Are women wired for war?
Editor's note: Evan Thomas is editor at large of Newsweek and author of "The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898." His other books include "Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941-1945" and "Robert Kennedy: His Life."
Washington (CNN) -- Recently, I was talking with an interviewer about men and war (I wrote a book about this), and she asked me, "What is it about testosterone that gets us into war?"
There is no doubt that women can fight. They do so every day in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though not permitted in the infantry in the U.S., they have seen plenty of action on a battlefield with no fronts. They are brave. They are also prudent.
Some men, maybe not so much.
In his correspondence between 1886 and 1898, for example, Theodore Roosevelt wrote enthusiastically about the prospect of war with Mexico, Canada, Britain, Germany and Spain. Roosevelt may have been an extreme example -- charging up Cuba's San Juan Hill, he exulted, "Holy Godfrey, what fun!" -- but he was hardly unusual in his eagerness for combat. When war against Spain was declared in April 1898, President William McKinley asked for 125,000 volunteers. He got over a million young American men almost overnight.
In those days, women were not permitted in the armed services. But what if they had been? Do women share the yearning for combat that has defined so many young men in so many societies, all through time?
I am tempted to say that women would be less likely to get us into wars. But then I remember Queen Elizabeth I (if you can't, just picture Cate Blanchett in body armor), British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (saying to President George H.W. Bush before the Persian Gulf War, "Now, George, don't go wobbly on me") and Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel during the Yom Kippur War (ordering revenge for the 1972 Olympics slaying of Israeli athletes). Does anyone doubt that gun-toting Sarah Palin would be ready to fight anyone, anytime? Hillary Clinton?
Still, I think women do not have the same primitive urge to test themselves in combat.
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