Former Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller (former Special Forces commander and Green Beret) said China “must be laughing hysterically” at the United States as senior Pentagon leaders get caught up in culture wars and warned that focus is hurting U.S. combat readiness.
Miller, who served as acting defense secretary at the end of the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview he is worried about the level of focus on social issues at the Pentagon.
“Hardly anybody joins the military to be part of the culture wars,” he said. “They join the military because they want to serve their country and, if necessary, defend our country in real war — not culture war.”
“The Chinese must be laughing hysterically as our political system and as our senior officials and senior leaders in the Pentagon get caught up in it,” Miller said. “We’re just hurting ourselves.”
Miller told Fox News Digital the focus on issues like diversity, equity and inclusion in the U.S. military “just takes away from combat readiness and focusing on the future.”
“I just have to think the Chinese are laughing as we basically consume ourselves in these silly political fights within our military,” Miller said, explaining that the military is “the neatest meritocracy in the world.”
“It is probably one of the few places in America where if you work hard and you do your job, you will be rewarded, you will receive benefits, you will get promoted if that’s what you want,” Miller added. “And, you know, it has absolutely nothing to do with race, creed, color, sexual orientation — any of that. It all comes down to combat effectiveness. And that’s what people in the field really, really care about.
“I know they get frustrated having their leaders drag them into these woke issues,” Miller added. “And I think most of them don’t even know what that means. They just want to do their jobs.”
Miller details how “wokeness” has infected the Pentagon in his new book, “Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies,” which is set to hit stores Feb. 7. . . . (read more on Fox News)
Trump’s last Defense secretary takes on the ‘American war machine’ (The Hill, 9 FEB 23)
Two decades before Chris Miller became then-President Trump’s acting Defense secretary, overseeing the Pentagon as an insurrection played out in Washington, D.C., he was on a C-17 airplane headed out of Iraq, shortly after U.S. forces had captured Baghdad.
By June 2003, Miller had worked 657 days straight as a group operations commander of a special forces battalion, and as the battle grew more distant on his way to a German base, his thoughts turned dark.
He had long hoped to fight for his country. But not like this.
“The more I thought, the more I was horrified,” Miller writes in “Soldier Secretary,” a memoir released this week. “We invaded a sovereign nation, killed and maimed a lot of Iraqis, and lost some of the greatest American patriots to ever live — all for a goddamned lie.”
“Soldier Secretary” offers an insight into the life of an American soldier who rose — briefly — to the top of the Pentagon as he grew increasingly resentful of the U.S. military-industrial complex, which he writes has now become a “hydra-headed monster” with “virtually no brakes on the American war machine.”
Still, Miller is hopeful that the next generation of Americans can shake the U.S. out of foreign entanglements and the idea of policing the rest of the world.
In an interview with The Hill, Miller said there is a pressing need for accountability in the upper ranks of the Pentagon and with military leadership for the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . . (read more)
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