Soldiers in the Culture War

[Kamaji]

Soldiers in the Culture War

Republicans are just catching up on the battlefield.

John Hirschauer
Jul 13, 2023

The United States lost nearly a quarter of its combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to musculoskeletal injuries. Military officials considered that evidence that they weren't choosing the fittest men and women for combat roles, which prompted them to create a gender-neutral fitness test to better measure candidates' combat-readiness.

The Army had previously used sex-specific standards for male and female recruits. Men had to perform significantly more push-ups, sit-ups, and run a faster two-mile-time than did women. There were similar tiered standards based on a recruit's age.

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The new gender- and age-neutral fitness test, rolled out in 2018, included a host of new exercises meant to better measure a recruit's ability to perform the skills needed in the field. The results, predictable to most people, were startling to the Pentagon. On the maximum three-rep deadlift, the average male soldier out-lifted his female counterpart 238 to 160 pounds. On the hand-release push-up portion, the average male performed thirty-four to the average female's twenty. The two-mile run and the sprint-drag-carry were dominated by male soldiers, and on the standing power throw, an overhead medicine-ball toss, the average male out-tossed the average female by nearly four feet.

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Most Americans, to that point, had assumed the armed forces were striving to create a maximally effective fighting force. The fact women were less likely than men to pass the new physical fitness test should not, by that standard, have mattered. The military is a killing machine, not a group meant to scratch its members' felt need to “belong,” or better “represent” the diversity of the American population.

But the Biden administration thought otherwise. Biden's now-Secretary for the Army said at her nomination hearing that she was concerned “about the implications of the test for our ability to continue to retain women.” Last year, the Army re-instituted its gender-specific testing standards. It is once again the official policy of the United States Army to admit candidates to the force whom it knows to be less capable of protecting the United States.

This is a long wind-up to make a simple point. Despite the media's insinuations to the contrary, the military has been part of the culture war for a long time, and certainly long before the debate over proposed Republican amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.

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A handful of Republican congressmen have proposed amendments to the annual NDAA re-authorization that would ensure the U.S. military is a maximally lethal fighting force rather than a vehicle for progressive social engineering. Several of the proposed amendments are considered “extreme” by the press only because the military, in its current state, is extremely far gone.

Representatives Roy and Crane, for example, introduced an amendment prohibiting federal funds from being used to establish a “Chief Diversity Officer” at the Department of Defense. Representatives Gaetz and Crane similarly would prohibit federal funds from being used to train military personnel on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and Representative Boebert would abolish the position of Deputy Inspector General for Diversity and Extremism at DoD and bar federal funds from sponsoring Pride Month activities at Defense. There are dozens of other amendments taking aim at Pride activities, diversity initiatives, and Pentagon-sponsored abortions and “gender affirmation” surgeries for servicemen.

Each of these measures is, by any standard, benign, and in keeping with the expressed preferences of our men and women in uniform. Sixty-five percent of servicemen surveyed in a recent Heritage poll said they were concerned about the politicization of the military. Those who expressed concerns highlighted the lowering of physical fitness standards and the Pentagon's obsession on race, and eighty percent identified the Biden administration's allowing transgender-identifying members into the ranks as a contributing factor in their response.

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Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/soldiers-in-the-culture-war/

[Bigun]

A handful of Republican congressmen have proposed amendments to the annual NDAA re-authorization that would ensure the U.S. military is a maximally lethal fighting force rather than a vehicle for progressive social engineering.

And every one of those amendments is much needed. They also need to exclude JAG officers from being present during ALL combat operations.