By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was about 15 klicks (kilometers) away from me in November of 2004 when he was putting himself and his men in harm’s way during Fallujah II. The official name of the battle was Operation Phantom Fury, and it was the largest urban assault operation since the Vietnam War. Hegseth went on to describe before Congress the reaction of the people who greeted them with open arms and asked, “Where have you been?” And, he was an advocate for the validity of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as am I, despite some failures and missteps.
He couldn’t have known that on Radwaniyah, we had portly and slow-moving National Guardsmen who honestly made me nervous because I questioned their ability to protect me from our neighbors who wanted to (and did) store heads in their refrigerator. And, he certainly could not have known that in a little over 20 years he would tackle that problem of poor fitness levels, which are an inarguable threat to national security and force protection, especially in a combat zone.
So, it was with great relief that I learned this week that SECWAR gathered up a bunch of the brass by summoning them to Quantico and laid down the law. Our soldiers would return to being lean, mean fighting machines beginning right now, no exceptions.
“Any place where tried-and-true physical standards were altered, especially since 2015 when combat armed standards were changed to ensure females could qualify, must be returned to their original standard,” Hegseth said. “Other standards have been manipulated to hit racial quotas as well, which is just as unacceptable.” He clearly is interested only in physical prowess and not skin color, and he is also saying that those requirements need to be straight across the board. “When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,” he added.
What I also appreciated was Hegseth’s insistence that officers return to doing PT as well, and submit to being tested two times a year. And, please note that this is a standard that he will submit to himself, even though right now his personal theater of operations is in the Pentagon.
Please understand, I have had skirmishes with my own weight off and on since I was a kid, and I am not in to fat shaming anyone. But that has nothing to do with force readiness. You
simply cannot have soldiers be in a state of anything less than full readiness to “drop and give me 20” at all times. While I did appreciate when in Iraq that soldiers would take National Guardsmen under their wing and coach them while they returned to a literal “fighting weight,” that is not something that they should have had to do. And I, for one, am glad that Pete has drawn a hard line in the sand. It’s about time.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
