Here's an excerpt of a sobering article by Jim Gourley published by Foreign Affairs. The piece was just forwarded by Father Bill Mouser, who served in the Marines.
...The core of our military’s strength is people, yet the Defense Department places inordinately greater attention on weapon systems than human systems.
Our dialogue is horribly skewed from the very beginning when we discuss women meeting the physical requirements for infantry combat duty, because we...
focus on “women” rather than “physical requirements.” As Colonel Martha McSally told Bill O’Reilly... the best and most fair approach to assessing women’s potential for infantry assignments is to test them to the same standard as their male counterparts. However, it cannot be stressed enough that we cannot accurately say whether any man or woman — let alone either sex as a collective — meets the physical standards for combat duty because our standards have nothing to do with combat. A truly gender-neutral fitness testing standard would be substantially more comprehensive and rigorous and would not scale its requirements based on gender or age differences.
The battlefield is ultimately the most unrelenting test of fitness, and it does not discriminate in its assessments between the quick and the dead. Neither should the armed forces. From aircraft carriers to armored vehicles, the Defense Department outlines performance requirements to ensure we have the very best systems in the world. Yet it faces a precipitous decline in quality and number of personnel ready to meet the demands of the battlefield. It is time for an equally uncompromising review of its standards for human performance requirements. By its very nature, the process would be blind to gender.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
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