Rod Dreher

Laws of the Culture War

New Model Army

By Rod Dreher • February 22, 2012, 12:27 PM

O Diversity! O Sensitivity! Teach us thy ways:

The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Look upon us, ye enemies of America, and tremble!:

(H/T: Mark Shea, who asks, “Where’s Patton when you need him?”)

56 Responses to New Model Army

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E-Ro says:

February 23, 2012 at 12:20 pm

“By the way, I am against any quota system: a candidate for any job should perform the tasks necessary for that job without special consessions to his or her sex, race, gender orientation or what not.”

never happens
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 23, 2012 at 12:34 pm

Mr. P, that “peace time draft” was in anticipation of imminent war. It was for a year, but somehow got turned into “for the duration of the war.” When I have to rely on Wikipedia to prove a point, I’ll get off the site and shut up. Try reading Percival L. Prattis’s series from the training camps for the Pittsburgh Courier. The “peace time draft” was instituted as part of the “cold war,” which eroded the war making powers of congress by making sure we were always in a state of war, sort of.
Mike says:

February 23, 2012 at 12:53 pm

I had no idea that the military was composed entirely of being able to bench press and lift heavy boxes.
b. r. rimmer says:

February 23, 2012 at 4:57 pm

I read the above comments about the men, the women, and the nation. What’s missing is the BABY. Research shows that the child in the womb reacts to the mother’s heart rate, stress level, fear level, etc. Is this a good place for nuturing that child before birth? I think not. There are many job situations that are not ideal for that baby’s pre-birth growth. This is one of them.
AnotherBeliever says:

February 23, 2012 at 8:42 pm

Mike, bench pressing? Hardly. Lifting heavy boxes? Yes, there’s rather a lot of that. Which my recruiter never mentioned, oddly.

Polchinello, your bench press statistics are measuring the average woman off the street, who culturally has been steered away from her physical strength for several decades unless she is a member of the vanishing minority of farm/ranch families. This is starting to shift back some as girls turn to athletics. The number is quite a bit higher if a woman trains for just a few months. But you are right. Women don’t have the same muscle mass as men, even when physically fit. That’s a fact. We also have lower lung capacity and very low relative levels of testosterone. We’re not infantry material, in my opinion. But we are plenty capable of contributing in non-combat roles, as we have proven for the better part of six decades. And we are in fact very useful in combat areas where the local culture frowns upon unrelated men interacting with the women. Though I seem to remember you don’t approve of us being at war over there in the first place.
Jon H says:

February 25, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Bench press is a stupid metric, because it bears no resemblance to any real-world application of strength. You don’t carry a wounded soldier with your pecs.

Any realistic measure of strength for military application has to include leg strength, and last I checked, women can have some pretty beefy leg muscles.

As for whether women should be in the military, the testosterone-poisoned meatheads posting here aren’t fit to carry the prosthetic legs Tammy Duckworth has needed since the helicopter she was piloting in Iraq was hit by an RPG that blew up in her lap.