Fort Brag.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Anthropologist Anna Simmons claims women soldiers endanger military morale - Column

Attention Bill Nye, Science Guy -- galactic update! Scientists have discovered that there is a North-South axis in the galaxy, but they are reluctant to say which end is up. Me, too. They have also discovered a monster fountain of antimatter erupting outward from the core of the Milky Way. The find, which came to them one morning at a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast, has made them alter their neat image of a disk-shaped galaxy to one of a fried egg with steam shooting out of the yolk. In laymen's terms, it's become harder to keep your sunny side up.

I can see why. Saying he wants to devote himself full time to getting Christians elected to public office, that blue-eyed uber-Christian egghead, Ralph Reed, has left his job as head of the Christian Coalition. As if up to this point he's been spending his time just trying to perfect a tuna casserole for the church potluck, now he says he's going to get busy, and I for one am nervous.

Nervous, too, especially after I read the findings of Anna Simmons, an assistant professor of anthropology at UCLA. She is the author of a new book, The Company They Keep: Life Inside U.S. Army Special Forces. In a column in The New York Times, she summarized some of the things she discovered during the year and a half she observed elite twelve-man A-teams in the Marines.

The title of her column was, "In War Let Men Be Men." My java had not yet bridged some early synapses, so I mistakenly expected irony. It was early; I was groggy.

According to Professor Simmons, the post-Cold War era might seem like a perfect time for women to be in combat units. She says, and apparently believes, that we are not engaged in any conflicts in the world, and that peacekeeping is our main mission. Nonetheless, she claims that women in combat actually endanger our troops. Why? Because G.I. Janes inhibit male bonding. It is this bonding, she says, that enables men to...