James Webb, son of Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) talks on the Women in Combat debacle.

I'm putting this up here because his perspective is much more modern than I (I've been off active duty since 86) and he covers all the bases... (Via "This Ain't Hell")

“Girls” in combat

February 17th, 2013

The discussion about females in combat continues. In the Ventura County Star they talk to girls barely out of puberty to get sense of what women think about the idea. Girls like 14-year-old Sarah Trujillo who was influenced by her father’s war stories;

“I was so excited. I was jumping up and down,” said Sarah, who at 14 still has at least four years before she can sign up.

But the Oxnard High School freshman who compares her dad’s dog tags to “a beacon of amazingness” said she knows she wants a military career.

“This is really what I want to do,” Sarah said, before falling back into drills in her Junior ROTC class. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

Yes, a long time. Like since she was ten, perhaps. They go on to interview other “girls” most of whom are enamored with the idea, but don’t plan on taking the path to combat themselves. They cite reasons that girls “want” and are “willing” to fill the combat jobs. Unfortunately, those probably aren’t the best reasons. James Robert Webb, son of Senator Webb, and an infantryman writes on his blog, Puckingninja says that “wanting” and “willing” aren’t reason enough for “girls” to join the infantry;

Plain and simple, if you admit women into the Infantry, you must ask them to be men. This is completely unfair, as women are not physically just smaller men – they are completely different. Now, this is not the same as equality in society – that is a completely separate issue.

In society writ large there are examples of these physical differences. One of these is the Olympics, where there are separate events for both men and women. As Ms. Duff pointed out during our discussion, women have 50% less upper body strength, and 25% less lung capacity. Because of this reality, the physical standards for women in the military are significantly and justifiably lower. The Infantry itself is a lot like your university’s football team. They’re a bunch of mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, testosterone charged, physical machines (to be clear I say this out of love). These men didn’t join the Infantry because the uniforms were cool or they wanted money for college. They joined to push themselves to the limits of human endurance, and well, because over the past 10 years were promised a chance to take a shot at another human being… legally.

Do you really want your daughter hanging out with men who have that mentality?

Yeah, this decision from the perfumed princes who doing their best to please their president is being acted upon for all of the wrong reasons. I want someone to ask them if they truly think this will make the military better in terms of warfighting capabilities. Because I want to get a good belly laugh from their answer.