Recent pictures in Stars and Stripes  feature female U.S. service members wearing the Islamic headscarf, also known as a hijab.  These women are part of a new initiative, Female Engagement Teams, being deployed in Afghanistan. 

Aside from questions about whether the safety of these women deployed into harm's way is jeopardized by trading the helmet for the hijab, the photos invoke memories of a policy fight in Congress less than a decade ago.  In 2002, the Senate overturned a DoD mandate requiring female American service members stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the Saudi version of the burqa, known as an abaya.  Similarly, in the House of Representatives, an amendment was enacted to end the "abaya" mandate.  Women in Saudi Arabia (or in Afghanistan under the brutal reign of the primitive Taliban) are subject to beatings by religious police (in Saudi Arabia known as muttawa), if they expose, even inadvertently, a wrist or ankle. 

The DoD "abaya" policy was defended under the guise of "cultural sensitivities," but it morphed into being justified as necessary for "force protection," since "cultural sensitivities" smacked of political correctness.  Could anyone imagine U.S. soldiers dispatched to South Africa under Apartheid segregating black and white soldiers to comply with "cultural sensitivities"?  Yet in Saudi Arabia, American servicewomen, prior to congressional intervention, were subjected to similar humiliation and coerced into conformance with an alien religious faith.