Biden’s War on the U.S. Military Threatens U.S. Readiness

Militaries exist to kill and break things. The great Prussian military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz defines war as “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” What’s our will?

Right now, it’s hard to tell.

President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have seen introduced extremly divisive policies that are sabotaging troop morale.

The military’s priority is diversity training, not readiness. Austin issued a “stand down” order to confront ill-defined extremism in February.

This comes at the time when America’s enemies are on the march. The People’s Republic of China destabilizes East Asia almost daily with its incursions into Taiwanese air space, and its naval militia incursions threaten Vietnam and the Philippines.

Russia threatens further aggression against Ukraine. Poland and the Baltics face threats from Russian cyberattacks and the unification of Russia’s air force command with that of neighboring Belarus.

Iran continues its nuclear enrichment unabated and threatens the Middle East with its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Its Houthis rebels in Yemen threaten Saudi Arabia with a growing missile stockpile.

North Korea has resumed missile testing.

By emphasizing individual identity over the mission, the Pentagon risks humiliating defeat at the hands of our biggest adversaries.

Since the January 6 Capitol riots, Democrats and the Biden administration have been on the warpath against the undefined boogeyman of “White Nationalism.” That used to mean card-carrying Neo-Nazis and Klansmen, but today it means anyone who people on the political Left dislike.

The Biden administration has sought to root out what it calls “extremist” beliefs in the military – a broad, ill-defined term that has been inconsistently applied across the Defense Department.

Training materials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provides a specific and narrow scope that includes ANTIFA and the Proud Boys at both ends of the political spectrum.

Navy training slides, however, were politically biased and focused exclusively on Neo-Nazi groups and listed membership in the “Young Democrats of America” as a permissible activity. This suggests a bias in favor of the Democratic Party, as opposed to saying the “Young Democrats of America or the Young Republicans National Federation.” It also endorsed participation in the Black Lives Matter movement even though it has been linked with violence and racial antagonism, and preaches a demoralizing Marxist agenda that says America is racist and evil.

Military regulations from the Bush era, by contrast, forbade political participation of any kind, including membership of any kind of political club. This slide presentation along with the attacks against Fox News host Tucker Carlson of the comprehensive politicization of the Defense Department in favor of the Democratic Party, as opposed to its prior commitment to political neutrality.

At least one Navy member objected to inattention to ANTIFA in the training and was shut down by the trainer.

“[O]verall this training was an indoctrination of our military,” the participant wrote in an email to OAN reporter Jack Posobiec. “It is embarrassing to say that I am a service member anymore.”

He or she is not alone.

Many in the military have indicated a decline in morale directly linked with the Biden administration’s stand-down order and other “diversity” policies.

The prestigious Harvard Business Review noted in 2012 that diversity training is counterproductive.

“Diversity training doesn’t extinguish prejudice. It promotes it,” the article said.

If diversity training has shown by Harvard and elsewhere to be ineffective in rooting out prejudice in corporate America, why would anyone at the Pentagon think it’s a good idea to rely on training materials that sabotage unit cohesion?

Early in March, the Pentagon resumed Critical-Race Theory based “diversity” training that had been banned in the waning days of the Trump administration after Austin issued a memo allowing its return.

So why would we want to promote something that’s only going to undermine morale and unit cohesion? The cynic might say that’s the idea, because the Left has always viewed the military as a force for oppression since the Vietnam War. President Biden said in 1975 that the United States should not “police the world.”

The U.S. Navy, for example, should be reading Alfred Thayer Mahan’s book about naval doctrine; instead, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday added Neo-Marxist guru Ibram X. Kendi’s Manichean anti-white tome “How to Be an Antiracist” that condemns colorblindness. Kendi’s book focuses on his individual struggle with what he sees as dominant white culture and how Western Civilization is evil.

Sun-Tzu notes the chaos brought from the top of any military chain of command becomes ruinous for the entire military.

“When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or no he is in a position to fight, the result is ruin,” Sun-Tzu said in The Art of War. “When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixes duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter disorganization.”

Training should focus on respecting differences and on putting what’s good for the unit first. Focusing on identity groups only sabotages unit cohesion. Our military should be focused on defeating China, Russia and other adversaries, not on verbal fratricide that pits servicemembers against each other.