I have mixed feelings on this issue.
Senate Democrats have added language to the annual defense authorization bill to require women to register for the draft, prompting a backlash from Republicans and social conservatives and complicating the chances of moving the bill on the Senate floor before Election Day.
As the father of several draft-age men and women, my interests are as personal as philosophical. Let’s think about it from a couple of perspectives.
As a man and a father with mostly traditional values, I do think it is largely the appropriate and historic role for men to be protectors and providers. The thought of sending women off to war is instinctively abhorrent to me. While women have always served in war in every conflict, it has traditionally when they volunteer or when the war comes to their doors. It is the duty of men to go to faraway places and kill the enemy before they reach their doors.
There is also a practical, if grim, reason for this traditional role. In the event of a bloody war where a great number of people are killed, any country/society/culture needs women to repopulate. Our nation can repopulate with more women than men. It is much more difficult when men outnumber women (see: China). Part of our evolutionary survival as a species is because we have traditionally protected the fairer sex from violence so that they can continue the species. In other words, men are more expendable to the species than women.
But… I also think that women are capable of being great war fighters in modern combat. Except for a few select roles that require great physical strength where men’s biological advantages prevail, modern combat is largely mechanical and technological thus reducing the physical requirements. Other nations have proven the effectiveness of women in combat.
Furthermore, women are full-fledged individual citizens imbued with all of the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen. One of those responsibilities is to fight, kill, and die to protect our nation. Why should women be excluded from this responsibility when they enjoy all of the same rights?
So I am torn. The small “r” republican supports including women in the draft. The rest of me recoils at the notion.
Most of this modern technology can be massively degraded by EMP airbursts. All of the major players these days possess such offensive capabilities. Life under the affected areas would revert to roughly that of the 1860s within minutes, so it’s no longer necessary to incinerate the enemy like we did Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And no, there is still not an effective defense to EMP airbursts beyond very, very select military and federal government hardened facilities.
Mutually assured destruction was the diplomacy of sane men/women for decades, but now that these capabilities have expanded to religious zealots dedicated to martyrdom the warfare game has become infinitely more dangerous.