Fine, until shapelier bodybags start coming home

The New York Times has an editorial entitled The Reality of Women at War, expounding the theory that allowing women into combat would be a good thing, and the Pentagon should get out of their way:

A Congressional study commission has recommended an end to the Pentagon’s ban on women serving in ground combat, a policy that years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown to be impractical. Female soldiers have become involved in de facto combat situations, suffering death and battle wounds. At the same time, their careers are crimped, as leadership promotions flowed more to men with combat experience, according to the study.
The case for women warriors was succinctly put by Senator Kay Hagan as a member of the Armed Services Committee: “Women are driving Humvees and having their legs blown off,” she told CQ Today. She urged the Pentagon to accept reality, and officially integrate small armor and infantry units with women.
A 1994 law allowed women to serve on combat surface ships, and authorized the Pentagon to make additional changes, providing Congress was notified. Last year, female sailors were permitted to serve aboard submarines.
The evolution to ground combat was recommended by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, which spent eighteen months studying ethnic, gender, and cultural problems hindering career advancement in the military. “Being ineligible for infantry may be perceived to make a female soldier ‘less Army,’ ” the commission stressed, adding that research has not born out shibboleths that women are too weak for combat, can harm a unit’s cohesion, or are more prone to mental health disorders than men in combat. Considering the perils of war, the nation’s female soldiers deserve a fair chance at advancement. Their lives are already on the line.

The problem, as ever (and when has Rico failed to point it out), is that we don't have a lot of real experience with the reality of women at war, and Rico suspects, if history is anything to go by, we won't like it when we do.
Ask the Europeans, whose women were involved as freedom fighters against the Nazis, or the Vietnamese, whose women fought alongside their men in both the Viet Cong and the NVA. None of them will say that watching women be killed and tortured was a good thing. But, if career enhancement is that important to them, what the fuck, let 'em go into combat. They won't like it, but there you are...