As a veteran, I have long been painfully aware of how the woke agenda has undermined our nation’s military strength. But it wasn’t until I read Pete Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors, that I realized just how far the rot has penetrated.
For years, the military was the last remaining bastion of meritocracy in our government. That is no longer the case, and if we want to reverse course, we need a major change in leadership. After studying the issues, reading his book, and watching his confirmation process unfold, I believe Hegseth is the best choice to lead our Defense Department, not just because of his exemplary leadership qualities and experience, but because, like so many of America’s warriors, he understands the gravity of the cultural problems facing our military leadership and how to fix them.
In his book, Hegseth explains how the career military has become corrupted by a civilian-imposed woke agenda. This is absolutely correct. I know because I’ve been there. Tragically, the armed forces have been treated like a social experiment. “Wokeness” is the order of the day. Senior military officers who value their careers and their chances of promotion have often been forced to conform to ideas such as critical race theory, which teaches that a human being’s race is central to their identity — the antithesis of what the military is all about. They’ve had to co-sign statements such as “diversity is our strength,” even though they knew full well that in the armed forces, it is our unity, not differences, that is decisive in armed conflicts.
But sadly, the military’s cultural problem hasn’t stopped at just abstract racial ideas — it’s been carried to absurd lengths.
Take the issue of allowing transgender people to serve in the military, for example, which recent military leaders have gone out of their way to accommodate. What does this mean in practice? It means men and women who want to change their genders can join the military for the purpose of obtaining the surgery, medication, and treatment necessary for them to transition. Soldiers who transition are often nondeployable for about a year after surgery. And even then, in most cases, soldiers who transition are barred from deployment to remote battlefields unless they are provided the medications they need to maintain their new gender identities. All of this, by the way, is paid for by the taxpayer.
This is not common sense. It is not mission-focused.
But what has bothered me and many of my fellow soldiers, perhaps more than anything, is the suggestion that Hegseth is a “misogynist” based on his views of women in combat. This is simply wrong — and a prime example of how our government has disregarded the mission at the expense of ideology.
In his book, Hegseth clearly says that some women are indeed the equal of men, and he himself has known many “phenomenal” female soldiers. The problem, as he sees it, is that woke ideologues require every woman to be regarded as being as successful as every man.
Hegseth’s belief is proven in the data, which the military should be focused on. He cites a 2015 Marine Corps study on women fighting alongside men. A task force made up of 300 male Marines and 100 female Marines competed with all-male task forces of 400 Marines each in a series of tests comprised of 134 battlefield tasks. The result was that the all-male units dramatically outperformed the gender-integrated unit, completing 93 of the 134 tasks better than the gender-integrated unit.
When there is a single standard of capability and women can meet the same standard as men, they should be regarded as equally successful. But hard evidence shows that this is not what has happened. That is not sexism, those are data.
What happens to the morale of our servicemembers if they are conditioned to regard each other based on their race? What happens if they are taught that our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights are shams because their authors included men who owned slaves? What happens when preparing for the mission is slowly replaced by social engineering? I fear we are seeing the answer reveal itself each and every day we allow this cultural rot to continue unaddressed. If we want to reverse course, end the recruiting crisis, and restore our military to greatness, we need change.
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Our military must return to meritocracy, common sense, and combat standards that allow combat success. We need military service to once again be a profession of values, excellence, and pride. Only then can “peace through strength” truly be achieved.
Hegseth knows what our military needs. As defense secretary, he will deliver.
Tom Stewart is a former naval attack aviation commander. He commanded Attack Squadron 686, Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia. He deployed to Gulf War One on aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt, with additional operational experience in Southeast Asia, Korea, North Africa, and the Middle East, including joint operations in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
