Talking About DEI in the Military

This was an Opinion Letter in the Iowa newspaper, Keokuk Daily Gate City. Write articles to your local newspapers and help educate people!

By Lt. Col (Ret.) Helmut Haas

It wasn’t too many years ago that our citizens held a very high regard and confidence in our military. Clinton, Obama and Biden have diminished that reputation.

It started with Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which stopped bias against undisclosed homosexual service members, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service.

Obama ended the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve. Biden expanded this policy by allowing transgenders to serve openly.

But Biden also attacked the existing military structure with DEI programs such as CRT training. We can see the combined results of these efforts in the military recruitment shortages and operational failures such as the Afghanistan evacuation.

Recently the Supreme Court ended Affirmative Action in higher education because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

While I agree with most of their ruling, the Supreme Court excluded our military academies from this decision.

The majority of our military officers (59%) come from universities which now cannot use Affirmative Action to recruit students, 16% are direct appointments (physicians, dentists and lawyers), 16% from military academies and 8% are from Officer Candidate School (OCS).

In the military, personnel are transformed from their carefree civilian life to professional military soldiers.

This is accomplished by breaking down the individual and focusing on the unit or team.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (five star general and recipient of the Medal of Honor) eloquently stated in his last address to Congress

“But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. WAR’S VERY OBJECT IS VICTORY, NOT PROLONGED INDECISION. IN WAR, THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR VICTORY.”

Many of our political leaders don’t understand this concept. Should our military lose a war, our way of life and our country would be totally destroyed — not the fundamental change to the USA that Obama and Biden seem to advocate.

Our soldiers and military officers should be the best qualified to fight our conflicts.

No one argues that the objective of competitive sports is to win — defeat your opponent.

Schools and coaches try to find the best athletes for their particular sport without regard of race.

This results in the best football/basketball teams having more black players while the best hockey/swimming teams tend to have more white players. Of course, there are exceptions to this generalization.

But for the sake of DEI, should sport teams be required to adhere to race quotas?

A maximum of 12% of football/basketball teams must be black and no more than 60% of hockey/swimming teams can be white.

Of course, that’s ridiculous and it would have a huge negative impact on the players and sports.

Win or lose, normally there are more contests where both coaches and players try to correct their mistakes and improve their performance. The same cannot be stated for our military.

When faced with a life threatening situation (surgery, airplane pilot, paramedic, etc.) do you want someone who achieved their profession due to some DEI program or the best available professional?

I’m not saying that minorities can’t be the best available professionals. I’m saying that the DEI programs distract from finding the best qualified individuals.

I don’t adhere to a philosophy that minority individuals are too ignorant to compete against majority individuals.