The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, taken from an airplane in January 2008
Image by David B. Gleason
Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gab TV, GETTR
China plans to supplant the U.S. as the world superpower. This has been widely proclaimed by the Chinese Communist Party for years and also extensively reported by the press and the military itself. Potential for conflict is building now in the South China Sea. The Sea Services recently published doctrine and strategy that highlight the grave nature of this threat.
Recent DOD priorities making the news:
• SECDEF ordered an all-hands Stand Down 5 February days after taking office. All of DOD had to participate. No evidence was provided of extremism being widespread in DOD. The Stand Down focus was on alleged white supremacists plus the January 6th Capitol demonstrations and was overtly anti-Trump. DHRA Office of People Analytics data indicates 2 percent of DoD personnel are concerned about hate crimes or racism which raises serious questions about the validity of the Stand Down and its needless waste of resources.
• June 2020, the Navy stood up Task Force One Navy (TF1N) to promote inclusion, diversity and equity. The word equity should set off alarm bells. Equity is the opposite of merit. Equity demands equal outcomes regardless of merit. America is a meritocracy. The equity push will destroy our merit-based system in place since the founding. TF1N guidelines promote Critical Race Theory language such as “inclusion”, “diversity”, “lived experience”, “Intersectional identities”, “equity”, “belonging”, and “under-represented”. Not explained is how these concepts would improve Navy readiness. In its conclusion, TF1N says: “Our nation of over 330 million individuals is made up of a multitude of races, ethnicities, genders, religions, sexual orientations and more. And we value them all. Why? Because that’s what right looks like, and that’s what we teach our young people.” This senseless blather is being force fed to everyone in the Navy. It has nothing to do with readiness and will serve to divide more than to unite.
• Critical Race theory (CRT) is taught at West Point according to Army veteran Congressman Waltz. CRT is blatantly racist. It’s also taught at the USAF Academy says one who is teaching it, Professor Garcia, who states”….we also acknowledge that the United States was founded on a duality: liberalism and equal rights on the one hand; inequality, inegalitarianism and second-class citizenship on the other. Critical Race Theory provides an academic framework to understand these nuances and contradictions. It helps students identify the structural racism and inequality that has been endemic in American society” CRT teaching is false. This is not what Air Force cadets should be taught?
• April 9th, SECDEF created the executive level “Combating Extremism Working Group. “Why the emphasis?” asks Congressman Mike Rogers who cited statistics from 2018 showing only 9 soldiers discharged for extremism activity. 9 soldiers per million = a .0009% rate. How can we afford precious resources being consumed by a minuscule problem?
• Another priority of DOD is incorporating transgenders into the military. On March 31st, Secretary Austin announced an “International Transgender Day of Visibility”. As recently as 2015, virtually no one had heard of transgenderism. It was then known as gender dysphoria, a condition similar to anorexia. In anorexia, slender persons think they are fat. Without treatment anorexics will starve themselves to death. World renowned psychiatrist of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Paul McHugh who practiced medicine in the field of gender dysphoria for 40 years classifies transgenderism as a mental disorder and asserts confidently that a person cannot change their biological sex. Only recently has sudden change occurred with the theory of transgenderism. Why is this a priority for our military and how will it help us be a better and more effective fighting force?
• The CNO recommends sailors reading these books:
o How to be an Anti-Racist. Per Andrew Sullivan, this book advocates a totalitarian state to transform America. The themes of this book should be anathema to anyone who believes in freedom and equality as it openly advocates racism.
o The New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow’s premise is that millions of blacks are in prison because of racism. DOJ data amply demonstrate that despite being only 13% of the population blacks commit 35% of the violent crimes which explains why so many are in prison. Why is the CNO advancing a completely false narrative of an unjust Department of Justice?
o Sexual Minorities and Politics. This is history of the LGBT movement changing law in America regarding marriage. How is understanding the evolution of marriage helpful to make for a more lethal and capable Navy?
Research done by Manhattan Institute (Dr. Heather MacDonald and Christopher Rufo), Hoover Institution (Drs. Thomas Sowell & Shelby Steele), scholars and authors Dr. Robert Woodson and Dr. Wilfred Reilly expose how intellectually and morally bankrupt diversity theories are. A reference sample of the academic research books on race that should be on the CNO reading list follows in the footnote. In an extensive analysis done by Christopher Rufo, there is voluminous evidence that class has supplanted race as the determinative factor for success. Quoting from the analysis:
“According to a growing body of evidence, social class is gradually supplanting race as the most salient variable for producing inequality. With regard to family, as Harvard scholar Robert Putnam has observed, “[t]he class gap over the last 20 years in unmarried births, controlling for race, has doubled, and the racial gap, controlling for class, has been cut in half.’” ”With regard to workforce participation, Census data show that black and white Americans with the same educational attainment have roughly equivalent levels of workforce participation: Education as a proxy for class has a much greater impact than race.” “With regard to education, Stanford professor Sean Reardon shows that the class gap in academic achievement is “now nearly twice as large as the black–white achievement gap,” in contrast to a half century ago when “the black–white gap was one and a half to two times as large as the [class] gap.” The data is clear, blacks in America can avoid the poverty trap if they get married before having children, they graduate high school, and they are employed full time. Are there no DOD personnel researchers that are aware of the voluminous research on this topic as cited above? Dr. Thomas Sowell of Stanford University and Hoover Institution has alone written at least 11 books on the subject dating back decades.
April 7th GAO released a report that documents falling readiness across the board in the military. How can DOD justify focus on these social justice matters when their most important priority is readiness? The military is supposed to be apolitical. The evidence presented above indicates that current DOD leadership is promoting progressive agenda items, politicizing the military, and wasting resources on a social agenda of dubious value at the expense of readiness.