reflect the desires and interests of their diverse membership?

This is not in any way to malign the Military Officer’s Association of America. I know several people who belong, and they have been both happy with and proud of their membership. Rather, it is to make you consider the goals of not only MOAA, but also any group to which you belong. What do you stand for? What do they stand for? Is your only commonality the word “veteran”? If so, is it a group with which you want to be aligned? Only you can answer that question and it’s really none of my business, but information is power. Empower yourself.

How? Do research. Ask questions. Read the fine print. For example, a quick search of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) website (I used the Northern California chapter) can help you look up organizations and find out more information. Ask the organization themselves questions. If organizations are reticent to answer your questions or evasive in their answers, that is a red flag. Do an internet search of your organization. Read not only their website, but also correspondence between them and groups like the Congress or Executive-branch agencies. Find out where their money comes from. Find out where it goes. As I’ve said, information is power. Empower yourself.

I fear I may have turned some of you off by this point, which is par for the course, I suppose. My goal has not been to malign any one or any particular thing (although you may have guessed I have no fondness for “big tobacco”). My goal has been to help you protect the cachet I mentioned.

If you take nothing else away from this article, please take away a sense that your membership and support of organizations and causes is the source of those organization’s power. The old saying “we must hang together or we will all hang separately” is the foundation of such groups and associations.  You have earned respect through your service to our country. Make sure the organizations with which you “hang together” are worthy of the power you give them.

Congress recently authorized an expansion for the role played by female troops in combat zones. There’s been a lot of attention paid to this, but it’s actually a relatively small change that only codified in law the reality on the ground for the last ten years. In reality, very little has changed.

Women are still barred from most combat arms professions – especially the infantry and tanks. What Congress did, here, was to allow women to serve in theater at the battalion level – which was thought to be too close to actual combat situations prior to Afghanistan and Iraq. Which means there are still 230,000 jobs – roughly one-fifth of the positions in the active component – in the military that are still off-limits to women purely because of the circumstances of their birth. There aren’t traditional front lines in war any longer. The past ten years of constant war has taught us that. Unlike in conflicts past, when there was a fairly clear delineation between territory contested by combat and territory thought to be “safe,” the nature of counterinsurgency has shown us that the enemy can be – and often is – anywhere. A gaggle of Taliban fighters is, in fact, more likely to attack a supply convoy than a patrol of infantry fighters, because they understand that the warriors on the convoy aren’t as highly trained as the infantrymen.

Thus, a ban on women serving in posts “close to combat” no longer makes any sense, because any place in any country where a counterinsurgency campaign is underway is close to combat. Of the nearly 6,000 troops that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 144 of them were women. None of them were on the “front lines.”

There is some method to the madness, here. But it doesn’t make a lick of sense in the long run (insert joke about Congress here.) The government is merely saying that women have already been in the thick of things for ten years – they might as well be “allowed to” by law. Which makes this entire thing a charade; a correction of a bureaucratic oversight does not a civil rights victory make.  This is not a victory for women.

Congress’ leap of logic is missing an accompanying conclusion – since women have been in the thick of things for ten years, fighting and dying for their country as valiantly as their male counterparts, they should have been authorized to begin serving in combat roles. At the very least, our armed services are long overdue for a plan to implement a repeal of this egregious policy that discriminates on the basis of gender.

I have personally served with many women and men – there are some men I would follow into battle under any circumstances, any time, because they have led me and I trust them. There are some men that I wouldn’t trust to eat an MRE without biting his own tongue and needing to go to medical.

It’s the same with women. I’ve had female counterparts that I don’t think could fight their way out of a wet paper bag. I’ve had female leaders who have inspired me, and who I know I could trust with my life, and who I would share a fighting hole with any day of the week.

When the topic comes up, the laundry of lists of challenges to women serving in combat inevitably gets trotted out: Women aren’t as strong as men. They can’t, on average, perform as well under a combat load – in fact, many can’t wear a combat load and still remain mobile – they can’t run as fast, their endurance isn’t as great, etc. ad nauseam. The Marines, especially, refuse to compromise their standards – if someone can’t perform at the level we demand of Marine Corps infantrymen, they can’t be Marine Corps infantrymen. They’re not incorrect – America needs her Marines to be extraordinary people capable of achieving extraordinary feats.

There are also logistical challenges. Women and men need to be segregated when sleeping, showering and during basic hygiene. There also seems to me to be a very high danger to women not from the enemy, but from her fellow service members; as long as sexual assault remains the prevalent problem within our ranks that it does, sending women out to a forward operating base, surrounded by men, creates a highly dangerous environment for them.

These are challenges, not insurmountable obstacles. The Marine Corps – or any of the branches of service – doesn’t need to lower their standards. They merely need to give everyone a shot to meet them. If you can’t cut it, you shouldn’t be in the infantry. If you can do everything that’s required of infantrymen, you should be allowed in the infantry. Yes, this excludes most women from that particular job – if for no other reasons than those that are purely biological.

But if there’s a standard by which we can judge someone to be fit for combat, regardless of sex, then everyone deserves a chance to try and live up to that standard. If the military wants to avoid the stickier parts of officially sending women into combat by continuing to field Female Engagement Teams and continuing to enforce the present segregation of the sexes, then by all means, it’s understandable (for the present moment, given on-the-ground reality, and as long as it’s on an enforceable timetable to fully integrate the service in a reasonable amount of time.) We can, and will, overcome the thorny sexual issues that come along with the desegregation of sexes in a fighting force. It will take training, it will take professionalism and it will take a monumental effort on the part of officers and noncommissioned officers in all branches of the service. But we’re the brightest and best professional fighting force in the world – if we can’t do it, it can’t be done. And I assure you that it can be done.

We need to allow women the privilege to actually fight for their nation, not just to work the mail room or staff the chow hall. Any soldier would rush to tell you that he or she doesn’t believe in “second-class” soldiers in the military. But the policy, as it stands, creates a de facto underclass of soldiers who are told that they are incapable before they are tested, who are robbed of a chance to earn what all of their counterparts are able to earn, who are unable to show the true grit and toughness of their patriotism and desire to serve America.

In the Marines, we say “We’re all Green.” You can either do the job or you can’t – it doesn’t matter what you look like. This is a radically egalitarian idea, and one that pervades all of the branches of the Armed Services. And it’s exactly this attitude that has led to one of the great meritocracies of the modern era. The military has always preceded great social change by half a generation – just look at racial integration of the service, and the recent repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The military has always been a paradox in this way, being a quintessentially conservative organization that continually leads the way on social progressivism.

Women have been in combat for a long time; like men, some make great fighters and others don’t. It’s long past time the military recognized this and put steps in place to fully integrate our female fighters into combat arms occupational specialties. The recent steps taken by Congress are a start, but without a full framework, we’re still failing our fellow service members who are already taking the fight to the enemy every day.

What do you feel about women serving in combat? How about the political implications? The emotional? The impact on the military? What’s your take? I’d like to hear from you in the comments.