By Army veteran David T. Cloft
I entered the Army in July of 1993, before President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” experiment. Back then, the military was still primarily about blowing holes in things, breaking enemy armies, and defending the Republic.
Then slowly, like a frog in a pot, the Pentagon began feeding the social science laboratory every “good idea” — except the good ideas about how to win wars.
This nonsense didn’t happen overnight. It really began in 1945 when the military became the proving ground for every utopian dream of the Ivy League social science (fake science) engineers.
Fast-forward to the 21st century, and instead of focusing on lethality, we had DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services) pushing quotas and “firsts.”
Hegseth was right to kill it. He said it best just yesterday: “The firsts stop now. It is merit-based from here on out.”
I lived through this charade. By 2012, I was an Army major assigned to the Pentagon. My boss? A “First.” The first LGBTQ female general officer. Was she competent? Sure. Was she Patton? Not even close.
She gave me a top block evaluation report because I did my job and kept my mouth shut — but as a Christian, I knew deep down that this was all upside down. Promotions and praise weren’t about excellence, they were about checking boxes for unique personal identifiers.
By 2016, the farce was complete. We had mandatory attendance at Pride events, with speeches that sounded less like military briefings and more like sermons in the Church of the Secular Woke Mind Virus.
It was never about warfighting, standards, or merit. It was about celebrating ideology — and punishing anyone who didn’t clap loud enough.
That’s when I made my decision: hit 20 years, get my pension, and get out.
The policy shift from “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to “Mandatory Celebration or Else You’re a Bigot” wasn’t progress — it was ideological overreach. That era of forced compliance and public shaming ends now.
Think about how sad that is.
It shouldn’t be a “radical” idea to say the military exists to fight and win wars. It shouldn’t be controversial to demand standards, merit, and victory.
But by the end of my career, those simple truths were treated like heresy.
That’s why the return to a Department of War instead of a Department of Woke matters. It’s not just semantics. It’s a re-centering on reality.
You don’t fight and win wars by handing out participation trophies or worshiping the god of “firsts.”
You win wars by training warriors, enforcing standards, and promoting the best — period. FAFO.
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