Selective Service: Discrimination??? Created 18 years ago2006-11-25 18:08:37 UTC by Orpheus

Wow, Tycell, you really have some bad prejudice there. A lesbian feminist would have your head.
Yes, the combat effectiveness of women can be debated, but I think it's more a matter of individual strengths and weaknesses, not gender. I have no doubt you can train women to be "as effective" as male soldiers. Might need a different type of training or methods, but it can probably be done. Come on now, the difference between guys and girls isn't that big. This is the 21st century.

back in the day while our boys where at WW2, the women where in the states working on all the tanks, guns, ammo, and all kinds of stuff, its been said that without them we would have had a major shortage on supply's that could have effect the outcome of the wore

Crazylikeafox: Yes pretty much every country in WW2 used women to run the factories back home and keep the supplies running. And yes, without that strength any side could have lost.

Orpheus: My point was that you can never have too much "Brute strength" in an army, even if it is a large reserve of it.

Also, I didnt mean to down women about being able to become soldiers, I simply meant that MOST women would not be able to hack it (can you picture a cheer leader in a trench?). In the same way that a lot of men would not be able to endure warfare, a lot of women simply wouldnt have the "blood lust" or the Primal instinct that Men have for war.

The fact of the matter is that Males have been waging wars since the year dot. Its a tried and tested system - We know that men can fight wars.

While I have no doubt that some where allong the line women have fought and won battles their achivements are 'brutally' overpowered by the number of Men who have waged and won battles.

I'm not saying "OMG women suck, they can't fight, Men FTW!", I'm saying Men are built to wage war, and we know how to use Men to wage war. Somone who made an army of women would have to over come an array of problems that simply haven't been encountered by other armies before (armies made of men).

When it comes down to it maybe it is a little bit of predajist on the side of all millitarys but I think the general outline is somthing like this;

Men are war machines/ Hunters.
Women are babie factories.

Yes, I know, thats very wrong of me to say. But thats the way nature intended.

(can you picture a cheer leader in a trench?)

I can, but she wouldn't be a soldier

I don't think anyone has even brought up testosterone and estrogen yet, which surprises me a lot. If you want to blame it all on chemestry, then men are more suited for war because of the "testosterone factor". Men tend to get more fo a rush out of violence than women, whereas women are more "womanly" because of the "estrogen factor". Most women, even if they were qualified to be on the army, probably wouldn't want to be because it's such a bloody and brutal environment, for the most part, no matter what your position is. Bring on your arguements, but I'll stand by my opinion.
HOWEVER, ultimately, I do believe that it boils down to individual capability.

/agree with WCD

Easy. Pop a few testosterone pills in their meals.

Does anybody want to go to war? Huh. I know I never would.
"War is sweet to those who have never experienced it."

Yeah. But this isnt really about wanting to go to war ZL. Its about who you take into war. I think all Males have a lust for warfare, violence and battle.

"War is sweet to those who have never experienced it."

Read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien if you want true insight to what it's like to be in a war(it's the Vietnam war, though).

Every war is different. You cant take one experiance and apply it to all wars in that broad a sence. For example:

One of my Ex's friends is in Iraq right now, and they are loving it. He says the closest he got to being hurt was when a mortar shell landed about 20 meters away. Then you take other things like the Vietnam war, when the soldiers were having drugs tested on them and stuff, and the warfare was brutal and supremly gurilla.

Warfare is good for those who sieze an easy victory. Only the Casualties and those around them suffer in war.

I doubt warfare is good for anyone, ever, except the war profiteers that invest money in it.

Its good for the people who win the wars, if they are fighting the wars for the right reasons. But you bring up a good point ZL, wars these days are fought for power and money not for the right reaons.

Power corrupts.

There are no "right reasons" for war.

Oh so we should have just sat down and let Hitler win?

There are always two sides to war. One is always the "right" side, now matter how thin the line is. Usually the defending side.

Or as in the case of HL2, the attacking side - the resistance.

Both sides in a war will see that their the right side. Therefore there really can't be a right side. Hitler thought that his ideals were right and the German people fought for them. The allies thought that he should bugger off and that they were right, and fought against him over it.

It's pretty much the same in every way. Vietnam, Korea, WWI and II, Iraq.

Im pretty sure thats what ZL meant.

But that isnt the case. The allies in WW2 didnt WANT to fight. They had to fight. Hitler had some good ideas (radical though they were). His methods however, "Take over the world with force", were wrong. No one should ever use their millitary might to overthrow an otherwise peaceful people.

We were fighting the right fight. The fight for freedom, and for our civilisation to continue freely and unhindered. If Hitler had won there would be no ethnic people left in the world. A blue eyed Blonde haired man would be running the world through propaganda and millitary force. There would be no jews and no other religions other than "the one" religion (whatever that may have ended up being).

No matter what nasty evil bad things people have done, NO ONE has the right to say "your kind does not deserve to exist on Earth any more." We all "got here first", we have to share. Every race of animal on this planet has an equal right to go on living on it until such a time as it can no longer support their existence (sun 'splodes or somthing). Thats why there is always a "right side" to a battle.

As I said, there is always a "right side", but the line between right and wrong can be very thin some times.

Hitler wouldn't have thought we were fighting the right fight. He would've thought that we were to be pushed away. You may think his methods of enforcing his ideas were wrong. But to him they weren't.

This is what i mean, you can only define the right side as what you are taught or told to define it as. It may seem logical to you that your ideals are correct. But to others they won't. The "Right side" has different definitions for the different sides, therefore you can never really have a right side.

Your completely right there, what is good or bad, what is a terrorist or a hero is completely defined by the scociety you are living in.

38_98's got the right idea.
Moral rights or wrongs are individual. Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. There's no universal rule to say who's right or wrong when doing things, everything is relative to the individual's perception. This strayed a bit, though.

I suppose you are right.

whatever is "right" is popular opinion, its not right to kill because most think its wrong

Of course it's acceptable to kill. People do it all the time in wars. Police do it all the time, too. And just because it's legal killing doesn't make it better, although it does seem to make it acceptable.

Yeah. Right and wrong is down the the inderviduals opinion greatly, however.

There are "universal laws" of sorts which we can safley assume are deffinatly right or wrong in all cultures. For example, if we landed on an alien planet and started blowing them up, they would consider that wrong, as would we. Because of this we can assume that killing is a universal wrong.

Its not so much a set in stone law, but it follows the general flow of life and the universe if you see what I mean. If you had an alien race that was totally into senceless killing they wouldnt last very long would they? They would all die out (either kill each other or have somone else come allong and kill them). End of species, there for the 'Universe' had judged them, in a way, and they have failed.

(OMG getting deep and off topic or what? :D)

Well, it's got a lot to do with social, societal norms. For instance, there've been people who've sacrificed a lot of humans to their Gods, because they thought it'd appease them. They thought they were doing the right thing. The sacrificed probably didn't, but the societal norm was that it was a good thing to do.

Perhaps the journal intrusions would be an example.

Thankfully the internets, and least of all twhl, isn't a democracy.

i think humans might be evolving, not physically...but like...how we think, because a long time ago we thought there was all these gods an stuff and didnt question, then we "evolved" a bit and decided to question gods and question religion, now more then ever theres people who really don't believe in god, even people who are Christian have told me they don't believe in god, they just do it for tradition

i also noticed we used to do things like have a monarchy, till we again, "evolved" and made things like a democracy, and just as recently as 60 years ago, in America we "evolved" and realized that all men must truly be "created equally" and gave black people rights

now theres of course absolutely NO scientific evidence to support my claim but i think it might be a mix of experience and maybe a little brain evolution.....who knows...

We're still a monarchy, woo hoo.
But yeah, you're right. Our way of seeing the world has changed while scientific and social progressions were made.