Portion of remarks given at a private military retirement ceremony in June 2021. For saying this, the Major was issued a Letter of Admonishment from his supervisor alleging that his remarks had been “insubordinate, disrespectful, and unbecoming of an officer in the military.”
How did we get here as a nation, after tens of thousands of US military personnel were killed fighting Marxism/Communism during the Cold War, that a military officer warning about Marxism is admonished by his superiors for doing so?
By Major Jace Yarbrough
Air Force/Space Force reservist
. . . . There’s a story, probably apocryphal, but it points a good truth, it’s about one of General Ulysses S. Grant’s responses during an examination at West Point.
It was I believe a course in engineering, and the question was, given so many materials, of lumber and rope and tar, etc. etc., how would you build a bridge wide and stable enough to get so many troops across the Hudson River.
Grant’s answer: “I’d find me an NCO, and I’d tell him to build me a bridge.”
That story captures well the virtues of the NCO: realistic, sober, pragmatic, down to earth because his missions are measured by real world results, sometimes deadly serious ones.
He earns the respect of his Airmen because his successes or failures are obvious and evident in reality.
Sgt Fish was respected by us because he delivered tough, practical results that could not be disputed. He was utterly competent.
Courage and Competence especially needed now: We Practice/Encourage Fear
If our military can be compared to man, who is one part spiritual or head, and one part animal or belly, then NCOs are the heart of the American military.
And the bedrock virtues of our NCO corp.—and therefore of our military as a whole—are courage and competence.
The importance of these two virtues cannot be overstated. Our aim should be always to inculcate and foster them.
But I fear we aren’t. In fact, I am afraid we are simultaneously breeding their opposites: incompetence and cowardice.
The Air Force and the wider DoD are under threat, not only from without, but from within.
Over the last decade, the totalizing claims of a radical political faction within our wider culture have broken into our military.
This faction, time and again, has brought the culture war inside the DoD, knowing that if it can capture our top brass, the lower ranks will salute smartly and follow.
Over the past 10-15 years, we have seen our service take sides on the most controversial issues of our times.
Our service has been politicized. This, I fear, is a death knell for courage and competence.
This faction of which I am speaking, embodies a militant disregard for truth enforced through threats of professional and social excommunication.
What matters to these culture warriors is not objective reality, but compliance with the party message.
We have seen their enforcement tactics; they cow their opponents into participation in their dishonesty through fear of professional and social retribution.
This tactic is so common and consistent that we’ve given it a name: “cancel culture.”
Ordinary Americans, including our Airmen, are at risk of losing their livelihoods for saying things that, until yesterday, were matters of basic common sense and wisdom.
Things like, “men can’t birth babies,” and “boys should not be allowed in the girls locker room.”
These are intuitive, basic facts about the world. They cannot be avoided in everyday life, by everyday Americans.
Denying them requires constant, maybe even continuous, self-deception.
What is worse, this deception is induced by fear; when we submit to it, we are cowards.
When we keep silent about the lies we see (whether to keep our jobs or merely to avoid uncomfortable situations), we bury the lie inside ourselves; we habituate ourselves to dishonesty.
Our grip on objective reality slips and we are less capable and less effective in our world.
By making the lie a part of ourselves, we become incompetent.
As I have said, this awful dynamic is not limited to our wider society, but has become a part of the DoD’s culture.
Going through the recent DOD-wide extremism training confirmed this for me.
I was relieved to see that my teammates recognized that training for what it was, a thinly veiled flex of political power.
I think often about one comment from a senior non-commissioned officer regarding this training. He said, “It’s weird. Usually the generals and colonels would discuss this sort of issue and resolve it at that level. This feels strange that it’s being pushed down to the Airmen. It’s almost like they’re sending us a warning.”
“Warning,” is the appropriate word, and it is unsurprising to me that it came from the practical wisdom of a no-BS SNCO.
The message from that training, though veiled, got through: if you are on the wrong side of political questions, we will label you an extremist and give you the option of conforming, or being “rooted out.”
So, what is to be done?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was soviet dissident and author. During his service in the Red Army, he was sentenced to 8 years hard labor in the gulag and internal exile for life in Kazakhstan for criticizing Joseph Stalin in private letters to a friend.
While in the gulag, he came to understand that he was responsible for his abject condition. Not because he had been critical of Stalin, but because he had gone along with falsehoods and euphemisms that made such a brutal society as the Soviet Union possible.
These are his words from “A Candle in the Wind,” a play he authored:
“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity.
Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.
One word of truth outweighs the world.
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future.”
For those Airman, and especially those NCOs, who will continue the mission once Senior moves on, decide now, today, what you will do when given the choice.
Will you continue the work he started?
Will you have the fortitude to insist on competence, or will you fold?
If we are to get through this time of, and I know no better word for it, insanity, it will be because a critical mass of Airmen said, let the lie come, but not through me.
And, God willing, when we look back on this period in our national history, we will see that many, perhaps most of those Airmen came from the ranks of our NCOs.
–
Yarbrough is a civilian attorney in Texas, where he lives with his wife and children. He received an active-duty commission as an officer in the Air Force on September 7, 2011, but he has served as a reservist in the Air Force since late 2015, currently holding the rank of Major. He has been recognized as a dedicated and valuable member of the Air Force, receiving official decorations and high praise from his superiors throughout his military career.
Another brave Space Force officer who spoke out against Marxism in the military and was forced out:
Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military by Lt Col Matthew Lohmeier
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