Imprimis June/July 2022 | Volume 51, Number 6/7
The Rise of Wokeness in the Military[Part One]
Thomas Spoeher
Director, Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on July 20, 2022 at the Allan P. Kirby Jr Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale's Washington, D.C. campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.
Excerpts:
Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change. The push for it didn't begin in the last two years under the Biden administration - nor will it automatically end if a non-woke administration is elected in 2024.
Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex.
It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotions are based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.
Wokeness in the military also affects relations between the military and society at large. It acts as a disincentive for many young Americans in terms of enlistment. And it undermines wholehearted support for the military by a significant portion of the American public at a time when it is needed the most.
EXAMPLES
In 2015, then Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus rejected out-of-hand a Marine Corps study concluding that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries. He rejected it because it did not comport with the Obama administration's political agenda.
In 2015, near the end of his second term, President Obama initiated a change to the Pentagon's longstanding policy on transgender individuals in the military. Subsequent evidence presented to then Secretary of Defense James Mattis - including the fact that transgender individuals suffering from gender disphoria attempt suicide and experience severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population - raised legitimate concerns about their fitness for military service.
…Along similar lines, the Biden administration has recently ended support for a longstanding policy prohibiting individuals infected with HIV from serving in combat zones. The policy had been based on sound science tied to the need for HIV medications and the danger of cross-infection through shared blood.
Much of the emphasis of wokeness today is on promoting the idea that America is fatally flawed by systemic racism and white privelege. Our fighting men and women are required to sit through indoctrination programs, often with roots in the Marxist tenets of critical race theory, either by Pentagon diktat or through carelessness by senior leaders who delegate their command responsibilities to private Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion instructors.
These indoctrination programs differentiate servicemembers along racial and gender lines, which runs completely counter to the military imperative to build cohesiveness based on common loyalties, training, and standards. Traditional training and education programs us to combat racial and sex discrimination have been supplanted by programs that promote discrimination by replacing the American ideal of equality with the progressive ideal of equality - which in practice means unequal treatment based on group identity.
Last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House Armed Services Committee, "we do not teach critical race theory, we don't embrace critical race theory, and I think that's a spurious conversation." Despite repeated denials by Austin and others in the Pentagon that critical race theory is being taught in the military, there is no shortage of evidence to the contrary.
Last year, Secretary Austin called for a one-day military-wide stand-down to address the so-called problem of "extremism" in the ranks, despite the fact there has been no evidence presented- including in testimony by senior officials - that there is a problem of extremism in the military. Commanding officers were instructed to discuss the topic using a Power Point presentation that included Ted Talks asking the question, What is up with us white people?"