Recent events have shown what many of us who watched ever-increasing attempts to politicize the military over the last election cycle feared most - partisan political ideology has supplanted competency as the defining attribute of our military’s top leaders.
There were rumblings about the divide between the Trump administration and the Pentagon’s top generals around the November 2020 Presidential election, which was the first time in recent memory such information found its way into public view. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, went so far as to distance himself and apologize for appearing alongside his Commander-in-Chief during the George Floyd riots in D.C. “My presence in that moment and in that environment,” General Milley said, “created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” To the contrary, Milley’s statement was exactly the opposite of what it purported to be; it confirmed his involvement in domestic politics and signaled to everyone in the D.C. beltway that he had picked a side.
Last summer’s congressional hearings put into sharp focus just how politically inclined and dangerously unfocused our military’s top leadership has become since then.
General Milley, discussing military training under his watch before Congress, testified about “white rage” and his desire to understand it.
The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, also publicly displayed his political fealty to the Left side of the political aisle by defending a “reading list” for young sailors containing books about anti-racism and Critical Race Theory (“CRT”). Presumably, Admiral Gilday included these titles on the Navy’s recommended list because he believes sailors reading about “white privilege” and anti-racism will somehow make the U.S. Navy a better fighting force.
This testimony was overtly public evidence that the rot has set in. Our top generals are focused on nakedly ideological topics as “white rage” and CRT. You can be sure the military is oriented towards these things as well.
And although it is hard to know how thoroughly these toxic ideologies have been allowed to permeate the ranks, and as important as it will be to excise it from our military, the first thing we must do is to stop the rot.
We must immediately stop teaching these corrosive ideas to our next generation of combat leaders. It was recently revealed a person who allegedly described the Republican Party platform as a platform for white supremacy was teaching future Army officers courses in CRT at West Point. In Colorado Springs, incoming Air Force Academy cadets are apparently being shown a video that encourages them to attend a Black Lives Matter chapter meeting. Such overt political indoctrination is inherently divisive and inimical to the development of future military leaders. Again, competency is the watchword, and there should be a straight line from a cadet’s training to developing competency in the profession of arms.
For those already on active duty and in the field, the public focus on CRT and political indoctrination is surely a distraction. But because the military’s senior leaders have publicly endorsed these corrosive ideas, young officers and NCOs will be compelled to spend time and resources on them. Already overtaxed and undermanned, the military’s first-line leaders must now keep one eye on the political barometer and siphon-off valuable training time for seminars about “anti-racism” and “white rage” with their troops.
Perhaps worst of all, the toxic ideologies being pushed by the military’s higher-ups means that innate characteristics and demonstrated ideological conformity will play an increasingly important part in selecting and promoting leaders. The Navy recently floated the possibility that photos should be reintroduced into promotion boards in the name of diversity. Photos were removed from promotion boards a few years back to avoid the possibility of bias, and there is only one reason to bring them back, and it has nothing to do with competency.
More to the point – do the Marines and Airborne troopers currently deployed around Hamid Karzai International Airport care what their commanding officers look like, or do they care more that they were selected for their positions by virtue of their professional skill and leadership ability?
Stated another way, Chinese People’s Liberation Navy pilots will not care if the American fighter pilots sent to meet them over the Straits of Taiwan are LGBT or have pride flags stenciled on their planes. Our Navy receives no bonus points if the commander of the carrier battle group that steams to the defense of our ally is the first half-Indian Jamaican woman of color to hold flag rank. These attributes only matter to a certain segment of America’s political leaders. They do not matter to the enemy at all.
To the contrary, history teaches that competent, skillful, and daring leaders who can impose their will on their adversaries will win, and that race, sex, political beliefs, and heritage of these leaders are immaterial. This was as true for Hannibal, Napoleon, and Patton as it is today. These universal truths of warfare have not changed, and they never will.
The American military is an incredibly resilient organization that largely moves on merit. The best leaders typically move to higher positions of authority and responsibility over their careers. Lesser leaders do not. But when our military is actively being shaped and led by people who place more import on political conformity and ideology than they do on competence, well, you get the American rout in Afghanistan. And make no mistake, General Milley and Admiral Gilday are presiding over a rout. But this is what happens when the rot takes hold at all levels and ideology becomes the primary means of selecting leaders. Honorable men would have already resigned.
Mr. Biden and his administration have thus far shown no interest in accepting accountability for his errors in judgement or appetite for firing the commanders on whose watch the disaster in Afghanistan occurred. Sadly, if we continue to select leaders based on ideology instead of competence, there are worse calamities in store for us in the months and years to come.
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