By Kevin Roberts
President, Heritage Foundation
As Biden officials pay tribute to the pride flag this month, they might as well be waving a white flag to our enemies.
At the very least, they are disregarding the faith and values of the everyday people who have formed the backbone of our military for the past 2 1/2 centuries.
The public and the men and women who dedicate their lives to the service of this nation deserve better leadership.
Our increasingly dangerous world demands as much. With the Chinese Communist Party waging a new cold war on U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific and supplanting American leadership on the international stage, the White House and Pentagon should be laser-focused on military readiness.
Instead, officials prioritize their left-wing social agenda over warfighting at every turn.
In 2020, Task Force One Navy spent nearly half a million dollars to analyze “issues related to racism, sexism, ableism and other structural and interpersonal biases” and to “advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy.”
That same year, China’s navy surpassed our own in terms of fleet size.
In 2021, the Air Force announced a deliberate plan to reduce the percentage of white male pilots by dropping prior flight training as a “plus” factor for selection. This, even though completion of flight training is highly correlated to success in Air Force flight school, not to mention defeating our enemies in battle!
Meanwhile, China leveraged technology stolen from the U.S. through industrial espionage to upgrade its J-20 “Mighty Dragon” stealth jets.
In 2022, following the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that the Department of Defense would pay for service members and their families to travel to different states to abort their unborn children.
Meanwhile, China surpassed 400 nuclear warheads, continuing its quest to rival the United States in nuclear capacity.
In 2023, the Navy tapped an active-duty drag queen to be the branch’s new digital ambassador.
China resolved to “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics” in all of its digital broadcasting nearly two years ago.
In short, “wokeism” in the military and defeat for the U.S. go hand in hand.
Every minute and dollar wasted on the Left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda and related compliance is time and money not spent on preparing our troops to fight, win, and come home safe.
Considering the Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength already rates the military’s preparedness to protect the nation’s vital interests as “weak,” we simply can’t afford to divert any resources away from readiness right now.
But more than distracting the military from its primary mission, the Biden administration’s policies are eroding the warrior ethos that has animated America’s armed forces since the siege of Boston on July 4, 1775, when George Washington ordered his troops to set aside
“all Distinctions of Colonies … so that one and the same Spirit may animate the whole, and the only Contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the Great and common cause in which we are all engaged.”
In its place, the Biden administration now champions an individual expressionism that teaches young people to take pride in their most degenerate desires and is antithetical to the idea of serving any sort of higher purpose, least of all the nation.
America’s service members are taking note.
According to a recent poll commissioned by the Heritage Foundation, roughly two-thirds of active-duty personnel said they have witnessed politicization in the military.
That same number said such politicization would affect their decision to encourage their children to join the military.
Is it any surprise, then, that in 2022, the Army fell 15,000 soldiers short of its recruitment goal , its worst year for recruiting since the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973, or that the Navy recently stopped issuing early discharges because it is having so much trouble retaining the midshipmen in its ranks?
Recovering the sense of honor, courage, and selflessness that defines the warrior ethos and forms the basis of unity in the military will require us to overcome more than the specter of “wokeness,” which is relatively new and difficult to define.
Indeed, conservatives should be encouraged by, but far from satisfied with, recent moves from the Pentagon, such as the decision to cancel drag shows at U.S. military facilities that was announced earlier this month.
That’s because being non-“woke” is not good enough. To win, we must go on offense.
That means
- destroying the DEI bureaucracy, root and branch,
- mandating that our service academies stop hiring corrupt civilian professors from academia when loyal service members are available to do the job, and
- requiring all military services to establish physical fitness tests that don’t yield to the demands of equity,
as our new Report of the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness lays out.
But, in a deeper sense, our mission won’t be complete until we have fully restored the military’s confidence in itself as a formative institution capable of cultivating a warrior ethos in America’s young men.
To do so, we must remind our top brass not only what the military exists to do — fight and win — but also who it exists to serve: the people.
Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Leave a Comment