would you like to know more?

You know, I've always gotten a perverse kick out of Starship Troopers (the film, not the book, while more inteligent in many regards, isn't nearly as funny and suffers from Heinlein's fixations) in a Bob Roberts in Space sort of way. I mean, it's very smart satire.

But I just had a total freakout watching it on cable. You know, all sorts of weird shit isn't funny any more.

That said, I'm interested that one brand of fallout from the prisoner abuse/torture in Iraq has been that we've gone from saying "a civilized society doesn't send its women to war" to "women are too vicious to be allowed in organized combat." How frigging insane is that? And while I mostly don't subscribe to the theory (military is military, and both genders should be part of it as individual skill dictates), I'm amazed that no one who is subscribing to that argument is asking why.

I suppose it's inconvenient for them to draw the obvious conclusion -- that if you believe women are too vicious for organized combat, it's because maybe they, we, have always been at war. And so when a woman says that they do what they have to, it's something they thought up long before they ever saw combat or combat training.

Just a thought.

p.s., before anyone gets confused, the subject line is from a running gag in the film, and is used here entirely for my own amusement.