The fitness of enlistees in the military has been going down for years now. Bone stress fractures are almost a given in basic training, carrying heavy packs on long field trips. Young adults just aren’t built the way they used to be.
A fit young female can almost compete on equal terms with the typical male high school graduate. It’s not that women are any more fit. Men are virtual weaklings.
Strong bones come from an active youth with an hour or two of exercise every day, without exception. Strong bones require a good diet, lots of milk, and plenty of sunshine for vitamin A.
Kids these days get none of the above. Their skeletons are so weak they can barely carry their own overweight bodies, much less a 40 pound pack on a long hike.
Carbonated drinks and colas aren’t themselves harmful to bone health, as people thought at one time. They are harmful, though, in how they are the favored beverage over the all-important milk.
A diet low in calcium during the growth years when bones are formed builds weak bones. Bones that can never be made structurally sound again, no matter how rigorous the training.
Daily physical education classes have been absent from public schools for a generation now. P.E. classes are school board’s favorite way to cut costs. They aren’t popular with the students either. Ditto for backyard fun after school, cycling, swimming and running away all that energy.
Kids spend their time texting, social networking, sexting, and – well, experimenting with alcohol, drugs, tobacco and various other pharmaceuticals.
The result is a generation of potential recruits who, almost to a man, would have been rejected fifty years ago. They are physically weak, structurally unsound and mentally unfocused. The boys used to be much stronger than the girls. Not any more.
Of course, only 1 out of 10 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan ever saw combat duty; most never even left their comfy bases. Only the combat troops who went out on patrols need to be fit.
Now the military will be putting women in combat units. They will look at every standard of fitness, and if women have a hard time meeting this standard, the military will have to justify their fitness standards.
This insidious form of political correctness will water down physical standards even more.
It’s no wonder the military is investing heavily in structural body frames to reinforce weak bones in weak bodies to make soldiers capable of prolonged field duty. It’s no wonder the emphasis is now on drones instead of field operations. We just don’t have the people to do it.
The liberals say why bother? War is outdated.
The conservatives look at China’s 5 million man army with 1.5 million special forces personnel. Versus our 2 million man army with 20,000 special forces. North Korea and Vietnam have armies roughly the same size as China’s.
All together the ChiComs have 20 million men under arms, 2 million of whom are special forces.
Oh, but the ChiComs are our friends, the liberals say. This, as North Korea prepares to test another nuke, this one capable of being placed on their new ballistic missiles.
Semper fi.
