Senate set for showdown over women in the draft

With the utmost respect, CSM, I think that with a draft remaining unlikely (if not impossible)...this is more about politics than preparedness. What concerns me isn't the integration of women...while I can't be disingenuous regarding my concerns of how the services have "changed", it is the new reality. What greatly concerns me is that our young people are being used as pawns in a bid to eradicate one ideology over another. There are things we can't say, such as, "boys go to fight...girls stay home and raise the kids". Most of our society labels that as "misogyny" and being "backward"; yet, in many ways, it remains a view held by many Americans...including many women. I have a young son-I don't want him to fight in a war, but I'm not raising him to avoid one if required. In truth, I'll probably have to confront his choice to serve long before anyone in Congress makes that choice for him. His mother, on the other hand, was not raised to do that, wouldn't "choose" to do that, and should not be asked to do that...and she is still demographically of the age for a potential draft. It may sound anachronistic, if not arcane...but a legislature, administration, and Commander in Chief should be comprised of 100% people who did serve before they dare ask that of Americans.

Personally I disagree with the premise of full integration (and even more in the way in which it was executed), but if it's good for the gander, then it's good for the goose. As I've probably said before, don't stop there. Make things truly equal and get rid of all the other dividers based on sex instead of our "cafeteria equality" compromises we've taken over the last 40 years which explicitly treat women differently in a variety of ways. If what we get is something that appears unworkable, then at least we found out the easy way what makes bad policy, which is better than finding out in a major conventional war of national survival which we seem to have every 70-80 years.

I have the utmost respect for all my comrades in arms, men and women both. I find this idea somewhat disconcerting though.

I think that for a while now we've been stretching the word "equal" way past its rightful meaning. Equal means that people have equal rights, equal influence (one person one vote etc,), and equal value. Equal does not mean that people are actually equivalent, identical, or, in the case of men and women, simply interchangeable.

A culture which requires women to place themselves in the selection pool for involuntary military service, which can of course include armed combat, will have made a sort of irrevocable departure from the traditions and values of our forefathers, and this step will represent a summary rejection of much of the wisdom they passed on to us.