Having female soldiers do button-pushing jobs frees up a better choice of men for the infantry. A volunteer force is better than a drafted force, female soldiers make an all-volunteer force more attainable. Extra money would have to be spent on recruitment instead of weapons and preparation if we got rid of female soldiers. There have been only two incidents of women getting engaged in combat over the last 12 years. During this time many other soldiers lives were saved because of the better choice that having female soldiers in less-physically-demanding jobs provides. Our military has proven itself vastly superior to all others with this set-up. A strong military and personal choice and responsibility are conservative ideals, so my position definetly isn't liberal.
How many men do you reckon Miss Lynch turned loose to the front lines? How many of your 100,000 number of women in the services are in rear echelon and clerical duties? If the services were short 100,000 women, how would that matter at all? There are 25,000,000 men to draw from, and you would get such a paltry number like 100,000 with one media call.
We used the draft in WWI and WWII and won both wars. You can provide no reasonable evidence that the casualties would have been any lighter had women been used, or an all volunteer force was used. Most platoon, company and battalion tactics call for merely the presence of someone who has the upper body strength to perservere, and do thing like throw a grenade farther than its blast radius.
There is no evidence from past experiments that indicate women in dangerous roles in combat, other than when they have to fight at the last ditch end (and then no evidence that their contrabution preveiled) produce positive results.
Our military has not proven itself vastly superior to all others with this set-up. This setup is entirely experimental, and contrary to what we know has worked in the past. Why do it for such chancey consequences and such a feeble possible return?
A strong military and personal choice and responsibility are conservative ideals, so my position definetly isn't liberal.
But what you are advocating is a weaker military, based on historical successes. Personal is choice is not a conservative concept. Just ask anyone who want to put certain substances in his body without permission.
"...female soldiers make an all-volunteer force more attainable."Actually, I think the opposite is true. The Marines are the only branch of the service that trains its male and female recruits seperately and they are the only branch of the service that consistently has no problem meeting their recruiting goals. Young males seek to prove themselves as men and surviving a challenge like boot camp is one way to accomplish that. When females can meet the same (not really, but let's play along with the gender benders) challenge young men are less interested because they cannot prove their masculinity (if a girl can do it...).
BTW, I am an activated guardsman in Qatar (previously in Iraq and Kuwait). We have females in our unit and by and large they do fine, but there is no absolute need for females in the service at all.