Why do we have a military? Train military personnel? Prioritize readiness? To deter and win wars. Why do we promote “radical progressive” or “wokeness” in the military? No excuse. Truth can give offense, but here it is: Our military is best when the objective is – to win.
We have never configured an effective Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or any other fighting force around the principles “anything goes,” “anyone can do it,” “all can do everything,” “sensitivity trumps training,” “accuracy, energy, strength, and outcomes are secondary,” “everyone gets a trophy,” “feelings cannot be hurt,” or “we will never go to war.”
Truth is, training to win is hard. It’s not for everyone and is not centered on sensitivity. Readiness – as countless studies show – means reverse engineering victory, working to align personnel and equipment to maximize individual contribution to the only outcome that matters: Winning.
Somehow, we have forgotten basics when it comes to warfighting, preparing to deploy into a highly challenging, invariably dangerous, often deadly combat environment – against an adversary determined to win.
Today, as recent accounts note, we are losing the edge. Still best trained, equipped, motivated, and historically capable, we are allowing a preoccupation with feelings, sensitivities, and delicacies of “woke society” to infect and degrade readiness. Objectively, that is dangerous.
Accounts of how Biden continues to downgrade military readiness – surrogate for winning – continue to pour in. Biden started in January 2021, flippantly reversing Trump’s restrictions on deployment for those with gender dysphoria, including those who “identify as transgender.”
Restrictions were not based on bigotry, bias, or misplaced understanding of capabilities. They were rooted in a study of readiness. That study – presented to then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis – showed “transgender individuals …attempt suicide and experience severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population.”
For reasons tied to unit cohesion, performance, reliability, and suitability of any individual to the exigencies of combat deployment, that was a factor degrading readiness. Biden blew it off.
From there, the slide accelerated. Biden dictated that active-duty military personnel can take off time to get “sex-change surgeries and related hormones at taxpayer expense.” He threw out a test showing “women were not scoring as highly as men” in physical readiness and allowed HIV-infected personnel to serve in combat zones despite cross-infection risk.
He reduced fitness standards, initiated indoctrination on “safe zones” “inclusive language,” and gender-neutral references, like “hey everybody” instead of “hey guys,” “pronouns” and mandatory “gender identity training.”
The list goes on and on, affecting readiness in ways not obvious. For example, recruiting in every branch of the US military has plummeted, hit by disinterest in being turned “woke” so they can put their lives on the line.
To be clear, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and most of our NATO and Pacific allies – have no such nonsensical, politically craven, readiness-reducing requirements. They do not let men who think they are women serve in combat and they do not change requirements to win votes, not wars.
Our adversaries and allies do not allow “safe spaces” for those too tender, do not imagine timeouts or do-overs in warfighting, and do not think the Chinese offer “safe spaces” on days when a place like Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Normandy, Anzio, Inchon, Vietnam, Fallujah, or any other gut-wrenching battlefield requires winning.
Bottom line: We need to get off the fantasy wagon and stop imagining that wars are fought by Scrabble, Rummy, or Go-fish rules. They are fought by those eager to best us – potentially China, Iran, North Korea, and others watching us degrade ourselves, drooling at self-inflicted wounds to readiness, quietly mirthful.
Our adversaries are not stupid, inattentive, ignorant of how to capitalize on our divisions, nor blind to our preoccupation with wokeness, lost focus on readiness and winning. They are highly attuned to choices we make – and they know that warfighting requires all-in commitment.
As the US Air Force blunders into asking cadets not to use “Mom” and “Dad” in favor of “gender neutral” terms, they are driving readiness, cogency, and our reliance on faith, family, freedom, and common sense – over the edge.
America has not won wars because we are “androgynous,” or think our parents, spouses, or kids are just genderless political pawns, second to government. We did not win because we were hyper-sensitive, assuring everyone was equally soft, pleasant, gentle, and genteel.
We have not won because we excused people to “timeout zones” and “safe spaces” when offended by words, pronouns, prickly shipmates, or hard orders. We did not win because we imagined those who can bench 350, run a 5:30 mile, and hit a bullseye are like those who cannot.
We did not win because we taught people to complain, go easy, excuse themselves from honest work, words, or the wisdom taught from suffering, getting up, putting up, and reaching up.
We won – and can again – by prioritizing readiness, motivating courage, not cowardice, teaching endurance, stamina, clear-mindedness in crisis, calm under pressure, strength, and growth every day, and being willing to do what it takes – no matter what it takes.
We honestly fight for what we believe in – which is the overriding motivation that brought us out of WWI and WWII victors. We fight for truth, ideals, family, brothers, and sisters in arms, and the freedom that resides in America, the freedom that rewards doing the right thing.
In the end, if we are to be our best, we must be true to that mission, motivated by freedom, determined to win. We must prioritize readiness not “wokeness.” Truth can give offense, but here it is: Our military is best when the objective is – to win.