By retired Army Colonel “Cynical Publius”
on X @CynicalPublius
As many of my followers know, I talk a lot about the decline in our nation’s military that Trump and Hegseth and the Service secretaries have been chartered to fix.
Lately I have also been active in Infantrydort’s threads on the philosophical problems in today’s military.
Basically, I have been giving these issues a lot of thought, and I have recently decided that most of our problems stem from our own good intentions.
Specifically:
1. Our well-intended commitment to racial equality in the military has resulted in DEI as a core military ethos, where “diversity” trumps competence and senior leaders will defy a President over DEI policies.
2. Our well-intended commitment to provide women better military opportunities has resulted in the mommyfication of senior military leaders, where the feminine tendency to favor emotion over logic and the desire to have collaborative solutions for all problems has stifled the masculine, aggressive decision-making process that has been the hallmark of successful, lethal militaries since before Alexander the Great.
3. Our well-intended desire to fix the cross-department intelligence failures of 9/11 has resulted in the deification of the “interagency” process, making military leaders think they are in the State Department and greatly reducing lethality and effective warfighting as a result. We have thus created an army of Alexander “Chow Thief” Vindmans.
4. Our well-intended goal to have mid-level officers think more strategically via professional military education has turned too many officers into wannabe Ivy League “strategists” who value process over results, seek the perfect solution instead of the good enough solution and who end up trying to fight a national-level campaign at the battalion level. Reduced lethality is the result.
5. Our well-intended goal to have our troops treated with respect has resulted in the military services interpreting decisive, effective leadership as being “toxic leadership.” In today’s military, Patton, Halsey, LeMay, Hackworth, Puller and a host of other immortal American warriors would have never made it past O-4, and instead we now have legions of commanders selected by psychiatrists for their mommy energy. Reduced combat effectiveness is the result.
6. Our well-intentioned desire to maintain continuity of operations at the senior level has resulted in key strategic decisions being made by unfireable civilian members of the “Senior Executive Service,” all of whom place their own position in the hierarchy as being more important than national defense. The result is fiscal waste, endlessly delayed weapons systems and a moribund national level decision making process that is usually vastly more reactive than proactive.
There are likely more such examples of good intentions backfiring.
But the end result is we now lose wars instead of winning them, all while patting ourselves on our backs and thanking ourselves for our service.
All of this needs to be reversed. The US military’s job is to slaughter our nation’s military foes in as lethal and expeditious a manner as possible. There is no other purpose.
First published on @CynicalPublius X feed
RE: The American Military
As many of my followers know, I talk a lot about the decline in our nation’s military that Trump and Hegseth and the Service secretaries have been chartered to fix.
Lately I have also been active in Infantrydort’s threads on the philosophical problems…
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) July 31, 2025
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