Fit to Fight: Why the Military Has Always Said No to Those Who Can’t
Jay Rogers
• July 4, 2026
RealClearWire—The United States Army turned away Erik Holmstrom on Reception Day at West Point in 1995. He was a standout offensive lineman from Duluth with the body and the drive for it. The problem was an old ACL repair and a ligament that measured 0.03 centimeters too loose to meet deployment standards. The Army didn’t apologize. It sent him home. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
That same standard is now at the center of a political firestorm over the Pentagon’s gender dysphoria exclusion policy and the D.C. Circuit’s June 2 ruling against it. The legal architecture of that fight matters, and my earlier piece in RealClearDefense laid it out in detail.
But the deeper question gets less attention: Why does the military exclude people from service based on medical conditions in the first place? The answer is not cruelty. It’s arithmetic.
Combat readiness is the mission. Every personnel decision the military makes flows from that fact. The military doesn’t owe anyone a uniform, and it never has.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/07/04/fit-to-fight-military/
