If Women Can Defend Fort Hood, They Can Defend America

Fort Hood, Texas, hosts tens of thousands of men [2] who are trained to fight for their country. But none of them stopped Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as he blew away 13 of their colleagues Thursday afternoon. It was a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who shot him. For her trouble, Munley took a bullet in her leg [3]. Maybe the president will also pin a medal on her.

Here's a better way to honor Munley: End the ban on women in combat.

Department of Defense policy [4] states that "women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground." According to the policy, "Direct ground combat takes place well forward on the battlefield."

Well forward on the battlefield? In Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no forward. There isn't even a battlefield. We're living in a world of car bombs, snipers, suicide bombers [5], improvised explosive devices [6], and civilian airplane attacks [7]. The battlefield is everywhere ... (Read the [8]rest of this article [9] in Slate [10]).