Poll: 75% Of Americans Support Women In Combat

February 7, 2013

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The Pentagon’s recently announced policy change that will eventually permit women to apply to combat assignments has broad support among the public:

American voters strongly back allowing women to serve in combat roles, a new poll finds.

According to a survey from Quinnipiac University released on Thursday, American voters support women serving in combat 75-22 percent. There was little breakdown along gender lines: Men support that measure 73-24 percent, and women say the same, 77-21 percent. The Pentagon last month decided to allow women to take on combat roles.

There was less robust support, however, for drafting women if an overall military draft were to be reinstated, with 52 percent of those surveyed favoring drafting females, and 42 percent opposing. Forty-eight percent of women opposed a draft that would hit females, while 45 percent supported such a move; men said that women should be drafted under those circumstances, 59-36 percent.

Personally, I’m opposed to a military draft both for philosophical reasons and because I think it’s clear that our nearly 40 year experience with a volunteer military indicates quite clearly that it is superior to a draftee force. Indeed, given the technical knowledge required of the average soldier today, it’s hard to see how we could have the kind of draft-train-and ship out routine that we had during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, unless it were on a much longer time scale. In any event, we do currently require all males over the age of 18 to register for the draft today. As long as that’s the case, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t extend that requirement to women. After all, not all draftees in the last ended up being combat soldiers.

4 responses to “Poll: 75% Of Americans Support Women In Combat”

JKB

February 7, 2013 at 11:33 am

Sign em all up. Equality means having the same responsibilities as well as the same privileges.

But let us not kid ourselves. Should we find ourselves in a real high casualty war like WWI, especially as suffered by the European armies, we must accept women and men are not equal and no society or country would survive the level of loss of young females that war did to the young male populations. On the other hand, such wars are unlikely since the advent of intercontinental nuclear weapons.
al-Ameda

February 7, 2013 at 5:02 pm

@JKB:

Sign em all up. Equality means having the same responsibilities as well as the same privileges.

I’d say that women are more than equal to the challenge. We go though so many machinations to take the smallest of steps. Everything is going to be just fine. Besides, I’m confident that women can direct a Drone attack as efficiently as a man could.
dll

February 7, 2013 at 5:19 pm

The author neglected an important point. Combat roles are voluntary for women, like submarine duty is for all sailors. Even if drafted, a woman could decline combat roles. Typically the draft enslaves men to combat roles.

Interestingly, this volunteer status would not impact the Supreme Court’s previous ruling regarding equal protection and the draft: drafting women would continue to impact the military’s ability to rotate people (slave or free) through combat roles, so equal protection does not apply. In affect, the government can constrain itself in a way that violates equal protection and thus free itself to draft without regard to equal protection.
justic day

February 8, 2013 at 11:49 pm

Apparently American’s don’t realize that one in three women is raped or sexually assaulted that serve in the US military, by male troops!

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