For those old enough to remember or who may have served during the Vietnam era, the impact that war had on the fabric of our military and our nation was truly devastating. It was compounded by the nation’s apathy and, at times, outright hostility towards those who served.
The result was a disaster in morale and significant indiscipline incidents throughout the force. Readiness and our warfighting ability were placed at risk. We left Vietnam a hollow military and now appear to have come full circle.
The rebuilding of the military after Vietnam and the transition to an All-Volunteer Force took years, led by then-President Reagan and senior officers who vowed never to let what happened in Vietnam happen again. It was very painful, but we came out of it a better, more capable force with extremely high morale. It was this force that fought the first Gulf War, along with Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Unfortunately, our senior leaders have again lost their focus on the most critical aspects of our profession, namely, readiness and warfighting and selecting leaders based on merit, not some Marxist concepts such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). These leaders have forgotten their primary responsibility is to man, train, and equip the armed forces. They have displayed a cavalier attitude and a lack of loyalty in dismissing over 18,000 military members and volunteers, all of whom refused to take an experimental vaccine. Recent medical studies seem to vindicate these service members.
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Leaders now care more about bringing a “woke” culture to our profession with its disastrous impact on recruiting and readiness while giving priority to finding phantom nonexistent “extremists” in the ranks recently debunked by the Wall Street Journal, among others, me included. Their major achievement, however, was giving us unilateral surrender in Afghanistan and the sacrifice of the lives of 2400 brave soldiers while leaving behind $70 Billion in equipment, aircraft, armored vehicles, and thousands of real “assault weapons” to arm our adversaries. To this list, we can add a recruiting shortfall of crisis proportions driven in part by using Drag Queens and cross-dressers to entice young military-age middle-class males to join. No surprise that the American public’s desire to serve is in the toilet. Our values have become nonexistent while our apathy rating is off the chart.
The time for accountability to the American people and those serving has arrived. The damage of the past three years is immense and will take many years to correct, while those responsible will escape any responsibility. They betrayed our trust and the trust of our soldiers and their families; this was unconscionable. Correcting this damage starts with a values-based Commander-In-Chief and senior leaders who lead from the front, not from their office, and who will hold everyone under them accountable regardless of skin color or ideology and promote based on merit, not your DEI score. They need to get their heads out of email, Facebook, and Twitter and get in the damn foxhole with soldiers and fix this problem or be shown the door. At the end of the day, the mission of the Armed Forces is to fight and win our nation’s wars. To do that requires we instill a warrior ethos, not a woke ideology, into the young men and women who volunteer to join and who want to make a difference. After all, it’s only the security and survival of our nation that’s at stake.
