Unironic praise for equality! This is a good policy change.
Now letās concentrate on decreasing the demand for combat jobs across the board.
Equal opportunity for women and gays in the military. Look at us, catching up to liberal bastions likeā¦Israel?
Seriously though, excellent news. Hopefully the services donāt drag their feet hoping a Republican administration will reverse the decision. Once implemented, it will be harder to undo, which is probably why the administration did this now. Hereās hoping they didnāt wait to late.
I find them strangely unpredictable. Sometimes the services get right with the program, and sometimes they drag it out forever.
Part of me wonders if we canāt use the lingering sexism of society to help fuel this. I wonder if many of those fathers who see their sons in the military with a mixture of anxiety and pride will not so much have the latter emotion when their daughters join.
Though coming to think of my anecdotal evidence, I donāt find much support for that hypothesisā¦most of the military dads I know would be either 100% on board with their daughter charging headlong into danger and glory, or would be 100% against ANYBODY doing that.
Long overdue, and about time they got it done.
Having more women at the potential beck and call of our eventual next RWN president who is itching to attack some people who talk funny doesnāt seem like much of a victory to me.
I suspect most men and women that are in the age range of first-tour combat are going to be children of a generation with less of that bias. Might have worked twenty or even just ten years ago, but these days perhaps not so much.
Personally I think the Founding Fathers were right to maintain a small professional volunteer corps that could train up an expanded army in times of defense. It wasnāt really until the Civil War that we got large standing armies to garrison the South during Reconstruction, and then even that kind of abated afterwards as the South came back into the fold. But the Cold War changed everything.
If we didnāt have enough volunteers, a draft can still be put into effect. I find a slave army much more troubling. The problem isnāt supply, itās demand. As long as the US continues to pursue the misguided role of the worldās police force, weāll be maintaining a large military.
Republican Presidential Candidate Hysterical Pants-wetting Freakout in 3ā¦2ā¦
In many cases the women are already there. Now they can get pay and benefits commensurate with their male coworkers. As with gays in the military, this is more a question of acknowledging reality than changing it. The days of pitched armies lining up to duke it out are long gone.
A plot twist in the 1997 Demi Moore film G.I. Jane was when it was revealed that the senator who pushed for the Navy to admit Mooreās character into the SEAL program later tried to sabotage the effort, explaining āNo politician can afford to let women come home in body bags.ā
I guess weāll find out.
Itās not the risk to them Iām most concerned aboutā¦itās the terrorists theyāre tricked into creating.
We donāt have a very good history of leaving places we muck in better than we left them, and weāve been pretty much constantly at war (or police action if youāre into technicalities) since WWII
Eisenhower called this a long time ago.
Thereās no real equality until women are also subject to the draft. 
[edit: duplication and grammar]
This is closer than you may realize. The only reason they made even this change is because male recruitment numbers are so far down. Generation XYZWTF knows the US military nowadays is just the enforcement arm of a bunch of obscenely rich guys.
It would be a good thing. Currently there are too many people who are in either fully in favour of putting troops on the ground abroad or oblivious because itās not their problem; but they canāt be forced into that role and experience the effects of their decisions. Theyād have to suddenly think harder about their choices. And the number of anti-war protesters would quickly increase ā¦ 
I think that military should be dispensed with, but itās nice to know that there is less institutional sexism.
There is no real equality until women are paid equally & rape doesnāt exist.
Anyone who thinks a slave army is a good idea because it will advance their political agenda is a monster
As a survivor of the last draft this country ran, I find your position morally repellent.
Thatās not what was said, if anything the opposite was implied: [quote=āaeon, post:15, topic:70163ā]
ā¦the number of anti-war protesters would quickly increaseā¦
[/quote]
Are you suggesting that the āItā of āIt would be a good ideaā refers to something other than a (gender-inclusive) slave army?
Or that increasing the number of antiwar protesters isnāt a political agenda?
Or something else?
