Introduction: Special Issue on Women and Operation Iraqi Freedom

Might the voices of women veterans cast a new light on the realities, ravages and aftermath of war? At a time when we have an increasing number of women in active combat, what would it mean to see war through their eyes? What might their writings and reflections have to teach us? During the Iraq War, American women made history insofar as they participated in combat on an unprecedented scale. Yet, public discourse rarely spotlighted or celebrated this achievement. The Iraq War is groundbreaking in both historical and literary terms: first, women not only served but also fought openly as women for the first time in a full-scale war waged by the United States; second, authors have begun to feature openly female combatants as the centerpieces of war narratives. This special issue of The Journal of Veterans Studies focuses on the double bind that females face as both women and service members within a hyper-masculine U.S. military culture that often casts this dual position as an inflexible binary, and asked its contributors to reflect on the ways that the Iraq War has produced a body of literature in both fiction and first-person memoir that portrays women as active combatants and participants instead of spectators or victims.