But I think in the future anyone who argues for women to be included in combat forces should have to watch last week's (2/13) "Survivor" show. This season it's about the men vs. the women.
It's not a question chivalry, chauvanism, gender bias, etc. Most men can simply hack things better with a machete (and maybe some girl will help me spell machete, ha ha ha)
But here is my opinion anyway. Due to the successful efforts of feminists and those like-minded, we have already integrated women into our military and have expended enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to do so. Case in point, when I was in the Marine Corps in 1981-85, many of the male Marines were moved to open squadbays so that luxurious (to our point of view) enlisted barracks could be built for all the women Marines who were flooding the Corps at the time. Not only were the existing male barracks converted for use by women (the way they were weren't good enough) but brand new state-of-the-art barracks were built for them. Unlike the men, who often had to live in 80-men open squadbays, the women demanded and received brand new quarters with semi-private (or private) rooms and private bathrooms. For those who do not understand what a squadbay is, let me explain. A squadbay is a WW2-era barracks, it is a long building with a common head (latrine) in the middle and on each side, 40 men sleep and live jowl-to-jowl on bunk beds, each Marine getting a footlocker and a wall-locker to store his gear and possessions. It is okay for boot camp but once you get out in the real Corps, it's a real drag. You get your drunks coming in at 2 in the morning, bouncing off the walls and whooping it up, you deal with an endless stream of farts, coughs, and whatever else. Most of us would just strap on headphones and try to tune everything out.
Anyway, enough of the whining, but that was my experience. I should also note that women never had to do the infamous "work details" that male Marines were made to do such as mess duty, guard duty or just plain scut work like painting or mowing the grass. Instead, work details for women consisted of either doing clerical work indoors or, believe it or not, supervising the male work details. So you would have women Marines ordering male Marines around doing things that they never would have been made to do themselves.
But nevertheless, women were integrated into the armed services for better or worse. The deed is done and there is no turning back the clock now. Actually women have proved themselves to be quite useful in the military, freeing up the men for combat duty, the one military function that women are still not asked to perform (and it appears that even the most ardent feminists do not want combat duty for women).
So when we talk of a military draft for women, we are not talking about sending women into combat. Let's get that issue off the table right now. We are merely talking about drafting women into the military to assume the roles that they have already been performing, and apparently performing well, for the past two or three decades. Why shouldn't we draft women as well as men?
If VMI and the Citadel are prohibited under Federal law from having all-male schools, then it seems obvious to me that Uncle Sam cannot have an all-male draft registration.
Dan Blather for CBSNBCABCCNNNYTWPNews: "Suzy Creamcheese dreamed of a career petting puppies at the local animal shelter but, first things first, she answered her nation's call and complied with the new all-inclusive Selective Service regulations enacted by a war-obsessed Republican Congressional majority abetted by those Democrats too cowardly to assert their party's historic pacifism developed all the way back in the 1970s.
"Now, as you can see, those puppies will go unpetted because Suzy's body was torn to shreds, decapitated, shorn of her limbs and her corpse was gang-raped by unidentified criminal elements clearly not representative of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or their religion of peace. It was all because the blood-crazed GOP warmongers didn't care about Suzy or the puppies. When will the Pentagon ever learn, when will they eeeeeever learn?"
C-SPAN Demonratic seminar callers to the Demonratic Whiny Hour of Washington Journal each morning (where all lefty callers of the male gender, in their capacity as stone liars, are self-proclaimed disabled combat veterans of the Vietnam War) seem to "feel" that democracy is dead unless the administration OBEYS the demands of the usual petty gang of leftist airheads in the streets to surrender before any war might begin. When Dan Blather has his aspiring assistants open Suzy's body bag for all to see, the emotional manipulations that characterized network snooze in the early 1970s will return to the one-eyed God of the living room.
Two lessons yet to be learned: No on the scene press and media coverage; NEVER waste six months yakking with the UN, just go in and attack. Do it. Don't yak about it. An obvious object of today's Americong is to postpone the festivities until hot Iraqi weather precludes chemical and biological protective suits from being worn to protect our troops. If they can't stop the war altogether, at least they will cause the maximum in gruesome casualties among American troops to bolster their political position.
They also figure that, if Suzy Creamcheese can be added to the casualty list and particularly if she looks like Meg Ryan in her prime, Suzy will be the permanent poster child for pacifism and knuckling under to one world gummint. "If only we had listened to older and wiser and morally superior countries like France, Germany and Belgium......" the line will go.
Use their next demonstration as a napalm proving ground and see to it that the loudmouthed Americong including Scott Ritter, Susan Saranwrap, Sean (Ohhh, I am soooo wasted) Penn, George (if I only had a brain) Clooney and the feminazis from Code Pink are facilitated so that they can be at Ground Zero as a Human Shield in Baghdad on Iraqi Liberation Day.
VOLUNTEER US Army Vet,
jimt
As cooks and nurses but not as soldiers.
If you had a actual draft and women were NOT included, that could be the straw that broke the camel's back, you may end up with a rebellion on your hands.