Women have a role to play in combat just as much as men – if combat is your thing. The ability to carry large and heavy weaponry and other clunky stuff, and to pee standing up, does not a superior fighter make.

Nimble, armour-challenged Monguls on horses easily defeated European knights weighed down by their silly suits of armour. Even the Roman’s found there was a limit to how far they could lug their huge, cumbersome armies and weaponry, before being picked off by nimble Germanics and Celts. And look at how the tenacious Vietcong (who had a strong female presence) defeated the most heavy weapons-dominant, superior military machine on earth.

Also, given the chance, many women are just as willing as men are to take up arms, or whatever comes to hand, to fight for what they believe in – whether it be through a standard army or through a paramilitary organisation or by engaging in civil disobedience. But the operative words are: ‘given the chance’. History has actively excluded women from combat, either through royal or papal decree as in the early middle ages, or because they have been thoroughly conditioned to believe war is a man’s job, or simply because they were always stuck with the kids.

I’m anti-war myself, but a lot of women are not. If wars are here to stay, then women who want to fight them have every right to do so

Killarney,
The guys in Afghanistan regularly carry about 50kg, and that's just a basic load,some have to carry mortars, missile launchers,machine guns, radios,ladders, anti materiel guns and so forth.If a person can't carry 50 to 120 kilos of weight all day every day in any weather over any terrain they can't be an infantry soldier, end of story.
Again, you and the other backers of this silly idea are living in the "land of should" not the "land of is", shall we all watch another video this showing what modern soldiering is about? No honest person could pretend that a woman would be anything but a liability in this situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cclbmO5poz4

Jay

Well, all that stuff they have to carry hasn’t brought them much success, has it?

After ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq, traipsing all over the desert carrying heavy backpacks and beepy things, those muscle-bound, manly soldiers have SFA to show for their trouble and even less to do now but go home – leaving a country in shambles and full of war rubble and limbless people.

The only supposed military ‘success’ of recent times – i.e. Libya – was only achieved by NATO carpet bombing of towns full of civilians, with about 10,000 sorties from 30,000 feet, leaving bombed out craters that were once thriving cities.

Where is the ‘manliness’ in all of that?

It was a mistake disbanding the WRAACS.

Women really do need women to manage them. The women officers do not take *bleep*.

Women football referees of women's sports are the same (and doesn't everyone wish that the penalty pleaders of men's soccer could be handled likewise to rid the game of the theatrics and BS!).

Technology has created large numbers of defence jobs with good career structures that could be staffed by WRAACS. Trucks, aircraft maintenance and the roles provided by ARAACS in wartime remain.

With poseur ministers like the Walking Haircut, who really do need to move often so their own publicity is never matched with their performance, facts, logic and good sense will never see light of day in defence policy.

Killareny, you're just being silly now, if those soldiers weren't carrying all that weight they'd die since it's all designed to protect them, did you watch the other video of the soldier taking a bullet in the head and surviving? That helmet weighs three kilos, his vest weighs about 14, then there's his other accoutrements, so even in the vehicle he has to manage nearly twenty kilos of gear. Did you see him struggling to lift the box of grenades before he was shot? He was a fit, strong young man and he still needed help but what if all the other men in the truck were wounded or dead and he still had to operate the grenade launcher to protect the convoy? Again, a woman would fail in that situation, she'd get people killed because she wouldn't be strong enough to do the job.

? The myth of gender interchangeability ?

...Rule by the “Alpha Bitch” Is no myth; neither a new phenomenon