According to a recent report, military recruitment has fallen sharply in recent months, leaving a record low number of Americans interested in joining the U.S. Armed Forces.
The recruitment struggle has hit the Army and Navy worse than other branches.
Late last month, the Army’s vice chief of staff told Congress he will reduce total force strength by several thousand troops in the next fiscal year. By the end of fiscal 2023, just over a year from now, the branch could be short nearly 10% of their 476,000 soldier goal.
There are many likely factors, including vaccine mandates, lack of personal interaction during the pandemic, and a candidate’s physical condition.
But maybe the new “woke” Army, with a focus on noxious critical race theory (CRT), isn’t appealing to the type of person who might want to enlist.
"A military that appears to abandon its apolitical role will have a harder time attracting large numbers of warriors and patriots to its ranks."
Important read from @VeteransOnDuty. https://t.co/qzpDuB5m5A
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) August 1, 2022
For one, today’s woke left are innately hostile to traditional masculinity, which is antithetical to the reality that masculinity has long been a driving force for encouraging males to become a soldier, sailor, airman or marine.
Many would-be combat soldiers also face demonization. A heterosexual, white, Christian male, particularly from the south, is the last acceptable bastion of mockery by media elites. These people witness perpetual bigotry toward their culture, yet admirably soldier on. The south — particularly Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — still easily contributes the highest percentages of 18- to 24-year-olds to military service.
It is ideological, too. Insouciant to global threats, the woke view the military as yet another political battlefield. Sadly, some of the Pentagon brass — and surely the White House — have joined Team Woke.
On day one in office, the Biden administration bowed to the woke and rescinded a Trump-era executive order banning CRT instruction in the military. Fewer than two weeks later, his defense secretary demanded all units seek out “extremism in the ranks.”
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday went one worse, actually promoting Ibram Kendi’s vile “How to Be an Antiracist” on his official reading list. The sophomoric, easily-debunked book endorses racial discrimination and seeks to tear Americans apart.
Reports also show the sudden drop came after President Biden announced that several million hours and over a half-million dollars is now spent pushing a “woke agenda” into the ranks.
Imposing anti-American tribalism on our troops directly threatens our national security. Warped ideas undermine confidence in the nation’s principles, trust in our system of government, and traditional values that promote color-blind cohesion among service members.
“The common refrain from both civilian leaders and active-duty service members alike is that the military ‘should be a reflection of our values as a nation,’” a retired platoon leader opined in a 2021 piece for the American Mind. “Over the last 10 years, corporations and governments in the West have set out to redesign their entire societies along specific goals regarding sex and gender representation for purely socio-political reasons … These explicit cultural changes bled naturally and inevitably into the staffing and design of the armed forces of the United States. But has anyone asked whether redesigning the military to be a reflection of these new values and goals makes for good warfighting?”
Our military men and women take an oath to defend the Constitution and all that it stands upon. Declaring to them that our Founders’ belief systems perpetuated “white supremacy” is reductive and execrable. It’s also dangerous, since it weakens our resolve in an increasingly dangerous world.
Will it be too late before consequences are more deadly? Whistleblowers have been asked to come forward, but facing repercussions, they’re seemingly making futile progress.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
