|| -----Original Message-----
|| From:Yoshie Furuhashi
||
|| However, more US servicemen and women have died of non-combat causes
|| (including training exercises) than in combat: (...)
||
|| The same probably goes for UK soldiers.
Absolutely, providing they do their job. E.g. if during the Falklands war, women carrying packs up to 110 pounds on the 3-day, 40 mile march from Stanley to Goose Green has started popping tendons and bones, they could neither have done their job nor stood the same chance as men of making it back in one piece. The problem with modern infantry is the amount of junk they're expected to carry. The Pentagon's starting an exoskeleton project so maybe one day this won't be such a problem and you can have Janes and Joes packing exactly the same horsepower, but as things stand, if women want to do the empire's killing, they would be more in their element at the controls of an Apache than slogging along with the grunts.
||
|| As for women in combat, women on both sides fought bravely in the US
|| Civil War (to take just one example), apparently with approval of
|| their male comrades in arms (...) Bravery and motivation are not the problem. In fact I remember the British MOD did a study about womens' readiness to kill in combat and couldn't find anything to fault them. But today's infantry is very much different from the 19th century. Nowadays, the less an army is prepared to take casualties, the harder it trains its troops, thereby raising the threshold of required physical performance.
Hakki