STARRS leaders had a great interview today on the Rob Maness Show about the DACODAI meeting. Watch:
In this episode of “Rob Maness Live,” host Colonel Rob Maness (USAF ret), on the STARRS Board of Advisors, discusses pressing issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the military with guests Major General Joe Arbuckle (USA ret), STARRS Vice Chairman, and Colonel Ron Scott, PhD (USAF ret), STARRS President. They critique these policies for potentially undermining unit cohesion and military effectiveness. The guests share their concerns about the push for DEI, which they argue diverts focus from merit and performance-based criteria essential for military readiness.
Joe Arbuckle, a retired Major General, highlights the negative impacts of these initiatives on the military’s operational capabilities. He points out that such policies could lead to a lowering of standards and a focus on identity over ability, which could weaken the force’s effectiveness. Ron Scott, also a retired Colonel, elaborates on how these policies are being implemented without sufficient transparency and how they might be driven by ideological motives rather than practical military needs.
The episode also touches on the broader implications of these policies on recruitment and retention within the armed forces. Both guests argue that the focus on DEI might deter potential recruits who prioritize a merit-based system that rewards skills and achievements over identity markers.
Colonel Maness and his guests call for a reevaluation of these policies, suggesting that the military should prioritize operational readiness and team cohesion over social engineering. They advocate for policies that strengthen rather than divide, ensuring that the military remains a capable and unified force.
This discussion is framed within a larger critique of political influences on military operations, with a call to return to principles that have traditionally governed military practices: meritocracy, cohesion, and a focus on the overarching mission.
Follow Rob: @RobManess and on Rumble
TRANSCRIPT
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
America’s Department of Defense: “We don’t like diversity of thought, only skin color.” Welcome to Truth Thursday on the Rob Maness Show is live on Patriot.tv and X-Spaces Simulcast.
The SecDef’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, or DACODAI, D-A-C-O-D-A-I, (that’s how even the chairman of their committee he pronounces that), their in-person public meeting was supposed to be today and tomorrow in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of the swamp in DC.
The members of this advisory group, mostly retired senior military officers, all have the same views, which are pro-views about promoting and pushing the Marxist-based diversity, equity, and inclusion DEI agenda in the United States military. Well, at least 18 leaders, including myself (I’m a Board of Advisors member from Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, which you’ll hear me refer to as STARRS) and other organizations we work closely with, made airline and hotel reservations to attend this meeting in person that’s open to the public from all over the country, and even fly in internationally, in one case. Well, these groups represent all those who are concerned about the damaging effects the DEI agenda is having on the military making it weak.
We had early on requested that three STARRS leaders be able to make short oral statements, according to what’s in the Federal Register about the meeting, during the public comments segment of the committee’s meeting. But on the 18th of April, we were informed by the committee that they were not allowing oral statements, and didn’t give a reason why they contradicted what was stated in the Federal Register.
But wait a second, that’s not the only change DACODAI made to the meeting. This past Monday afternoon, they notified us that the meeting would be virtual only, denying us the opportunity to speak and to attend in person as planned. Again, it’s open to the public as required by the law.
After the last DACODAI meeting in December, the chairman, General Lester Lyles, a US Air Force retired four-star general, wanted to have an informal discussion via Zoom with members of his committee and STARRS. Unfortunately, the DACODAI federal officer shut this down.
It appears that diversity of thought, so often touted by DOD, is not in fact valued. In being inclusive to all actually means only to those who believe one side of the issue. The committee itself all has the same one thought bias regarding pushing DEI in the military with no diversity of thought.
The Vice Chairman of STARRS, retired Major General Joe Arbuckle, US Army, and President and CEO, retired Colonel Ron Scott, are my guests today.
Gentlemen, welcome back to the Rob Maness Show.
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
Thanks a lot. Thanks, Rob.
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
Colonel Rob, pleasure to be with you.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
It’s been a busy week, actually a couple of weeks for all of us, about this particular committee meeting. I guess I’ll just start with General, step through the stated purpose of the STARRS organization’s efforts to get to this meeting in person instead of attending virtually or just sending letters in.
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
Well, it relates back to one of our two strategic goals within stars, and that is to cause the removal of all aspects of DEI from the Department of Defense. And this particular organization, this group called DACODAI, that you did a great job there of summarizing as your lead in, is a key organization that feeds information into actually the Secretary of Defense right at the top, through their reports on what’s happening within the Department of Defense regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity. A
We felt like that we could have a stronger presence and make a bigger impression by being there physically to provide our input into this committee’s meeting. As you pointed out, this is a public committee paid for by taxpayers. Of course, that got shut down, as you mentioned. Just a couple of days ago, they finally told us that it’s going to be virtual. Nobody can be there. And on top of that, they didn’t explain why.
Basically, General Lyles and his people put out the word on Monday that “due to unforeseen circumstances”, the meeting would not be held in person, but rather virtual. So basically, the message that they are sending to us in STARRS is that they’re not open to public comment or any diversity of ideas that you’ve been pointing out. That’s our major concern right now because of the influence that this body has on policies regarding DEI within the Department of Defense.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Ron, just so we’re clear, this committee is the direct line to the Secretary of Defense on DEI policy, both recommendations and implementation, isn’t it?
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
Correct. And there’s a history, if I might, Rob.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Yeah, go ahead. I wanted to get your impressions of their actions this week and the history behind this.
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
The Department of Defense was an experimental petri dish, if I can be blunt. In the fall of 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus chartered the Military Leadership Diversity Commission in the fiscal year 2009 National Defense Authorization Act. That’s what got it all started. Less than a month after the new President was inaugurated, the first Department of Defense publication came out with diversity management in the title.
They spent three years determining how they could advance discrimination within the Department of Defense. And they were explicit about it.
I’m going to read something from their final report where they talked about the importance of treating people differently. Here’s a quote from their final report. This is March 15, 2011.
“Diversity management calls for creating a culture of inclusion. Creating this culture will involve changing the way in which people relate to one another within a single unit, within a particular military branch, and throughout the Department of Defense. In particular, although good diversity management rests on a foundation of fair treatment, it is not about treating everyone the same. This can be a difficult concept to grasp, especially for leaders who grew up with the EO-inspired mandate to be both color and gender-blind. Blindness to difference, however, can lead to a culture of assimilation in which differences are suppressed rather than leverage.”
So in this statement, they were justifying how assimilation was not to be pursued. In lieu of that, inclusion is what they would adopt. That was in 2011. Five months later, the President issued an executive order establishing diversity and inclusion personnel programs across the entire federal government.
Now it’s been launched on steroids, not just in the Department of Defense, but the entire federal government. So that gives you a little background. All this happened under the radar. Hardly anybody outside the Department of Defense and who was directly involved in diversity inclusion efforts knew any of this was happening.
Now DACODAI has been created to finish the recommendations that were advanced in that Military Leadership Diversity Commission report.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
So completely under the radar, it seems. And when the Trump administration came into power, General Arbuckle, I know that President Trump eventually signed an executive order to eliminate this DEI training that apparently continued under, in some cases anyway, under different terminology and everything. But I was watching some of the meeting virtually this morning, and I wanted to get your take on this, Gen. Arbuckle. I noticed, at least from my perspective, that this committee makeup is not diverse or inclusive at all. When I look at the individuals that are on this committee, at least the ones that I saw speak, What’s your thoughts on that?
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
I agree with your observation there, 100%, Rob. It’s definitely not diverse. It’s composed mostly of minority group members of various types. And certainly not diverse, as we keep saying, about accepting differences of opinion.
Let me come back real quick, if I may, about your first comment there regarding what President Trump did when he learned about this DEI throughout the federal government. Toward the latter part of his term in office, he did put out an executive order, basically banishing DEI throughout the federal workforce. But of course, he was slow rolled by the bureaucrats within the various agencies to include the Department of Defense, and not much really happened.
So then Biden comes in and steps in office. And one of his initial executive orders was to reverse the Trump executive order, doing away with DEI. In fact, I think he did that as one of the 17 original executive orders he signed on the first day in office. So returning back to your observation, yes.
Another thing that I caught General Lyle’s opening comment this morning, as you probably did, and he emphasized there that they’re all about equal opportunity and they’re all about meritocracy. Well, that’s not what happens in practice, as we know. They’re trying to equate equal opportunity with equity, and they are two very different things.
In fact, DACODAI, in this whole diversity and inclusion industry has moved away from the word equity because they’ve learned that people understand now that what that means is common outcomes. In other words, you lower your standards down to reach whatever level you want to reach within a particular identity group. That’s not acceptable.
So they’re trying to put these two terms together and say they’re saying, well, they’re not the same as we know. So there’s a lot of word games going on as my point, within this organization, and definitely, they’re not representing the majority of people.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Oh, exactly right, sir. And I’m glad you pointed that out. It’s a nice segue because, Ron, I was going to ask you to lay out STARRS’s official positions, according to the perspective of what this board or this committee is doing from a diversity, inclusion, and equity perspective, if you can. But also, just a reminder that the chairman, General Bishop, sent an open letter to General Lyles within the last 24 hours. And one of the parts of that letter points out that critical race theory, the term, got evaporated in use about a year ago. And now the term equity is also evaporating in use. It’s not even part of the committee’s name anymore. General Lyles says he has trouble with that. But he’s also the one that says we have to treat people differently from the first organization he led in their report. And he’s the same man, so he’s not going to change his mind just coming in to head this organization. Is he, Ron?
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
The challenge we’ve had is General Bishop has tried very hard to treat General Lyles with tremendous respect and deference to his rank and his experience in our Department of Defense. But also challenge him in terms of some of the things that we’re seeing that are just inconsistent with what equal opportunity is all about, or merit, or meritocracy.
In fact, one of his recent responses that I had the privilege to read was that he was telling General Bishop that he would be willing to meet with him to discuss this more fully, if he would agree to his understanding of what equity and equal opportunity means. He has a different understanding of what we have.
So basically, he was telling General Bishop, I’ll meet with you and we’ll discuss this if you are co-opted into seeing this the way we see it, which is so contrary to our founding principles of E Pluribus Unum, and assimilation, and concepts like that.
We grew up in a department where, during our experience, and I served 34 years to include four years at the Air Force Academy, I was a social actions officer in my early days, I was teaching the importance of equal opportunity and not considering race or ethnicity or other factors in making decisions regarding promotions, rewards, or any of that sort of thing.
That was back in the 1970s. And so now we see this happening, and we wonder, what’s going on? And this really goes back to something that Christopher Rufo has tried to educate the entire American public about, and that’s the cultural Marxism that has penetrated all of our institutions, universities, corporations, the Department of Defense, media.
He has a tremendous book out called “America’s Cultural Revolution”. It came out about a year ago. It’s not the easiest book to read because it’s heavily cited. Rufo lays out his case with tremendous evidence to support what happened in our country.
If you want to identify one individual that probably had the largest role in where we are today, it was a gentleman named Herbert Marcuse, who was a member of the original Frankfurt School that came to America from Germany when Hitler was rising in power.
They took up residence at Columbia University. It’s no surprise right now that Columbia University is considered the epicenter of the anti-Israel protests that are taking place. It’s very characteristic and consistent with the DEI, Cultural Marxist mentality about oppressors and oppressed.
And so, Christopher Rufo, for your supporters on this program, if they want to learn more about how we got to where we are today, Christopher Rufo’s book, “America’s Cultural Revolution”, is the standard.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
I’ve got a series of these clips from congressman Cory Mills from two years ago, laying out his concerns about unit cohesiveness and what DEI is doing to and what it means to us. Because as you both said, we think we are among the members of the organization that is the most diverse and inclusive in the entire set of institutions in the United States of America. You’ll hear from Mills about that, too.
FOX News Host
. . . Tweet which claims diversity, equity, and inclusion are necessities in the US military. Cory Mills, Army combat veteran and former DOD advisor under President Trump, joins me now. Cory, great to see you as always. First, isn’t the military already pretty darn diverse?
Rep. Cory Mills
Yeah, it’s extremely diverse. Again, this is more of the wokeness setting in with our military in this administration. When we’re starting to focus on inclusion and equity and diversity, diversity over what I used to remember, which is the ability to shoot, move, and communicate, you know that you’re already at a loss.
Again, we have no adversarial nation or anyone who’s been threatening our constitutional liberties and freedoms who are going through these similar trainings.
This is cultural warfare over kinetic warfare. It actually weakens us on the national stage, and it doesn’t make me feel confident that we could have the ability to defeat our enemies and to have the lethality and capability necessary to defend our constitutional liberties and freedoms.
Fox News Host
I have never served in the military. It does appear me that the military has one job: secure the homeland, keep us all safe. How the heck does any of this woke crap improve that?
Rep. Cory Mills
Well, it doesn’t. It actually continues to weaken us more and more. We’re talking about purging in the military because of these unconstitutional mandates. We’re talking about looking at cultural warfare over kinetic warfare.
Again, when I joined the military, I joined because of the lethality and the capability. I wanted to go out there and be able to kill and destroy our enemy who threatens our freedoms and liberties. I wasn’t there look at the diversity and equity and inclusiveness. That’s already there.
I serve with guys from Bushwick, New York. I serve with people from Puerto Rico. I serve with guys who their families were born in Cambodia. We’re already a diverse military. What we need is that cohesiveness that we come together on during our trainings and during those difficult times that allow us to move swift, silent, and deadly.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Welcome back to the Rob Maness Show. It’s Truth Thursday at Patriot.tv. We’re live and we’re live on our X-Spaces simulcast. We’re talking with two of the top three senior leaders of STARRS. You can find them at STARRS.US. It’s an organization I’m on the Board of Advisors for, and the vice chairman, Major General, retired US Army, Joe Arbuckle, and the President and CEO of the organization, Retired Air Force Colonel Ron Scott, are both my guests today.
General Arbuckle, that was Cory Mills there. He’s a soldier. You’re a soldier and a senior leader from the United States Army. And when I hear that we’re sacrificing unit cohesion, potentially, and I believe we are, by implementing these policies and these trainings on our force, and I hear that from a soldier like Cory Mills that has been in combat. It makes me want to ask a senior officer, a general like you, what kind of damage is really being done as we go through these policies? And keep in mind, that clip was from two years ago.
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
Yeah, exactly, Rob. Cory’s right on the money with what he had to say there. And that’s a theme that we’ve been emphasizing within STARRS in a lot of our written documents recently. That is the damage that DEI does to the cohesiveness and the morale of the fighting force.
To understand this, you really got to get back to the basis of Marxism and how that is inside of DEI and then and how that affects our military. As we know, the underlying principle within Marxism is to create groups and pit them against each other, one as the oppressor and the other is the oppressed. Within DEI, that’s largely being done along racial lines, but also any other identity group today, such as based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so forth.
That’s counter to everything that our military has been built upon decades, which is one team, one fight. That means no matter what your skin color is or gender or whatever else, you’re a member of a team, and all those other personal identity factors matter not. So when DEI comes into the picture, which is what Cory was getting at, and it starts emphasizing race, or gender, or ethnicity, sexual orientation, it starts tearing apart that teamwork and cohesion in the cohesiveness we need to be an effective fighting force.
Instead of being a color-blind, as we’ve always been throughout my career and for decades within the military until recently, now even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Brown is saying, “We must be color-conscious.” That means looking at people through a lens of their race or whatever identity factor.
The point is, and I keep reiterating this, that is counter to building team teamwork, and trust, and confidence in each other, which we must have for our very lives within the military.
That ties back to the warrior ethos, which I’ll state very briefly that comes from the army, and that is:
I will always place a mission first. That means the mission may be, in certain circumstances, more important than my life or my buddy’s lives. I will never accept defeat, I will never quit, and I will never leave a fallen comrade.
That’s the warrior ethos. And in order to execute that ethos, and make it lethal on a battlefield, we must have that cohesiveness that goes with it, and DEI is tearing that apart.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
You’re absolutely right, sir. Ron, I’ve talked to Infantry soldiers from World War II up through today. I’m a combat aviator. I have my own combat experience. You’ve been in the military for more than three decades, just like those of us that are on this panel here, too. Trust is the key factor.
They all say that I don’t really think about dying for my country when I’m in combat. I think about dying for the person to my left, right, to my rear, to my front that I trust with my life. I have to have that trust in order to get that mission done in this high stress environment. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re an infantry, aviator, a sailor, Coast Guard, a Space Force person. If you’re in combat, if you don’t trust the person next you or behind you, the mission is going to fail, isn’t it?
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
Absolutely. So let me describe two pieces of evidence that demonstrate why we’re at risk there.
Most recently, the Center for Character and Leadership Development at the Air Force Academy has commissioned a group to monitor transmissions on a social media platform called Jodel. We’re talking surveillance, and they want to surveil cadets to see what they’re saying. To see if it’s contrary to values that are being pushed by Academy leaders. So that’s number one, and that’s most recently.
Number two, in July 2020, we saw a 3-minute video that was put out by the the Air Force Academy football coaches, chanting Black Lives Matter seven times. That got our attention. Up until that time, I was hoping to work on my golf handicap. But when we took a closer look at that video, which obviously came out right after the George Floyd incident. There was some sentiment that was permeating across our nation.
They made accusations about social and racial injustice that were just flat out false. And this coming from members that are of a Service Academy that has as its foundation an honor code. There was something that was extremely dishonorable in the messaging there.
The day after that video came out, the superintendent issued a letter to the academy family, cadets, parents, graduates, indicating his concern about systemic racism in America, and that the Academy was not immune to that phenomenon. So he directed that an assessment be made of the extent of systemic racism at the Air Force Academy, with the report due to him, September 18, 2020.
We filed a FOIA, a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for a copy of that assessment. That was in October of 2020. It took a lawsuit by Judicial Watch on our behalf to get a federal judge to compel academy leadership to produce that report.
When they did, of the 167 pages in that document, 52 entire pages were completely redacted. All pages were marked for official use only, apparently to shield that report from the public. So we looked at the remaining unredacted pages. There was absolutely no evidence of racism, let alone systemic racism.
But what did they accomplish during the 2-3 years that that report was shielded from the public?
They trained 90 cadets to be diversity and inclusion officers and NCOs throughout the entire cadet wing, two each per squadron, per group, per wing, with a separate and parallel reporting chain to the Chief Diversity Officer. These cadets roam their units with a purple arm rope around their left shoulder. We’ve been told that some of these cadets relish the authority that they have to report cadets that are not in compliance with diversity inclusion values.
That’s something that’s happened at the Air Force Academy. We see it more broadly throughout the Department of Defense. And so, Rob, your question about what are we doing to promote trust? Well, we’re going to great lengths to destroy it. And I just gave you two examples.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Well, yeah, exactly right. We’ll hear from Mills again about what colors do soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Space Force, I’m not sure what the Space Force is called, and Coast Guardsmen see, and have always seen, and will continue to see, but we’ll have to get rid of this type of training. And so that we are back to that. I’m Rob Maness on Truth Thursday. We’re talking with STARRS Leadership. You can find them at STARRS.US or @starsmission.
Fox News Host
Something that you just mentioned, when you’re in a foxhole, when you’re in battle, do you care about whether the guy to the right or the left of you is black, white, or other?
Rep. Cory Mills
No, because we’re all green. We’re all fighting for the red, white, and blue. Those are the colors that matter. And those are the only thing that we were looking at.
Again, when you’re sitting here in any Joint Special Operations Command, or in the 82nd Airborne Division, or 101st, or anywhere around there, your brothers who are to the left or right of your shoulder is all that matters. You don’t care about where they’re from. You don’t care about their religious belief. You don’t care about what color they are. When we go out there, and let me just make this point really quickly, Todd.
Have anyone who’s worried about this diversity, inclusion, and equity go out to Arlington Cemetery. Tell me what color those headstones are because they’re not dressed in what color you are or what gender you’re identified by. They’re actually sitting there all in the same way, side by side, because that’s what it takes in order for us to maintain these freedoms.
Look, freedom is not free, and we have to get back to what the military is about, which is increased lethality.
Fox News Host
That is an amazing point. You are a DOD advisor. Why is this happening?
Rep. Cory Mills
Who is pushing Well, again, this is the Democrats pushing for identity politics. This is the Democrats who are trying to think that having this wokeness entering into our military will somehow enable themselves to be able to get more votes. This is appeasement to the radical left.
This is not about America’s safety and security. This is not about increased lethality capability for protection of our national security. This is certainly not about strengthening America on the world stage to ensure that we can answer the call if anyone threatens us at any time.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Welcome back to the Rob Maness Show. It’s Truth Thursday, and we’re talking with two of the three most senior leaders of STARRS.US, an organization that I’m proud to work with and be part of in a small way that’s fighting against this Marxist ideology that’s being pushed into the Department of Defense.
As Cory Mills, a congressman today, described two years ago. That’s two years ago. All these clips are from two years ago from Congressman Mills. The colors that matter are the red, white, and blue. He mentioned Arlington Cemetery, and those headstones are white. They’re all marked the same way. We don’t even distinguish visually by rank. That’s how diverse and inclusive the United States Armed Forces has historically been and should remain so today and why we have to fight against this.
General Arbuckle is the vice chairman of the board for STARRS. Sir. I’m I want to quote Barry Weiss. General Bishop put it in his letter to General Lester Lyles yesterday. She’s a former New York Times editor that had to leave the New York Times, and she’s a progressive liberal. She says, “In theory, these three words represent a noble cause. But in actuality, DEI is not about any of these words. Rather, it uses those words as camouflage.”
That’s what Marxists and communists do, is they change the words, right, sir? And it’s causing grave damage to the United States armed forces. I mean, the evidence that it’s changing things is we saw at West Point admissions, right? Don’t we have data that proves that better qualified white male applicants are being denied, while lesser qualified applicants, such as black Americans, are being accepted into West Point, which generates the next generation of combat leaders for the United States Army in America.
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
Absolutely true, Rob. In fact, Scott McQuarrie, one of our great lawyers on the STARRS team, has that data you just referenced, particularly for West Point. But it’s also true at all the service academies. There are special privileges given for minorities to be admitted to the academies, and that’s basically in the form of lower standards on total scores.
That’s ironic because at the same time, we hear the DACODAI Committee saying, as we talked about earlier, that they’re all about equal opportunity and merit. Well, if that’s true, then why do we have a set of standards for the majority that apply to these academies and a different, lower set of standards for minority group members, in particular blacks? That’s not equal opportunity, and that’s certainly not admissions based upon merit.
That’s an example of how they use the language disingenuously. I want to come back to a point here. What is the impact of DEI on the military besides the erosion of trust and confidence in each other, which is so critical?
By the way, I was an infantry Lieutenant in Vietnam, so I understand the importance of that in a foxhole. You guys that fly understand the importance of that with a pilot that’s on your wings. The sailors understand the importance of that with their shipmates. Total trust and confidence each other for their very lives is crucial.
One of the points of evidence that this is hurting is in recruitment. We know today that our military is in a recruitment crisis, the worst since the volunteer military was formed in 1973. We also know that we have the smallest army since pre-World War II because of that.
So when the senior leaders in Defense Department are asked, is DEI having some kind of negative effect on recruitment? Their response is, there’s no evidence of that.
Well, We know better. All you have to do is talk to parents of people that are in the military, talk to military members themselves, and ask them, is this DEI, Woke Agenda, within our military, having any effect on you recommending your friends and family coming into the military? Polls done by different major agencies in the United States indicate that that’s absolutely true. The evidence is there.
I’ll tell you something else about the effect of this. When General Austin was going before the Senate Armed Service Committee for his hearings to be selected and approved to be Secretary of Defense, he made the statement to the Senate that two of his objectives were to rid the Department of Defense of racism and extremism.
Of course, after that, we had that major DOD stand down looking for extremists in the military. Turns out, finally, after a couple of years, DOD finally admitted, well, there was less than 100 found.
I want to tie that to what the President said recently, I think it was at Howard University, he was making a speech. He said, the greatest domestic threat in the United States is white supremacists. This gets back to the Marxist approach of putting in people into different groups. The Whites into one group, perhaps labeled them as being supremacist, and minorities in another group, the oppressors versus the oppressed mentality.
That’s a major part behind this DEI strategy, which we keep coming back to, is based on Marxism. You start putting some of these threads together, and it becomes obvious what’s going on in terms of the damage that DEI is doing to our military.
It’s been inculcated over the last several years so that it’s not just at the top. It has seeped down into the lower ranks in terms of leadership right now.
Here’s a key point. Even if a switch were turned tomorrow and all this DEI was removed in terms of organization, people, money, and so forth out of the Department of Defense, you still have that ideology within the minds of people who have adopted it. It will take a generation or so to get rid of that if we could flip that switch.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
It’s so concerning that we’re way beyond that. You and I, Ron, will be gone before this is ever out of our armed forces. That doesn’t bode well for the of the entire United States of America as our Democratic Republic, as a guarantee, basically, of individual freedom and liberty, at least in some way, as even an example, it doesn’t bode well for our standing in the world and our credibility to try to maintain the peace. I think we’re seeing some evidence of that, quite frankly, Ron, around the world today with all of the hotspots that are firing off.
There’s a lot of other things associated with it, but our perceived weakness militarily has to be in part of that calculus of these folks that are choosing to go into warfare all-out warfare instead of trying to maintain the peace and work out their differences in a peaceful way.
Let me quote General Lyles from General Bishop’s letter, Ron, before I come back to you. It says, “With no degradation of the importance of merit/meritocracy, others think we are deemphasizing merit. That is absolutely not the case!” How can he say that, Ron? We’ll come back to you, let you address this.
How can he say that when we have the direct evidence, and you’re closer to the Air Force Academy problem, probably than anybody and know the data very well, that the leaders we are creating in our service academies, which are our top leaders on active duty in our military forces across the board for the future of this country, when it’s just not true. I’m shocked that our colleagues on this committee say things like this when they know they’re not true.
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
It’s called rationalization. It’s so easy to say what you want to believe, even though you may not have evidence to really support or back up what you’re saying. He repeated that this morning in his opening remarks on the DACODAI session.
But Rob, a lot of this goes back to Marxist tactics in the way they are able to persuade not only their followers, but the general public. One concept is called Aesopian language, like Aesop’s fables. So they invent words that mean one thing on the surface, but they have a completely different meaning among the folks that are a part of their tribe, a part of their group. So it’s called Aesopian language.
A former American Communist, by the name of Louis Budenz, who testified before Congress, has written several books about his experience in being duped, seduced into the Communist movement in America. He talked about how they used Aesopian language in a Weekly Worker, the newspaper that went out weekly, and he was an editor of it.
It was individuals like Douglas Hyde, who was a Communist in Great Britain following the first World War, when there was a lot of poverty taking place, and people were saying, we’re organized to take care of the oppressed. He became a member of the Communist Party, and a very prominent member of the British Communist Party, until he realized that a lot of what they were pushing were lies.
For instance, when they talk about peace, all we want is peace. Well, no, they don’t want peace. They want to divide people and to make them so demoralized and destabilized that it promotes the conditions for a revolution. That’s the ultimate goal of these folks, a revolution. They adapt to the conditions, and and they make adjustments as needed to push for this revolution.
Look at what’s playing out in America right now with all these anti-Israel protests and whatever. These are students that have been indoctrinated.
One of the leading writers here that’s talked about what’s happening at the university is a former military intelligence officer, Stanley Ridgley, who’s at Drexel University. He’s a professor. He just came out recently with a book, “Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities”. (I’m sure he appreciates me marketing his book for him!)
He lays out an excruciating detail of how this is happening at the universities, mostly with the student affairs programs, not the faculty members, per se, although we do have those faculty members with the ethnic studies and gender studies type programs, it’s cultural Marxism on steroids.
But most of the student affairs groups that are pushing this with dormitory programs and whatever. And it’s Mao. It’s Mao’s tactics that they’re employing in terms of demoralizing individuals and telling them that you can be part of the group, but you have to buy into our concepts, our principles. And so this has been taking place at our university since the 1960s.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Yeah, it sure has. And a case study, if you look at the videos from the universities, starting with Columbia University, where the Frankfurt School critical theories are emanating from and have been since the 1960s, you can see the critical theories all laid out. Critical race theory, critical gender theory, critical LGBTQ theory, critical trans theory. They’re all based on the same Marxist theory.
We got to take our last break. When we come back, Congressman Mills has got a proposal on how somehow to address this and get these general officers attention, but it’s an interesting idea. But I want to get General Arbuckle and Colonel Scott’s thoughts on the way ahead and how we can address this issue to resolve it instead of continuing to let it fester like it is. I’m Rob Maness on Truth Thursday at Patriot.tv. We’ll be right back.
Fox News Host
….The highest levels of the military, and you have a lot of stars on your coat. You got into this not to be a bureaucrat at the end of your career. You got into it because you wanted to defend your country and you wanted to fight, quite frankly. How did these individuals that are pushing this get so political in the first place?
Rep. Cory Mills
Well, I’ll tell you right now, this has been going on for a while. The difference is that where other big-time generals that are secretaries of Defense or they are in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we’re looking at their million-dollar boards later on, which is why they were advocating for these endless wars that we you can get out of. Now you’re looking at woke corporations. So now all these people are starting to think to themselves, Well, if I want a job after I leave the military, I need to be able to push this woke agenda with all these corporations have adopted.
This is now why I looked at the ideas of having a military, a moratorium, if you will, where generals, once you take that one star, you have to sign something that says that I will not go on to these million and $2 million boards where you have a deemed conflict of interest. It’s about service, and that’s what it has to be about now. It has to be about public service. But again, all of these big generals who are one and two and three and four stars, they are already in politics. Now they’re looking at the woke corporations and what’s next for them.
Fox News Host
FOX Cory Mills, amazing insight on a problem that should frighten not just everybody in the military, but every American, because it’s not good. Cory Mills. Appreciate your time this morning. Enjoy.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Welcome back to the Rob Maness Show, live at Patriot.tv in our X-Spaces simulcast. We’re talking with the Vice Chairman of the board and the President and CEO of STARRS.US, Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS) that has been fighting this woke agenda and the DEI trainings that’s being foisted on not just the uniform person personnel, but the civilian personnel in the United States Armed Forces.
It has hurt our recruiting. It’s hurting our retention. And quite frankly, it’s weakened our ability to win our nation’s wars, and even more importantly, to deter our adversaries from taking combat action in order to achieve their goals. That puts the world and the United States of America in a really bad place.
General Arbuckle is the vice chairman of the board for STARRS. And sir, General Bishop says, “America’s moms and dads trust the Department of Defense to provide their sons and daughters with the best qualified leaders available. But it doesn’t sound like we’re doing that.”
I think that’s the bottom line here on what Mills has been talking about, what your organization is doing, what all of us that are part of this organization and this new coalition that I’ll let Ron talk to here in a second, want achieve, which is keep our promise to the moms and dads of America that when their children are under our command, they have the best commanders that are focused on accomplishing the mission and taking care of their people.
Maj Gen Joe Arbuckle, USA ret
Absolutely right. And that relates back to these identity preferences that are in the military, not only for selections into the academies, which have a lower standard, which I’ve already talked about before for certain minority groups, but also within the services for the officer corps and the senior NCO corps, when it comes to selections for promotions at the senior ranks, there are goals offered for certain minority groups, also for selection for key assignments like battalion command selection boards or brigade or even general officer selections.
So it permeates basically the personnel system throughout the military in terms of applying these DEI goals. The end result is we do not always get the best qualified leaders to go into those positions you mentioned earlier.
Cory is absolutely right about that. His idea was a good one. If it’s applied to the military about not being able to go in and work in the defense industry after retiring, it also needs to be applied to the senior civilian ranks who do exactly the same thing on a rotating basis. It’s a rotating door in and out of the Department of Defense, into different defense contractors and so forth.
That should be broken up. When you get into the problem here, if you really want to solve what’s going on with this DEI, we have to recognize that the problem source is political, and therefore, the only solution is political, and that’s with a major change of political leadership. And unless we get that, we’re not going to see DEI, I don’t think, eliminated at all.
I want to make a quick comment, too, about what’s wrong with the General Officer Corps. It goes back even to the Clinton administration in the ’90s, when we first saw political correctness being infused and pushed into our military. That’s one of the reasons I retired after my two-star command. I saw it then and I didn’t accept it. Well, it’s only gotten worse under Obama in the 2008, and thereafter during his administration.
Of course, this political correctness, as evidence with DEI, is on steroids under the Biden administration. My point is, this goes back a long way. This has been happening throughout our General Officer Corps for decades. The generals we have today have grown up with this political correct mindset, and they understand promotions are based upon that, advancements are based on that, assignments are based upon it. That’s all they know. And so if you ask a question, why are they the way they are? It’s because they grew up that way.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
Yeah, you’re exactly right. I was asked the question before I came on the show, Ron, why are they going along with this? And General Arbuckle just pointed it out.
During all this craziness with this particular meeting, Ron, you guys have come up with a new idea about a new coalition, the Military Readiness and Merit Coalition, to pull our groups together to create an economy of force, I think, and increase our ability to have influence over this process and influence over the ability to eliminate it, at least eliminate it now, and then have the opportunity to deal with all these soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guardsmen, and Space Force folks that will grow up as careerists in the armed forces to get them to where they understand what we understand and understood all of our services is that this is about trust, it’s about leadership, it’s about the red, white, and blue, and it’s about doing the right thing by your troops when you’re a commander or even an informal leader in a military unit, so that they’re alive to get the mission completed and defeat America’s adversaries when called upon.
So what’s that coalition going to do and where are we going with it, Ron?
Col Ron Scott, USAF ret
Well, the coalition formed in less than a week. We have 19 groups right now that are part of it. We’re going to just magnify our voice. We all believe in the same thing, the importance of merit and how DEI is so contrary to that. It’s making us weak and extremely vulnerable.
So the coalition, and we anticipate that it’s going to continue to grow, is just like-minded groups that are willing to work their networks and to continue to educate the American people on the issue that we’re dealing with and why it’s so dangerous, and that there’s a lot we can do to stem it and to defeat it.
I’d like to point out, Rob, that General Arbuckle mentioned politics. STARRS has been accused of being politically political. And whenever I hear that, I tell them, absolutely right–we are political. But we’re political in the sense that Aristotle advanced, back when he was writing, he first wrote Nicamachean Ethics, and he laid out a system of virtuous behavior. That preceded his book on politics, and the thesis in that book on politics is that the ultimate duty of an educated, virtuous citizen is politics: advancing the values and ideas that allow a society to continue to transcend beyond its current conditions. That’s politics, and that’s what STARRS represents.
I’ve actually been disowned by several of my peers when I reached out to them and said, you know, you’ve achieved a tremendous rank in our armed forces, and you have a great voice stemming from that rank, and we could use it in our fight. I’ve actually been disowned because I’m too political.
I remind them every time they try to disown me, that when you raise your right-hand swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, you were swearing to support a political document. The Constitution is based on a political philosophy known as classical liberalism. It’s very clear and it’s very powerful. It allowed the United States to become the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of humankind.
Now we have political forces at play to undermine that. So we got a lot of work ahead of us, Rob, and we certainly appreciate your support in that effort.
Col Rob Maness, USAF ret
We do have a lot of work ahead of us, and you’re exactly right, gentlemen. It is political because the Constitution is the legal document that embodies the political values of the creation of the United States of America that is underpinned by the Declaration of Independence. And every one of us needs to remember that.
I’m proud to serve in this political effort to turn the ship back around, to reembrace those values, and most importantly, so our young men and women that are wearing the uniform in the United States lives aren’t wasted in unnecessary wars, and that they can grow up to trust each other so their lives aren’t wasted in losing in combat because they don’t trust each other. That’s what I think this is all about.
Well, thank you both for joining me today. We really appreciate it. I’ve been pushing STARRS.US, the website, and @starsmission, the X account, all during the show. And we will have you on again. And I’m proud that GatorPAC Veterans Leadership Fund has joined that coalition of military readiness and merit, because that’s what’s important for our young people in the United States of America. I’m Rob Maness.
Leave a Comment