Generic Gamer said:
Honestly it doesn't sound like women bring anything to the table that men can't do equally well or better in this circumstance. Women as a generalisation have their skills and maybe there aren't enough of them that lean this way to make it worthwhile.
It's a shame that I keep failing to articulate my points to you as you keep seeming to miss them.
OK, I'll cover this again, in bullet-point, so you cannot possibly miss it (and a few more):
-HALF the population of America is female, that is a HUGE recruiting pool that cannot be entirely ignored. Especially in a world where conscription is not only socially unacceptable but is under it's greatest legal challenges and likely cannot ever be used again. Recruitment must cast its net wider than ever before to get the quality of recruits in the quantity they need.
And there is NO POINT in recruiting infantrymen if they are banned from ever doing what infantry are defined for: Combat operations.
-Women also make up 50% of the population in occupied countries, in Iraq and Afghanistan where often local custom is VERY SENSITIVE about male/female segregation, female infantry ARE SOUGHT AFTER BY THE MILITARY! They can enter women's quarters, search women and other areas that male soldiers would be just a bit too inflammatory.
This IS necessary as Al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups are now consistently using females on suicide bombing missions. Other ways they are utterly unscrupulously exploited the privacy/decency to carry out insurgent and even terrorist actions such as using them as mules and even male combatants disguising themselves in women's face scarves and cowering with their mother/sisters.
-You talk about how men won't surrender to female troops, well how would a woman feel being pulled over buy a load of men with guns. A female face can put a lot a of those - not so unreasonable - paranoias to rest and cut down on the all too common of people getting freaked out by all the guns and trying to ram the car checkpoint even though they have no contraband. Womankind's reputation for compassion is a boon in this scenario.
-Also 25% of Science-engineering degrees in the United States are awarded to women, THAT is a recruiting pool that cannot be missed when such skills are so highly sought after in the increasingly technically advanced battlefield calling in laser/GPS guided close air support, sniper-locating sensors, radar that can shoot mortars out of the sky.
That's not logistic roles, that's COMBAT roles. The "close" part of Close Air Support is no exaggeration, you need to be able to direct a metric-ton of high explosives from 10'000 feet to a position just a couple hundred feet from where you are standing. You don't want some dude who flunked High School math directing that because he was the best candidate you could find. Not when there are so many qualified females.
-If you think women haven't got the - hmm - the guts for the job, don't think it's anything inherent or biological:
http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Women_Warriors/Hirschfeld_01.htm
"A peasant girl related that she found herself right next to a German, ran him through with her bayonet and at the same time shot him and took his helmet for a memento.... Another girl related that before they went over the top they were all very much excited and scared. But when the order to charge came she forgot everything and leaped over the top with the mob of screaming and bellowing girls. All excitement had virtually disappeared when the time came for shooting. This despite the fact that bombs were bursting all around. The first dead man that she saw made her pause for a moment but she just had to go on and therefore passed right over his dead body, a thing to which she soon became quite accustomed. Another girl related how her battalion had surrounded a company of German soldiers who threw away their weapons, held up their hands and shouted in amazement, 'Good Lord! Women!'"
1915 -
before women had the Vote in most of the western world they were leading bayonet charges.
Bottom Line
You may be of the opinion that war is too much of a meathead's game, where unrestrained brute violence is the principal path to victory and a path that can be forged exclusively by testosterone fuelled men (which kinda omits
The fact is the opposite, that to defeat insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan DEMANDS, finesse, discretion and violence only when justified. And this is war fighting that is not in the trenches or a distant battlefield but on the streets, in the market, in people family homes. War is no longer men fighting other men in a field at an agreed time and place.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/102737/20110119/lift-the-ban-on-women-in-combat-panel-says.htm
Everyone whose opinion means anything on this matter is in favour or lifting this combat-ban which at the moment is frankly disrespectful of women's contribution to the service. They are de-facto in combat roles but this ban de-just denies them recognition and commendation for that.
