Having women soldiers fight is very different than using civilian women and children as shields.
"The women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them. I fear neither death nor pain."
Having women soldiers fight is very different than using civilian women and children as shields.
For myself I think women ought to be able to fight BUT ONLY when the women in question need no extra accommodation or relaxing of standards of strength and ability. Especially no hiring quotas. For example if a woman wants to be in the infantry, she must meet the same PT requirements as the men are required to. Must be comfortable taking a piss without a toilet right in front of the other soldiers. And must be able to keep herself from getting sexually entangled with her fellow soldiers. Now I suspect very few women meet that criteria...but those that do should be allowed to serve in then infantry if they really want to.
Why should the Army be turned upside down to accommodate this 1% (and that's being generous) of women who "really want to?" Specifically, how would having women in the combat arms enhance our fighting ability in any way?
I think women should go into combat and carry a rifle, they should be grunts. But they have to register for the draft and not be eligible for any student aid if they do not. They will simple get pregnant and the men will do the fighting. It happens in every unit the deploys.
As a decision made by a culture, it seems identical to me. Not that the enemy will desist because of their femaleness, but because we would be putting women in front to protect whoever is behind. And being women, like the Moslem "shields," they're not in much of a position to defend themselves, compared to the rest of the military being shielded by them.
All your caveats and requirements are well taken, of course, but the bottom line is that the whole point of a military, for all the reasons you cite, is to put the women and children out of harm's way. Otherwise, there's no point in having a nation at all. There's no excuse for its exercising authority over us if it won't do that.
4. Are there different physical fitness requirements for women and men?
Although female candidates/trainees take exactly the same Physical Fitness Test as their male counterparts, the scoring scale for each event is slightly different in order to account for physiological differences.
http://www.fbijobs.gov/11131.asp
http://www.fbijobs.gov/11133.asp
Things seem to breakdown across endurance and upper body strength. Since there are very real physiological differences between the sexes women’s roles in the military should be limited as well.