During her debate with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris insisted that the Biden administration had done an excellent job supporting and managing America’s military.
The facts say otherwise.
According to Military.com, an online site for news and information about the U.S. military, the U.S. Army failed to reach its recruitment goals for the second year in a row.
The active-duty Army currently has 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021, and the smallest it has been since 1940. The Navy and Air Force also missed their recruiting goals in 2023. The Marine Corps and the Space Force were the only services to achieve their targets.
Why? Why, at a time when two major wars (Ukraine and Israel/Gaza) are raging, when China and North Korea are acting belligerently toward their neighbors, and when Iran is on the brink of developing its first nuclear weapon, are Joe and Kamala allowing our military to shrink?
The answer is simple. It’s because a contagion of wokeness is sweeping through our three largest military branches, replacing or minimizing the importance of traditionally critical concepts such as unit cohesion, combat readiness, task commitment, and effective warfighting.
A recent commentary in the Epoch Times by a military expert said that since the 1980s, “we have seen the gradual supplantation of the warrior culture and meritocracy with quotas, sex-based double standards, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. This change, including the repealing of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and a push to support transgenderism in the military, has created a military that is increasingly unattractive to the kind of men you need to fight and win wars.
It’s a frightening statement, and it should concern all Americans.
The commentary went on to say that “although the displacement of the traditional Army warfighting culture, which some see as being all about toxic masculinity, has slowed, it has not been stopped, much less reversed. Over the past few years, the implementation of pervasive DEI initiatives has accelerated. Further, as it now stands, active members of the military can take time off from their duties to obtain sex-change surgeries and all related hormones and drugs at taxpayer expense.”
That certainly wasn’t the U.S. Army I joined in the 1960s as the war in Vietnam was hotting up. In my army training company (E-3-2) at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, drill sergeants taught us how to kill the enemy, survive in hostile environments, and, most importantly, win battles.
Concepts such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion didn’t exist. Nor did divisive Marxist ideas such as “Critical Race Theory” or the dishonest “1619 Project.” We were taught American history that was not infected with woke fabrications and deceits. Unlike today, there were no women recruits sharing our barracks.
When you have woke military commanders more concerned with imposing DEI and CRT on troops rather than leading them successfully into battle and winning the war, something is haywire in America’s military.
Military.com reported in June that the Army’s declining recruitment numbers are almost entirely attributable to a significant drop in male recruiting. According to service data, male enlistments have dropped from 58,000 in 2013 to 37,700 in 2023. Meanwhile, female recruitment has been relatively flat at around 10,000 recruits each year.
The Military.com report said the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for military personnel could have further deterred some recruits, as did the muddled withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those facts and DEI venality explain why trust in the military has plummeted over the past four years.
According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ “having a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in the military plunged from 79 percent to 60 percent in 2023. While Republicans continue to trust the military more than Democrats, Republican trust still plunged from 91 percent to 68 percent in the past three years.
When I joined the Army, I was told that the American military must always remain independent from the caprices of misguided politicians, extremist social engineers, and others who want to use the military to conduct radical social experiments. The Army’s job is to fight and win wars, not to be a social laboratory.
According to recent polling, this wokeness and social experimentation have turned off military heritage families—those families that have had members serve in the military for generations. More and more of these families advise their sons not to enter the military.
Internal service data reviewed by Military.com shows that “since 2013, male enlistments have dropped 35%, going from 58,000 men enlisting in 2013 to 37,700 in 2023.”
Even more concerning, however, is the decline in military recruitment of white males. Military.com reports that in 2018, 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white, but fewer and fewer white males sign up yearly. In 2023, only 25,070 white males joined, a 43 percent drop in just five years. No other demographic group has seen such a drop.
The decline in white male enlistments is significantly out of step with demographic trends in the general population. This sizeable decline is, without a doubt, the primary reason the U.S. Army missed its recruiting goals by 15,000 in 2022 and 10,000 in 2023.
So, what are we to make of all this?
Well, my immediate conclusion is that the military appears to be much less attractive not only to white males but to all males in general. Why? I believe strong and qualified males don’t want to join a military that panders to extreme, woke ideologies such as DEI and CRT.
Another reason many men are not joining, and one that I have previously posted about, is because of military leadership’s twisted ambition to put more women into combat roles. Leadership continues to push for this even though every credible study shows that doing so severely impacts combat effectiveness and unit cohesion and makes it less likely males will survive in battle.
The Navy’s recent use of a drag queen to boost recruiting hasn’t helped. Nor has the Army’s new policy of allowing recruits to ask for a “time out” if a drill sergeant is haranguing them too harshly.
The thought of drag queens crewing a Navy destroyer or infantrymen demanding a “time out” from the enemy during battle is ludicrous. Still, isn’t that the kind of soldier or sailor we are turning out if the military adheres to its dangerous woke policies?
Army, Navy, and Air Force leadership need to recognize that the social justice ideologies with which the military is now thoroughly infected make it less appealing to traditional and honorable men who were once its backbone.
Of course, the other option is to return to the draft.
The U.S. abolished the draft 51 years ago, choosing to rely on an All-Volunteer Force (AVF). The AVF has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though neither war was a victory. Of course, Vietnam was not a victory either, and that was fought with a combination of draftees and regular recruits.
Contrary to common belief, two-thirds of the U.S. military who served in the Vietnam War—and more than half of the names on The Wall—volunteered for duty. The other one-third were drafted, primarily into the Army.
In World War II, 38.8 percent (6,332,000) of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen were volunteers, while draftees made up 61.2 percent (11,535,000) of those who served.
In recent months, Congress has considered automatically registering young men aged 18 for Selective Service and making women eligible for the draft to help address the recruitment crisis. To do either of those things would most certainly create an uproar.
Nevertheless, as long as we have an all-volunteer force and until the military returns to time-honored American military values where rank is earned with merit and not with DEI, it will find it increasingly difficult to meet its recruiting goals, much less recruit the kind of men our country needs to fight and win wars.
As for me, until that happens, I won’t be counseling either of my grandsons to join up.
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