Do you have a cite for this? Because if it’s true we should just bide our time and invade. Not that I’ve got anything against the EU but if they’re going to set themselves up so well we should be the one’s to knock them over.
On the OP, I agree. Equality means equality. I’m freak-a-zoid libertarian enough to believe in absolute equality when it comes to the ways the government interacts with citizens. It would be wrong for me to be able to get a drivers license and not a woman and it’s wrong for me to register for selective service and not a woman.
it was on a Dispatch box program about 1145pm UK BBC2 when they were discussing a EU combined force and something that came up was the role of women in this force , the EU force doesn’t exist yet so its in discussion , a EU parlment member said it was a suggestion brought up by another member of the parliment and it was promptly shotdown by the other members , as it would undermine our forces as said rules still don’t exist as the force doesn’t exist its a beurocratic meta policy
also they worry about what may happen if soldiers are captured for some reason , the SAS team who were captured in Iraq (the one that got away story) were treated pretty badly , if a female was in this force much worse stuff could have been done ,
You know, there are a lot of non-combat roles that the armed forces has had trouble filling in past wars–medical personnel, foreign language experts, etc. Allowing women to be drafted increases the chances of getting more people with special skills.
FWIW, I think women should be allowed in combat roles. But even if they aren’t, they should still be eligible for the draft.
Gender/sexuality has no bearing on military duty. The restrictions should be based solely on an individual’s mental and physical military performance. Anything else is irrelevant. As some folks are fond of saying “the military is not in the business of social engineering”.
The restrictions should be based on the likelihood of someone completing the training and performing the job.
If the government’s actually drafting people, let’s assume we need ground combat troops. While there are women who can meet the physical requirements these roles demand, it’s a fairly small number.
I sure wouldn’t want to be in the business of evaluating each individual’s potential for meeting the physical demands of the training. For example, you can take almost any young (< 25) man and, given the proper training, easily get him in the condition to run two miles in 13 minutes. Are there women that can do that? Of course. But the numbers are so small that it’s not worth the effort.
Why flood the training facilities with people who aren’t going to make it.
I don’t have a problem with the government drafting women. If I were of draft age, I’d have a problem with it. Since the women won’t be assigned to the combat positions it just increases the probability that I would be - which increases the possibility of getting killed (the casualty rate being significantly higher in the combat arms positions).
Personally I love the thought of women stomping around Afghanistan and popping caps in Taliban asses. There’s a certain poetic justice there that you gotta love. [sub](Dropping bombs on them is fine but the members of the Taliban really need to personally see that it’s a woman handing them their balls to get the full effect.)[/sub]
Are you saying that a woman cannot be trained to run a 6.5 minute mile, but a man can? Because AFAIK, the ability to run ain’t even an area of great disparity. (By which I mean, both men and women, given the same training and the same level of physical fitness, can run a satisfactory distance in a satisfactory time to qualify for virtually any job, from firefighting to combat positions.) A more likely disparity would be lifting weights, where men have an physiological advantage that women have difficulty overcoming. But then, AFAIK infantry soldiers are not required to carry packs of such surpassing heaviness that a woman would not be able to do it, if properly trained.
I absolutely believe that women should be subject to the draft, and should be subject to assignment to combat positions. We can’t claim equality only when it’s safe and easy to do so.
i did read something on this in psychology that men are better at navigation and detecting movement and speed of movement inherently although the skills can be learnt , but then SAS troops do carry a helluva lot of gear , (aside from the Sierra leone hostage rescue incident where the SAS and paras were mostly armed with handguns and submachine guns)
but hell if they are pressing people into military service then they are doing rather badly in the war , worse if you are 40+ and they are pressing you into service your gonna lose that war
HYPOTHETICAL
and in response to earlier , if you were attacking say an islamic nation homosexuality is forbidden , thus male -> male rape would be uncommon , however a captured female would be prey for these people , however doesn’t mean they can’t use an object say a brick or a tree branch to rape you with , course i did remember flickly idlely thru a friend’s essay in college about rape being used as a weapon of war though i didn’t catch much of it as i was just proof reading while he was proof reading mine
I’m saying given the mass production quality of the training, it’s not reasonable to spend the resources.
I just selected the running example because I ran across the standards for the running portion of the test the Army uses (2 miles - ~13 minutes to score the highest for men, ~15.5 minutes for women). The other categories (push-ups and situps) had even larger differences.
You’re right in that the differences between the sexes for the same size person are less pronounced when measuring physical capabilities involving the legs as compared to the upper body. There are differences related to intake and processing of oxygen that will affect the ability to run, however. Of course the average man is quite a bit larger than the average woman.
My main point (badly made) was that if I’m the government and I’m conscripting large numbers of average people, I don’t want to have to make personalized evaluations just to figure out if someone’s going to make it through infantry training. I just want to grab a 100 guys out of the 500 I drafted that day and tell them they’re infantrymen. If 50 of them are women, 49 of them won’t make it through the training.
BTW, my daughter is 16 (almost 17, and a great kid BTW) and plays varsity field hockey, lacrosse and basketball. The best athlete on her team runs a mile in about 7:30, my daughter does a little under 8:00. I was a serious couch potato when I was that age and engaged in no physical activity. When I was invited to join the Army, I was able to run a mile in 8:00 from day one, as were most but not all of the other attendees.
And therein lies the problem. There are some things (such as weight-lifting) in which males have a physiological advantage over females. There are undoubtedly areas in which females have physiological advantages over males, but we don’t hear about them too much because militaries have traditionally been male-dominated. So the question is, do we set up different standards for women or not? But if we set up different standards, then will they be able to hold up under the rigors of war? Of course, this refers only to combat positions. In addition, what if a woman gets pregnant while serving under the draft? Does her child (when born) get shipped off to some foster home? Can the mother take care of the child herself while simultaneously fighting some enemy? Does she get an honorable discharge. I’m not saying that women should not be allowed to serve. I’m just saying that to move into it immediately at this point in time, without addressing these problems, would be a huge mistake.
Are you saying that a woman cannot be trained to run a 6.5 minute mile, but a man can? Because AFAIK, the ability to run ain’t even an area of great disparity. (By which I mean, both men and women, given the same training and the same level of physical fitness, can run a satisfactory distance in a satisfactory time to qualify for virtually any job, from firefighting to combat positions.) A more likely disparity would be lifting weights, where men have an physiological advantage that women have difficulty overcoming. But then, AFAIK infantry soldiers are not required to carry packs of such surpassing heaviness that a woman would not be able to do it, if properly trained.