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I remember the day vividly, standing in formation in the hot Kentucky sun at Ft. Knox. “Look to your left and to your right,” the sergeant said. “You are all wearing the same uniform, you all bleed the same color blood. There is no color here other than green.” But by the end of my career, there were directives coming down from Washington D.C. telling us that some of our service members were somehow different, as was the case when we were told we should counsel some of our soldiers letting them know they can change the gender on their ID cards. I wasn’t about to single out a soldier, and I doubt very many did in any branch of the services.
But aside from causing a few eyerolls, woke policies in the military are more of a distraction at this point than anything else and are thankfully being largely ignored other than service members being ordered to sit through the regularly occurring death by PowerPoint. However, that in no way diminishes the very real threat it poses.
The United States military remains the most effective fighting force on the planet, and although wokeness has not yet significantly infected the military, the woke cancer continues to grow, threatening the cohesion of America’s fighting forces. Every hour that a service member wastes sitting through unnecessary woke briefings, is an hour lost that should have been spent on warfighter training, leaving us less prepared for the next war.
Woke policies, unnecessary political correctness at the expense of readiness or the success of a mission, have been and continue to be pushed at the behest of politicians inside the beltway. But the problem with their efforts to change the way our military operates is that it doesn’t need changing. The military is one place where true diversity has already been achieved.
“Through generations of sacrifices by our brave military members, all fighting for each other and for our Constitution, the American military today is unmatched in the world,” Congressman Darrell Issa, a fellow former Army captain, told me. “They are the most effective and diverse professional team of men and women, who do not need Washington politicians and bureaucrats telling them how to work together. We owe it to those heroes to give them our support, not detrimental policies that could cost lives.”
Major General (Ret.) David Baldwin, the former Adjutant General in charge of the California National Guard from 2011 to 2022, reminds us “The cornerstone of our system is civilian control of the military. So, even after military leaders give them input, we have to suck it up and do what they say, even if we think it wrong or detrimental, as long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution.” During his tenure, he said most of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies were benign topics, not the stuff we see in the headlines, “Most of this stuff had to do with selection boards, like taking names, photos, and gender off of records so boards aren’t biased,” he said.
Policies that reduce race and gender as a factor are not the issue, it is policies that artificially prop people up in the name of equity or make them somehow different that are problematic. Like many other service members, Retired Major General Baldwin viewed some of the DEI policies coming out of the Pentagon as more of a distraction. “Some of the other stuff that we did which I thought didn’t enhance readiness [from either civilian leaders or internally within military leadership] I think was more of a distraction than anything particularly deleterious,” he said. “DEI initiatives that enhance readiness by changing processes and policies to eliminate institutionalized and personal biases in personnel selections, that improve diversity of thought in decision making, and build trust are mandatory for an organization to succeed.” However, “Those initiatives that are put in place just to make people feel good may be divisive and can hurt readiness.”
An Army Colonel I spoke with on condition of anonymity said he believes the root of much of the woke debate is what he calls “feelgoodism,” coming from virtue signaling politicians and bureaucrats who attempt to champion alleged oppressed groups of people to make themselves feel better. The Colonel also told me how after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memorandum in 2021 calling for a “Stand-Down to Address Extremism in the Ranks,” he received a slide deck from the Pentagon. The deck was almost exclusively focused on right-wing extremism, without a single mention of Islamic extremism, despite the fact that we have seen multiple jihad inspired attacks from service members inside the ranks, such as Major Nadal Hasan who murdered 13 people. Although the Colonel did not take any slides out, he added an equal number of slides dedicated to jihadist and other actual extremist threats rather than just the incredibly rare ones.
In visiting West Point, I learned the academy is facing litigation for making race-conscious admission decisions, and were exempted in the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down race-based admissions in schools. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, states that West Point “openly publishes its racial composition ‘goals,’ and its director of admissions brags that race is wholly determinative for hundreds if not thousands of applicants.” That litigation remains ongoing. On the ground at the school, however, I saw nothing even remotely close to the kind of indoctrination we see on so many other university campuses, quite the opposite. What I saw were some of the most dedicated and focused students America has to offer, being forged into a cohesive team without the need for divisive policies forced upon them. I didn’t see or hear anything of the sort to indicate the place was anything other than the pinnacle of education and leadership training.
Another important element in the discussion is the role of higher education from civilian universities, and the continued weight these degrees have in the promotion of senior military leaders. Those campuses have been a source of much of the disastrous woke policies in America. In looking at the biographies of the top 40 officers in senior U.S. military leadership, all of them have advanced degrees. That begs the question regarding our military: Should we continue to give such significant weight to advanced degrees in these positions? No. In fact, with two wars and numerous other conflicts in the past couple of decades, our military members represent a pool of immense experience that far outweighs an advanced college degree where we now know so much indoctrination occurs. This goes for civilian leadership too. Why would we want to keep sending bright and competent leaders through woke indoctrination centers rather than focus on experience, skills, and character?
Although the military is largely ignoring woke policies for now, the detrimental effects of wokeness from the top down are already being felt, and it has the potential to become the Achilles’ heel of the military. Recruiting and reenlistment is in the tank, and these policies and rhetoric are a significant contributing factor.
“The sole focus of the American military must be to be prepared to fight and win the nation’s wars,” says Lieutenant Colonel Chuck DeVore (Ret.), with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “War is unforgiving. To be anything less than ready for war is to consign Americans in uniform to a greater likelihood of failure and death.” We owe it to the men and women in uniform, our nation’s sons and daughters, to keep our eye on the ball and ensure mission is placed first and civilian leaders don’t enact policies that hinder our abilities for mission success. The stakes could not be higher.
Jesse Petrilla is a former Army Captain. He served as a civilian advisor to the U.S. Department of State and was a Liaison Officer in the Army to the Afghan secret police. Look for his book “If It Takes a Thousand Years” coming out this Spring about the mindset of jihadists.
I’m a 1Lt, HonDis 1969, Korea Arty. I have no kids. But if I did t
I would physically hog tie any relatives to keep them out of our military. Men who truly believe they are women aren’t sane. And now, our entire military is run by these perverts.
Just say, “No!”
Unfortunately, I agree.
I’m a former Marine who never imagined the day would arrive that I’d actively tell men not to enlist, but while these woke “memorize other’s personal pronouns, or else” generals run the show . . . what’s the point in joining the effeminate version of the vermacht?
The military is very woke.
These days there is so little good news, what a nice Christmas present.
Gays & trannies serve openly in the military. Military chaplains perform gay “marriages”. The military pays for tranny genital mutilation surgeries. Christians are persecuted, forbidden from expressing their faith. The military hosts drag queen grooming shows on base. Soldiers are mandated to get experimental mRNA shots that the gov’t knows will kill & harm them, or else they are discharged. This was a huge violation of every soldier’s civil & human rights. The chain of command is utterly & absolutely corrupt & evil. All of the upper echelons are Obama creatures who have no problem firing on Americans on American soil if ordered to by the fascist dictatorial regime.
Don’t kid yourself. The US military is full on woke. Woke = progressive = marxist/globalist
It’s a train wreck in slow motion.
I do what I can to discourage any young person from joining the military. If for no other reason than to keep them from being vaxecuted by their own chain of command.
Unfortunately, I fully agree.
As long as cocktail-circuit, pussy generals run the show, I openly tell young men not to join.
Perhaps not all US troops are woke but they all have been weakened by the DOD Top BrASS!
Maybe Trump can strengthen them.
He can if he takes a blowtorch to all the turncoat officers in charge.
An example is that affirmative-action major Hassan openly wore his aspiring jihad on his sleeve.
No one had the courage to say a damned thing about it, or do a damned thing about it . . . so 14 were killed at Fort Hood. (Chickenshit Gen. Casey was more worried about our diversity, than what he allowed to happen.)
“The United States military remains the most effective fighting force on the planet, and although wokeness has not yet significantly infected the military, the woke cancer continues to grow, threatening the cohesion of America’s fighting forces. ”
I’ll buy that the majority of the troops are not woke and see through the B.S. That doesn’t really matter: the majority of Soviet troops were cynical about the Party and communism. The problem is that the need to lie, at an institutional level, gradually destroys the honesty upon which an effective military rests, and once lies are seen to matter more than truth, liars get promoted and cynicism reigns. We’ve seen this for the last 40 years with the coed force which, in every respect mimicked the woke CRT mantra, with respect to sex: separate and lower standards exist for women – and still do – and different outcomes were attributed to sexism. So, it’s not like the groundwork wasn’t laid.
I’d also disagree that we’re the most effective military in the world. We haven’t won a war against anyone since the end of the Cold War, and not really since 1945. Blaming it all on the politicians only goes so far: I read the vast majority of the military’s professional journals and I can tell you that no one had a good strategy for our recent wars, and indeed the military danced around the Islam-Islamism relationship as much as anyone else. Weapons take years to develop and then aren’t available in quantity. We have more admirals than ships – and have for at least 15 years. No one has been able to explain a case for sea power or the industrial base, so now we’re in the position towards China that Japan was to us in 1941. Yeah, it can get a lot worse, but we keep talking like our defeats don’t matter and seem uninterested in learning from them because, somehow, we’re still the best. I fear we’re the French Army circa 1940 and kidding ourselves just as much as its officers did.
Very true. And even WWII was won with Soviet blood and American money. That statement may enrage any living American veterans and the families of those who fought in that conflict, but it doesn’t change the fact that 80% of the German army was mired on the Eastern front and never saw an American soldier. And of course, the great D-Day operation that “saved the world”? Without the German army being tied to the Russian front, no U.S. soldier would have planted a boot on European soil.
That was the strategy! Study your history
I’d note that even Stalin pointed out the USSR would have lost WWII without Lend Lease aid from us. One shouldn’t forget that the air war consumed enormous German resources and pulled resources from the Eastern Front that would have otherwise been used against the Soviets. Had we been forced to fight Germany without the Soviets, it would have taken a lot longer but would still have ended in victory, although probably with a mushroom cloud over Berlin.
Yes. And it’s not new either. It is true that we have excellent units, and we have some good weapons, but that alone does not make an excellent fighting force. As Ivbin pointed out, we have not won a war since ’45 unless one counts the ‘Cold War.,’ and even that’s debatable.
Public trust in the military has eroded. We keep hearing of families who were military for generations but not anymore. All due to woke statements.
How about the whiny diversity statements from military leaders? We cringe. We cringe when its current leader is in the Middle East bullying Israel.
It’s all frightening to the American people. We wonder whose side the military is on. Woke or the people?
So soldiers can change their GENDER on their I.D. cards? What about their SPECIES? What if a soldier decides he wants to be a K-9 DOG?
Send it outside to sleep in a kennel and allow it to only pee on trees, bushes, or fire hydrant while lifting one leg or by squatting. . . .
Our soldiers sailors and airmen
Must be ready for war not to spout woke mantras
I sincerely mean this, Thank You for your sacrifice and service to America Captain even to this day you are strapping it on for the good you know is out there. My only push back is once the rot starts it is hard to stop. I saw troops during my short stint in Nam do very bad things including fragging of our COs hooch. It took President Nixons ending the draft and instituting an all volunteer military and years of hard work to build what you and others ” enjoyed” . That said I hope you are right .
Look to Trump-there isn’t a woke bone in his body!!!
I believe it was Winston Churchill who described the pre-war and early war British Army as an army of lions led by donkeys. It came perilously close to defeat. La plus ca change….
And Churchill was the leading donkey, albeit a fascinating historical figure. He was a drunkard, a pathological liar, and completely dishonest – even to his own countrymen. But he was also a brilliant writer and orator. In June of 1940, immediately following the French surrender, he was with his son Randolph Churchill at Chartwell, his estate outside London. Randolph asked “now that France has surrendered, how do you plan on winning the war?” Churchill never missed a beat in replying “I’m going to drag the Americans into it…” And he did. For the second time.
Ivbin, I would be interested—fair astounded actually—if you can provide a single reputable source for anything you have written here. Really, Churchill was ‘going to drag the Americans’ into the war? You don’t think the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor along with Hitler’s declaration of war on the US had something to do with America’s entry into the war? At least a little, a teensy-weensy bit, maybe, eh? 2400 American dead along with almost 1200 wounded might have influenced FDR slightly more than the fat boy on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
For your next mission, Ivbin, explain Churchill’s role in Brazil’s declaration of war on Germany and their sending an expeditionary force to fight in Italy. Did this result from:
A) Churchill’s perfidiously nefarious influence,
or
B) Germany gaily sinking everything in sight, including a number of Brazilian ships (with attendant Brazilian fatalities)?
No, Winston is not known to have ever used the phrase. It entered popular imagination largely due to MP Alan Clark (1928–99)’s 1961 ‘The Donkeys’, a purported history of the BEF in 1915, which he began with a supposed quotation by Generalmajor Max Hoffmann (whom he misspells as ‘Hoffman’), a reply to General der Infanterie Erich Ludendorff’s remark ‘The English soldiers fight like lions’: ‘True. But don’t we know that they are lions led by donkeys.’ This ‘quotation’ he sources as ‘Falkenhayn: Memoirs’. General der Infanterie Erich von Falkenhayn’s memoirs was published in English as ‘The German General staff and Its Critical Decisions, 1914–1916’, and Generalmajor Hoffmann (either with one or two ‘n’s) is not even mentioned, nor are lions or donkeys in any context whatsoever. Clark made this ‘quotation’ up out of whole cloth.
The phrase itself has long providence and has been employed to describe various armies and their leaders. The earliest instance of the phrase might have been said about the British Army—but by a Russian officer in regard to the Crimean War:
‘Such poor undisciplined lads, fresh from the plough, ought never, on any occasion, to have been pitted against the well-drilled soldiers of Russia; but it was something worse than blundering to lead them to the assault of such a formidable work as the Redan. Such generalship recalls to our mind the remark of the Russian officers with respect to the military force of England—that is, that it was an army of lions led by donkeys.’
(Tyrrell, Henry. ‘The History of the War with Russia’, vol.2. London: 1855. 256.)
The very earliest use of a form of the phrase goes back to Plutarch (46–c.>119AD) and his ‘Moralia’ (c.100AD), in which the essay ‘The Apophthegms or Remarkable Sayings of Kings and Great Commanders’ has the Athenian general Chabrias (<420–357BC) saying ‘that an army of stags, with a lion for their commander, was more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag.’
Hey, that’s not fair! You are using ACTUAL FACTS and HISTORY to offset the troll’s lies and propaganda!! Actually, I’m rather impressed with the info! Keep up the good work!!
Great explanation and totally settles the matter. Troll twat take note dissing Churchill 🥊
The present US military is indeed woke. The rot started under Obama when he canned most of the flag officers who believed in God and country and replaced them with incompetent yes men. The services suffered greatly. Trump tried to correct the situation but it was too little to late. Biden ushered in Obama’s third term and the transition to woke was completed under Milley and Austin. Our military is the weakest its been since prior to WWII. We get into a scrap with the Russians or Chinese and we’re toast. This nation had better hope that Trump gets reelected before things deteriorate more.
The critical and deadly bottom line here is that woke soldiers will be the ones most likely to fire on their own citizens if told that they’re fighting against anti-American terrorist insurrectionists. And we know that’s been a propaganda line since 2016.
I think this is the main thrust of “woke” in the military. The objective, IMO, is to create a sense of trust in our military towards our political leaders instead of military brass. Once the experience of being “woke” (my definition is finally awakening to all the felonious constructs of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, xenophobia, etc., ad infinitum) is accomplished only the enlightened upper ranks are privy to the “truth” and must be obeyed. The citizens and the Constitution are inverted from a moral and upright cause to defend into a force of evil intent on only maintaining a system of superiority and oppression. Pulling the trigger or firing a missile at who was once your neighbor will not be a difficult decision to make. More to the point, this process started long ago in the upper levels of education and has now slithered down to the lowest levels. The real subversives behind all this have one goal and that is to take the children. I would guess most here are well aware of this and have seen it play out, in public, in recent years. “One-party tyrannies” need a strong arm and “militarize” almost all their agencies. Once the military is captured it’s just a matter of time before we are whispering our political thoughts to only those we can trust not to turn us in. This we have seen, also. God only knows if the will to resist being subjected to slavery is strong enough to head off what is barreling down on us. Pessimist I am, says it will get much worse before it starts getting better. Unfortunately, the saying ‘you get the govt you deserve” will play out once again and much destruction will follow.
I agree except the pessimist in me believes that things will just keep getting worse until America as we know it ceases to exist.
Thanks for writing, Jesse. As a veteran from a family of veterans I cannot, in good conscience, advise any young person to enlist into the military. Although “frauds and blasphemers” have always been with us in the Church and government, they have become so emboldened in our military and throughout our society that I fear for my country. May our future leaders exemplify the virility and anger of Christ in the Temple. GOD BLESS.
They don’t want Israel to pray because God is their helper. The left wants the Jewish people to be secular, anti-God. Its God’s power that will help them against their enemies.
I’.m sick of the silly word “woke” because it’s a camouflage word for communist indoctrination and infiltration to undermine the military and our country. (Never would happen in the military of our adversaries including CCP.) These are blatant subversive tactics by our Communist enemies WITHIN America and WITHOUT who gleefully promote nonsense to DISTRACT and weaken our military and the loyalty and unity of our country. The goal of our enemies is the demise of the United States of America with multipronged suicidal Psyops, Open Borders, racial divisiveness, lawlessness, economic collapse and loss of freedoms that used to be the reasons why soldiers would fight. American soldiers don’t fight on behalf of Socialism, Communism, censorship, racial identity, trans mutilations and equity.
I am former LCDR Navy, MC and never would have joined given the current state of this military today and wouldn’t encourage anyone to join this Democrat Communist controlled military. TODAY”S Democrats don’t have PRIDE in the country; they only have PRIDE in diversity of perversity and being NON-WHITE.
Fish rot from the head and the head is rotten so it doesn’t matter how fresh the body is until you get someone who isn’t rotten in the head.
We’re going g to find out, soon I fear, if our military is up for defending Taiwan and then America, itself. I hope you are correct.
We’re going to find out soon Jeff, Fear is for fags.
Wrong. Anyone who says he isn’t scared is a liar or a fool–and probably both . . .
If they’re not woke already which is highly dubious they’re getting there very quickly unless people stop worrying about pejoratives.
The US military is not woke because we can find some people offended by the term.
Most of them probably think it’s a compliment but the military isn’t woke.
On DAY ONE PRESIDENT TRUMP should order the organization of the very FIRST and ONLY “ALL TRANS/GAY DIVISION” in each service branch!! Yes, every one of them will be allowed to practice their philosophy as they wish, within the guidelines of an organized Military! I would select the most NORTHERN and most SOUTHERN bases we have in the ARCTIC and Antarctic regions! SKIRTS? Wear ’em if you got ’em!
Then I would install LEADERS to get our Military back into SHAPE! All those “muffin tops” would get extra care and assistance to fit into REASONABLY sized uniforms! Our Military has ONE PURPOSE – to PROTECT the United States of America! That’s it! Nothing else should even be a consideration! AND our BORDER is most definitely in NEED of PROTECTION! And our INTERIOR needs protection as well from the MILLIONS of who knows what that have been ALLOWED to INVADE! It will take our Military to remove some of those people – we should not hesitate! If we are to take back Our Nation it will require strong MEN and WOMEN doing what’s BEST for the USA and our CITIZENS!