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Your arguement assumes that this military will always be able to defeat an enemy with the forces already in place. It ignores the possibility of a tough, resolute, and capable enemy cabable of bogging us down and inflicting significant numbers of casualties. This might necessitate press ganging infantry and other combat arms replacements from other specialties, as was the case with the Army's ASTP soldiers in WWII. With the female 15% officially non-deployable in most critical combat arms MOS's, this does not bode well for such an eventuality.

I certainly hope that our military supremacy will continue to make such a reality moot. But I think it unwise to expect that it will always be thus and not recognize the threat to combat readiness that a large number of women, who are trained to a differential standard of physical fitness represent.

I concur that certain support units can be exposed to combat. But there are two different issues here.

The 1st issue is, should we permit a lowering of standards to permit women in combat infantry roles? I think that this has already occurred and is a bad thing. I would like to see the physical standards returned to their previous level. So I think you will find few people who think lowering the physical standards is a good thing.

The 2nd issue is, assuming we permit women in the service, do we permit women in roles that expose them to injury, capture, and death? In an all voluntary service we clearly have to for two reasons -- because they want to and because not enough men volunteer. The first reason can be argued with, but face it -- they too are citizens of the Republic. If they can serve in roles for which they are qualified, without lowering standards, your basis for denying them the opportunity is weak. The second reason is pragmatic. I am perfectly willing to discuss this issue with fellow citizens who have served, but I suspect there are many who shout "No damn wimmin in the military" while never having served a day in their lives.