That's true Red, but you don't need to be a woman to be raped. I'm sure plenty of Iraqi men who spent time in Abu Ghriab could attest to that.
And this is a good reason to prevent them from participating in all the other assembled horrors of war? They are in combat. They are there to kill and be killed. What puzzles me is that some people are perfectly happy for a woman to be brutally wounded or even killed but spit the dummy at the possibility the might be raped. If a woman being murdered or doing the murdering is acceptable to people, the fact that if captured she is statistically more likely to be raped than a man (men are also often raped) is just another unfortunate side effect of organised murder.
Get rid of the draft and I am fine with women in combat. -Edit- I shouldn't say fine with it. As a husband and father I would not like to see my wife or daughter in combat. That said, as long as it is a voluntary choice I wouldn't try to block it.
As a husband and a father I would not like to see either my son or daughter in combat. I do not play favorites based upon sex. I realize both people are unique indivduals and equally deserving of the same respect and roles in society.
Being a good conservative I did a quick cost benefit analysis and thereby it made more sense economically to rely on insurance and allow the wife to go.
Nobody should serve in aggressive combat - for example being deployed overseas to attack countries that didn't attack yours and really can't attack yours even if they wanted to. However, in defensive roles men should be the first forces deployed with women in reserve. All should be trained. The ability to rebuild a population after a war is almost entirely determined by the number of fertile females. If all your women are dead after the war it doesn't matter if you technically won - you lose. --- addendum Of course, if the invading forces rain depleted uranium all over the place then rebuilding your population becomes much harder as you have to labour under a vastly increased rate of birth defects - just ask the "liberated" women of Fallujah.
About 96% of the population in the world is derived from one of 4 females. So one doesn't need all that many.
If you want to build your population back to what it was pre-war within 25 years you don't want to lose more than half of your women. Meanwhile you can lose 80% of your men but the ones that survive will be busy.
At present women are needed for the incubation period. Men are edging ever closer to not being needed. As long as fertility clinics aren't destroyed... There's 'snowflake babies' and sperm storage. Women could clone the sperm. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6265366.stm As long as technology is not destroyed.. Spermless humaning cloning appears viable. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-first-human-cloned-em The only hold back is our legal rules on banning humans. They'd quickly be lifted if all the males disappeared.
I guess he really wants his fundie trifecta. Women have been going to war in front line positions for as long as there have been wars.
If I were among the few surviving males I plan to be far too busy to be working at keeping some fertility clinic operating.
