Statement to DACODAI – Scott McQuarrie

Statement to DACODAI by Scott McQuarrie, USMA ’72, President of Veterans for Fairness & Merit

---

A RECOMMENDATION FOR DACODAI                

April 21, 2024

Presenter:  Claude M. McQuarrie is a 1972 USMA graduate and former Army Infantry/JAGC officer.  He is founder and president of Veterans for Fairness and Merit, whose 627 members of all ranks include 21 Medal of Honor recipients, 45 former POWS, and 119 Flag Officers (12 4-stars).  They served 934 combat tours and held 476 combat leader positions, many at the platoon, company and battalion levels.  They received over 900 combat valor decorations and 215 Purple Hearts.  They seek a return to equal opportunity, race neutral and exclusively merit-based military accessions, assignment, command selection and promotion policies.

Presentation:  Members of the Commission, thank you for this opportunity to communicate with you.

I begin with a recommendation.

Recommendation: DoD should discontinue using identity preferences in service academy admissions, other officer accession programs, service school and civil schooling selections, command and other assignment selections, and promotions.  All such personnel actions should be equal opportunity, race neutral, and based solely on individual merit, fitness, capability and performance, undiluted by identity preferences.  That is, in fact, what is required by DODI 1350.02, paras 2.8 (a)(3) and (c) and mandated equal protection under the Due Process Clause of the U. S. Constitution’s 5^th Amendment.

I urge you to include that recommendation in your report to the Secretary of Defense.

Discussion:

1. Ladies and gentlemen, identity preferences in military personnel actions, based on race and gender, are happening. They violate our Constitution, our duty to warfighters, and our duty to maintain the trust and confidence of the American people. They also ignore a published, current DoD policy directive, DODI 1350.02, paras 2.8 (a)(3) and (c).

 

2. Many retired general officers through the 4-star level have confided their experiences with pressure to “select more diversity” candidates in promotion boards. Two independent and very reliable witnesses have privately confirmed that racial preferences have been used at the Army’s Battalion Command Assessment Program, whereby lower scoring minorities, because of their race, have displaced higher scoring non-minorities in selection.  Similar practices are occurring in DoD school selection.  And finally, after decades of concealment, race-based, service academy admissions practices are starting to be exposed.

 

3. These practices have become commonplace in our military because leaders at many levels lack the moral courage to say “No” when they are pressured, in the name of Inclusion, to use racial preferences. Concerned for their careers, they violate their oath to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, failing to “choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.”

 

4. Active and retired military leaders who deny that these practices occur, or, worse, who conceal them, have lost the trust of the rank and file. They are deluding themselves when they think their ends justify their unlawful means and that their actions are helping our military.  Why would anyone who takes seriously the oath to “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution” want to serve in an organization that expects ignorance, and worse, violation, of that oath?

 

5. The best of the best often leave in disgust. Why are service academy graduates’ retention rates no longer published?  Many of our best and brightest officers optimistically entered the academies, anxious but savoring the challenge, full of hope, yearning to selflessly become part of something greater than themselves, and feeling pride when first, together with their classmates, swearing their allegiance to our Constitution.  What does DoD want to avoid having to explain to Congress and to the American people regarding why so many of those young officers (many of our best and brightest) are so disillusioned that they leave as soon as they can?

 

6. DoD is defending its practices in court with the legally contrived claims that they are needed to achieve some level of officer-enlisted racial demographic parity and that such parity is “critical to combat effectiveness and unit cohesion.” Those claims are demeaning and offensive on multiple levels.  They are also not credible.  They are, in fact, the opposite of the truth.  And the Supreme Court rejected those contrived arguments made in a nearly identical context when DoD argued that universities with ROTC programs should be allowed to consider race in admissions for all the same reasons.

 

7. The truth is that over the last 40 years, our military has, while requiring dignity and respect by and for all, fielded a combat effective force without having officer-enlisted racial demographic parity.

 

8. Warfighters need and deserve only the best-qualified leaders, 100% of the time.  Combat leadership is the most difficult leadership there is.  It is also the most consequential. In combat, incremental differences in leader quality often make the difference between mission success or failure and a warfighter’s life or death.  No amount of compromise in leader quality is acceptable.

 

9. Warfighters care about their leaders’ competency, moral courage, and character, not race or ethnicity.

 

10. When identity preferences dilute merit, we undeniably lower quality and fail in our moral and professional duty to provide warfighters the best-qualified leaders. That is now happening with a significant percentage of appointments at our service academies, where racial preferences are used. It is an intolerable moral and professional failure.

 

11. Before you endorse continuation of such practices, please do whatever is necessary to learn the “facts on the ground.” You would discover that at West Point, for example,

• • substantial numbers of significantly better qualified candidates (as determined by West Point’s application scoring systems) have been rejected to make room for lower scoring diversity candidates;
  • that many of those preferenced candidates who are admitted can be described as “qualified” only because the “qualified” bar has been deliberately, and unnecessarily, set so low;
  • that preferenced, marginally qualified cadets consistently perform at a significantly lower level academically, militarily, and in character development metrics, and further that they have significantly higher attrition and significantly lower academic and military GPA and graduation rates.

All of the above (and more) are well-documented.  The primary effects include lost slots (forever), lower quality leaders, and higher cost.  Secondary effects include loss of trust in the chain of command (resulting from denial/obfuscation of such practices, obvious infidelity to the Constitution, and the disingenuous, legally contrived claim that such practices are a national security imperative), erosion of morale and retention shortfalls.

12. DoD’s obviously far-fetched, legally contrived “critical to combat effectiveness and unit cohesion” claim not only erodes trust in the chain of command (and consequently morale), it contributes to erosion of already reduced public trust and confidence in our military’s leadership. Multiple polls show that the public’s trust and confidence in the military has declined considerably.  The consequences are in plain view.  Why are Army enlistment percentages of whites declining disproportionately compared to enlistments of other demographics?  Why has the Army had to reduce its end strength?  Why are our active-duty numbers now at 1940-ish levels despite heightened geopolitical threats amid ongoing conflicts and nuclear-armed, global (and other) powers in multi-dimensional conflict?  Why is the Navy now projecting a recruiting shortfall?  Yes, there are many factors contributing to these circumstances, but central among them is loss of trust and confidence of the American people.

 

13. DoD’s attempt to gain judicial exemption from constitutional compliance to facilitate its continued use of race-based preferences under the guise of “Inclusion” will fail a second time. Those who advocate for use of racial preferences (and who tolerate its dilution of merit) are ignoring history and our Constitution.  Equally important, they are failing our warfighters, whose leaders’ quality is unarguably less than what it could be!

 

14. Nothing justifies DoD’s ignoring its own Equal Opportunity policy directive, further sacrificing any trust it might expect to have with warfighters and the American people.

 

15. Neither the Constitution nor DODI 1350.02 contains exceptions for personnel actions that will “make military leaders look more like those whom they lead” (current Pentagon mantra), a not-so-thinly veiled reference to using identity preferences in officer personnel actions.

 

16. I respectfully urge you to act with moral courage, to learn the facts on the ground, to remain faithful to your oaths, to strongly and unequivocally recommend to DoD that it follow DODI 1350.02 to the letter and follow the Constitution by discontinuing its consideration of race/ethnicity in all personnel actions.

Thank you.

Attachment:

20220509154943084_Amicus Brief of Veterans for Fairness and Merit Supp Petitioner (pdf)