Monday, February 08, 2016

women sign up for selective service? Fake question

the question dejour is if women, like their brothers, should sign up for the "selective service" so they could be drafted like their brothers.

IF they reinstitute the draft.

AS IF all boys sign up. (Does anyone really check this when you get a job or go to college etc as they did in the past:?)

The real question is: Do you want everyone in the USA to be signed up by the government and on a list?

The whole thing is, of course, a fake question. Drafting huge numbers of people for cannon fodder is not the way one fights a modern war. Indeed, it is not the way one fights a war in most of history (I just was reading about the Tang dynasty that decided that professional soldiers should guard the borders, because the draftees were too inefficient...later the rebels proved them right as the rebels cut through the local less professional types who were supposed to guard the city).

In the past, they could grab you for war, but it was the elites who made the war...during the French revolution, and later with Napoleon, things changed, so you had to fight for YOUR country. Hence everyone signed up, or were faced with locals who frowned on your cowardice or turned you in as a traitor.

But today's wars are more mechanized: D Day won't happen again.

The question being asked is: Will putting women into combat increase the efficiency of the military? Ah, but President Obama never served, so he sees the military as something he can make PC on his way to do a fundamental transformation of America. Oppose him and you are forced to leave...(which is why you can ignore all those military leaders who testified in congress. Oppose him and you get shafted and silenced).


 feminists are using this to prove they are equal, yet how many of them signed up to fight? Dirty little secret: In VietNam, it was the rich who got the draft deferments, and in the Civil War, the rich also bought their way out of service, letting the immigrants be drafted. Draft riots of 1863 anyone?

But of course, this is not about the military. This is about President Obama's transformation of the military to a pc army that will not kill people. So we will have token women in combat even if it kills them. Never mind that women's skills could be used elsewhere.

Ironically, some pious types worry their daughters would be corrupted in the military. Well, how do you keep them out of the farm after they've see Paree? as the song goes.

But I was amused.

The poster child for women in the military is not the US feminist who wouldn't be able to shoot a gun if you gave it to them, or even Mrs Palin, who could shoot but never joined up.

This is the poster child for women in the military,at a time when women were on the Front line and dying. (The front line being London, which was bombed constantly).




She was merely a truck driver. But she is the last major head of state in the world who served in WWII... and I wonder how many who are running for president ever had first hand experience. (answer: Two who dropped out: Rick Perry and Lindsey Graham).

FYI: StrategyPage has a long article on how women's skills always have been used in the military and they discuss the pros and cons of the issue.
summary:

 Carrying a heavy load was not required. In convoy operations women have also done well, especially when it comes to spotting, and dealing with, IEDs (roadside bombs and ambushes). Going into the 21st century, warfare is becoming more automated and less dependent on muscle and testosterone. That gives women an edge, and they exploit it, just as they have done in so many other fields. What women continue to avoid is traditional infantry jobs, which are less needed but not going away.

The dirty little secret is that combat troops per se are few, and non combat and support jobs are most of the jobs, so in effect you are arguing about the wrong thing.

As for me: I was only NG in the peacetime army, so never was full time military.

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