By Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D.
Retired U.S. Air Force officer and military historian
In March 2023, amid an ongoing recruiting crisis, the United States Army returned to a former motto: “Be all you can be.”
The motto, which ran for two decades starting in 1980, spanning the end of the Cold War and the first (successful) war against Iraq, poses a conundrum for Army leadership and service personnel alike. (Note: the estimated cost to return to the old motto is $117 million — real money for most people and institutions.)
On one hand, the Army, along with the rest of the Pentagon, continues to prioritize the mantra of mystical, utopian, undefinable diversity, which Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said: “Seems to mean everything for everyone.”
On the other hand, by returning to “Be all you can be,” which served well enough during a mostly meritocratic era, the Army is now alluding to a tried and true priority: meritocracy.
Which priority — diversity or meritocracy — will hold sway is yet to be seen.
The tested reality is that pursuing meritocracy as one’s priority leads to a highly capable institution that, over time, comprises a team from varied backgrounds.
Why? Because there will always be a certain percentage of individuals willing to make the personal sacrifices required to excel and achieve their goals, regardless of their background. This is diversity in the legitimate sense.
Pursuing the Left’s version of diversity, however, logically leads over time to mediocrity.
One thing is certain. The Army must choose.
Pursuing meritocracy leads to the advancement of those most qualified to meet the nation’s strenuous land component national security requirements; diversity, to the advancement of individuals who meet the requirements of the Left’s predetermined, preferred group.
The two priorities may neither logically nor honestly be said to agree.
The Army is quickly learning the consequences of prioritizing diversity.
A recent article on Marketplace.org quoted Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, the Army’s chief of enterprise marketing, admitted that young adults, including children of service members, who have historically made up a good percentage of recruits, no longer see the military as an attractive career. “And this goes across all services, not just the Army,” he said.
The Army has insisted that wokeness in the service is not to blame for the dangerous recruiting crisis of the last two years, but such assertions ring hollow.
Consider these facts.
Last year, an American Homefront Project article cited Pew Research Center data that among new recruits, “30% have a parent in the military, and 70% report a family member in the armed forces.”
In 2017, a Slate piece noted, “Perhaps the strongest predictor of military service is having a family member who served — allowing for extended family members, it averages to about 80% of new recruits across the services.”
Moreover, the South contributes “more than its fair share of 18-24-year-olds to military service: 44.3% of new recruits in 2015, 20% more than the region’s share of the total U.S. population [emphasis added].”
So what’s the point?
As Time observed, “Relatives are what the military calls key ‘influencers’ because of their ability to steer young people into, or away from, the military.”
In the current climate, how many veterans whose sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, or grandchildren are considering Army service are “influencing” them away from serving based on the Army’s racially-charged, divisive, diversity-laden programs?
This issue has presented itself in several different ways.
Military leadership has pushed for the renaming of Army bases, the unmistakable messaging of which is that Southern history, heroes, and culture are held in contempt. (Note: the South sustains an inordinately high percentage of total U.S. ground combat losses, 31% from the eleven former Confederate states in the last two decades).
Pentagon leadership also announced a highly-publicized hunt for white supremacists-extremists in the military, which netted a statistical “nothingburger,” and has promoted divisive policies from taxpayer-financed abortions, pronoun mandates, taxpayer-paid “gender reassignment” procedures, and mandatory diversity training.
Recent studies clearly show that more and more Americans are sick of the politicization and accompanying degradation of their once highly-respected military.
The Army’s 25% accessioning shortfall last year, and its anticipated shortfall this year, ought to serve as the wake-up call for leadership to ditch its meaningless diversity priority and truly embrace its former — now current — meritocratic motto, “Be all you can be.”
Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired military officer and government historian, and the author of four military histories including the forthcoming book, Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press).
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