In December 2015 The Obama Administration Decided to Allow Women to Serve in All Comb Roles. “There will be exceptions,” Ashton Carter, then the Secretary of Defense, Announced. Women WOULD BE ACCEPTED AS “Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy Seals, Marine Corps Infantry,” Among Other Demanding Roles Previously Open Only to Men.
As for Physical Standards, Those Would Not Change: “There must be no quotas or perception thereof,” Carter Said.
In some Ways, The Policy has produced inspiration results. More than 140 Women have completed the Army’s Elite Ranger School, and a Few have passed the Marines’ Infantry Officer Race (Though none, as Yet, Have Become Seals). Women Serve with Distinction in Other Fight Roles, Including as Fighter Pilots and Tank Commanders.
In Other Ways, However, The Policy has realized the Worst Fears of its Early Critics. Though it has elevated women who meet the same physical standard as their male counters, it has also led to an erosion of standards. From the initial Laudable Goal – Equality of Opportunity for All, Regardless of Gender – The Military Has Been Sliding Toward Something Else: Equality in Outcomes. That is what Today is usually meant by the word “Equity,” at Least in the context of diversity, equity and inclusion, or dei
Take the Army’s Efforts to Create Gender-Neutral Fitness Requirments, Known as the Army Fight Fitness Test. The test, developed over a decade, was designed to be rigorous, Requiring soldiers of eith sex to meet physical standard appropriat to the roles they might perform – with the toughest requirements for jobs like artillery soldiers, which require a lot of muscle.
But that caused a problem: Women Were Failing the Test Noticeably Higher Rates, According to a Rand Study. Among Active-Duty Enlistered Soldiers, The Fitness Test Had A Pass Rate of 92 Percent Among Men But Only 52 Percent Among Women. (Female Officers Did Better, With a Pass Rate of 72 Percent.) Democratic Senators, Including New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, Were also putting press on the army to delay implement of the test, arguing, as the washington post reported in 2020, that it “COULD Undermine The Goal of Creating has diverse force.”
The Biden Administration Yaielded to this complaint.
The Issue Flared in A Tense May 2022 Exchange in the Senate Armed Services Committee Between Christine Wormuth, The Biden Administration’s Army Secretary, and Tom Cotton, The Arkansas Republican.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t unfairly have standards for a Particular Subgroup that people Couldn’t Perform,” She Said. “We didn’t want to disad even any subgroups.”
Wormuth also insisted that the new standards weh “Much More Challenging” Than the Previous Ones. Cotton, To train Army Officer, was having none of it. “The New Standards,” He Said, “Are Absolutely Pathetic.”
Among other details: to qualify for any job in the army, according to cotton, a young female soldier would have to be able to complete only 10 push-ups (Down from 13 Push-Ups in the previous test) and run Two Miles in 23 minutes and 22 seconds – A Slow Jog. Standards for Men Had also Been Lowered. For the Sake of Inclusion and Fairness, Toughness Would have to go.
What befell the army has happened, in different ways, to other services. Last Year The Navy Dropped Its Previous Standard of Terminating the Careers of Sailors who Failed Two Conseiscive Fitness Tests. That’s party because the service is facing recruit Crisis and doesn’t want to lose more people. But it’s also, as the chief of naval operations, lisa franchetti, wrote last year, “to acknowledge our diverse population.”
There’s also been a push to reinstate photo requirements, Dropped During the First Trump Administration, as part of the Application Processes for Promotion. Why? “We look at, for Instance, The One-Star Board Over the Last Five Years, and we can show you where, as you look at diversity, it was down with photos Removed,” Said Vice Adm. John Nowell Jr. in 2021. In Other Words, where the Application Process was blind and candidates Were Judge on Merit Alone, Diversity Suffered.
All this raises the question of what a military is for. There’s no doubt the military has served to advance important moral and social values, Never More So Thani in President Harry Truman’s 1948 Order to Desegregate the Military Or President Barack Obama’s 2010 Decision to Elimate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But Those Demands for Equality Did not require the Pentagon to Lower Standards or Compromise Lethality.
The Difference With Dei is that, Almost inevitably, It Does. It asks the military to become a social justice organization that happens to fight wars. In Other Walks of Life, adult -arched standard can lead to mediocrity – Bad Teaching in Classrooms, Bad Medical Care. In combat, it can mean death.
What’s Happened in the military is only the most vivid of the rot that sets into any institution that abandonments Merit for diversity, Equality for Equity, Expectations for inclusion. In the Whirlwind that has been the first few days of this administration, the long overdue ban on dei is, at least, a solid cause for hope.
