Whose Army Is It, Anyway?
The Army is taking sides in the culture wars.
From Military.com:
The Army is circulating a draft policy tweak that would specify that soldiers can request to move if they feel state or local laws discriminate against them based on gender, sex, religion, race or pregnancy, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plans.
The guidance, which would update a vague service policy to add specific language on discrimination, is far from final and would need approval from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. But if enacted, it could be one of the most progressive policies for the force amid a growing wave of local anti-LGBTQ and restrictive contraception laws in conservative-leaning states, where the Army does most of its business.
More:
The policy would ostensibly sanction soldiers to declare that certain states are too racist, too homophobic, too sexist or otherwise discriminatory to be able to live there safely and comfortably.
If you were trying fracture and further politicize the military, this would be one way to do it. They see it as a way to protect their servicemembers from the ramifications of political decisions, but, in practice, this is the military taking sides in a bitterly divisive political dispute, something the military is not supposed to do:
The Army's consideration of a policy to protect soldiers from discriminatory laws is part of a wider Defense Department campaign to start shielding service members from increasingly divisive laws and rhetoric from state-level lawmakers.
It’s an interesting position for the military to take, given they didn’t seem to have the same concerns when it came to combating “extremism” in the services, teaching Critical Race Theory to troops, and showing solidarity with those protesting the death of George Floyd in 2020. These were all divisive issues which military leadership not only couldn’t help wading into, but, also felt it necessary to impose on their troops.
Now, the military is considering allow servicemembers to dictate the terms of their service over politics. Before you start talking about discrimination, remember: this is the military we’re talking about. Serving doesn’t strip troops of their rights, per se, but, as a condition of service, their conduct is highly regulated. More important, troops aren’t exempt from the law and, whether they like it or not, represent the institutions that make laws, even the ones they find distasteful or personally offensive. Prior to officially joining the service, all enlistees swear the following oath (officers swear to a slightly different, but largely similar, oath):
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)." [bold mine]
Nowhere does it say one’s service is contingent on the political environment within which one serves. This is what it means to wear a uniform and serve. That said, if the laws of a certain state do, in fact, turn out to be discriminatory (ex., homosexuality is outlawed), then transferring a servicemember out of the state would arguably be the most prudent form of action.
But what exactly is the Army reacting to, here? The article cites moves made by Republican politicians concerning the issue of gender identity, specifically:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is largely seen as a GOP front-runner in the event Donald Trump doesn't run for the White House again, signed what critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay Bill."
That policy forbids teachers from referencing sexual orientation or gender identity to students between kindergarten and third grade. Gay teachers fear that means even mentioning their spouses could get them fired or land them in the midst of an ugly political fight in school board meetings that have become a staple of right wing media.
In April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into a law a sweeping measure to prevent transgender kids from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identity and limiting schools from teaching about race. Kemp also signed a policy that bans books deemed offensive from school libraries and gives parents tools to file complaints.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called on the public to report parents of transgender kids to child protective services if those children are receiving any gender-affirming care.
The Army seems to share the view that stopping teachers from talking about sex with children aged 5 - 8 years old amounts to oppression of sexual minorities. It also seems to have adopted the stance that gender is fluid, socially constructed, and that the male-female binary is totally bunk. Finally, they also seem to believe that there exists no way to teach about race without arguing that the United States, the country to which the Army is sworn to protect, is fundamentally racist and that certain races are more susceptible to racism than others.
The Army is taking sides in the culture wars. That’s what’s happening, here. The Regime has spent decades ensuring not only that the military remain under civilian control, but that the services adopt the ideology and tenets of the ruling class. After all, a politically-aligned armed force is the ultimate guarantor of the Regime. It looks like those efforts have paid off.
It’s shocking to see how quickly the military became compromised in this fashion. But, again, this is the result of years of attempts by both the left-wing ruling class and public to force the military to become less like itself and more in line with the values that define civilian society. 25 years ago, the worry that gripped the minds of the ruling class was that the military was diverging from civilian America. These concerns were encapsulated in an essay written by military writer Thomas Ricks in the July 1997 issue of The Atlantic:
Several trends already under way in civilian society and in the post-Cold War military threaten to widen the gap in the coming years, further isolating and alienating the military. In his 1974 prologue to the revised edition of The Professional Soldier, Morris Janowitz concluded confidently that there would not be "a return to earlier forms of a highly self-contained and socially distinct military force; the requirements of technology of education and of political support make that impossible." But the conditions that shaped the military of which Janowitz wrote no longer obtain. It now appears not only possible but likely that over the next twenty years the U.S. military will revert to a kind of garrison status, largely self-contained and increasingly distinct as a society and subculture. "Today," says retired Admiral Stanley Arthur, who commanded U.S. naval forces during the Gulf War, "the armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve. More and more, enlisted [men and women] as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve. This is not healthy in an armed force serving a democracy." [bold mine]
“Garrison status, largely self-contained and increasingly distinct as a society and subculture.” Is that how the military appears today? Certainly, the military still wears uniforms and subjects its members to a level of discipline with no real parallel in civilian society. It kind of has to. But, with few exceptions, the trend has been, increasingly, to de-emphasize the service aspect of military life to make the institution appear a little more inviting, if only to boost recruitment and maintain the size of the force.
More from Ricks:
These isolating trends are occurring amid broader cultural changes in the military—notably the politicization of the officer corps. Of course, military culture has always had a conservative streak, just as journalism has always had an element of anti-authoritarianism. I suspect, however, that today's officers are both more conservative and more politically active than their predecessors.
Admittedly, the evidence is hazy and the data are skimpy—in part because "conservative" is almost impossible to define. Nonetheless, the few indications available today are strikingly at odds with the conclusions Janowitz reached. Janowitz found that many officers continued to avoid open party preferences, but also detected a trend toward more liberals among military officers. He found the military becoming more representative of society, with a long-term upward trend in the number of officers "willing to deviate from traditional conservative identification." And he detected a correlation between higher ranks and greater intensity of conservative attitudes.
Today the available evidence indicates that all these trends have reversed. The military appears to be becoming politically less representative of society, with a long-term downward trend in the number of officers willing to identify themselves as liberals. Open identification with the Republican Party is becoming the norm. And the few remaining liberals in uniform tend to be colonels and generals, perhaps because they began their careers in the draft-era military. The junior officer corps, apart from its female and minority members, appears to be overwhelmingly hard-right Republican and largely comfortable with the views of Rush Limbaugh. Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap observed in a recent essay published by the Air Force Academy, "Many officers privately expressed delight that" as a result of the controversy over gays in the military, the Reserve Officers Training Corps program is producing "fewer officers from the more liberal campuses to challenge [the Air Force officers'] increasingly right-wing philosophy."
You can see what’s really animating Ricks. While conceding the military attracts or cultivates conservative attitudes, Ricks was worried that servicemembers, particularly the officer corps, were becoming too conservative and too Republican. There’s something to this concern, but ask yourself: if the military was more liberal and constituted overwhelmingly Democratic voters, would Thomas Ricks, whose political views aren’t any mystery, have written an entire essay warning against the politicization of the military?
He summarizes his thesis with the following:
When the military is politically active, when it believes it is uniquely aware of certain dangers, when it discusses responding to domestic threats to cherished values, then it edges toward becoming an independent actor in domestic politics.
Once more, with feeling, ask yourself: does this describe the U.S. military today? The military may have become politically active, but it did so partly at the encouragement of its leaders, a trend that became publicly noticeable during the presidency of Barack Obama and picking up steam under President Donald Trump. “Independent actor” most certainly doesn’t describe the institution today, not when it parrots lines indistinguishable from the Democratic Party’s platform. It’s not enough to merely carry out the president’s dictates, but, the military now also engages in the practice of virtue-signalling:
A big reason why the politicization of the military seems to be accelerating is because, during the last several years, the intelligentsia of the military establishment, began to more vocally argue that they ought to shift away from trying to remain an apolitical institution and, instead, embrace its role as a political institution. Here’s a good example of that argument:
Every smart defense strategist learns early in their career the wise words of Carl von Clausewitz, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” And yet, military leaders are constantly fearful that they will be labeled with that scarlet word, “political.” To some degree, this fear is well-founded; it is also profoundly problematic. The terms “political,” “apolitical,” and “politicization” are applied and misapplied across a wide range of issues, and understanding the military’s relationship to politics deserves serious reconsideration.
Claiming that the military is, or should be, apolitical is both confusing and counterproductive. The military itself is, of course, an intensely political institution. Military leaders need to be able to engage on political issues with their troops and with the public, and they shouldn’t shy away from a topic simply for fear of being labeled “political.” Instead, they should actively tackle what it means to do so in an appropriate and responsible manner.
In practice, that looks like retiring the military’s ambiguous “apolitical norm” and replacing it with new practical rules of thumb about what topics are off-limits for those in uniform. We don’t want a military that is “apolitical”; we instead want a military that avoids partisanship, institutional endorsements, and electoral influence. Those topics should stay off limits, but politics are too critical to be entirely ignored by the military. The military is a political creature — it’s time for it to consider what that means in a more practical and appropriate manner. [bold mine]
The problem with defining problematic politicization strictly along the lines of partisanship, institutional endorsements, and electoral influence is that the lines are quite blurry. For example, if the Democrats are known to favor one policy and the Republicans are known to oppose it, and a military leader comes out in favor of that policy, how is this meaningfully different from blatant party endorsement? As for institutional endorsements, servicemembers, particularly leaders, are often perceived as speaking for the military writ large, which is exactly why the military was expected to maintain an apolitical stance to begin with. There’s no way to avoid politicization if servicemembers are allowed to speak so openly and publicly about politics, even if they never use the words “Democrat” or “Republican.” It becomes far too easy to be compromised and exploited.
More:
As scholar Risa Brooks has argued, lip service to an apolitical norm also can blind officers to their own biases or hinder them from understanding the political implications of their actions or advice, ultimately enabling the types of behaviors the norm was intended to prevent. Similarly, fears of becoming a meme or political poster child also can cause military officers to refrain from talking about important issues in public or with their personnel. Their silence itself can sometimes be interpreted as a political message.
Indeed, following the death of George Floyd, it took nearly a week before any of the service chiefs released statements to their service members about the killing or the unrest that had consumed the nation — although for at least a few of them, that silence was almost surely informed by heavy pressure from Secretary of Defense Esper to refrain from commenting on these issues at that moment. In fact, it wasn’t until after Kaleth O. Wright – in his own words “a black man who happens to be Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force” – posted a powerful Twitter thread on June 1stthat they did so. Since then, a flood of senior military officers have released statements and videos to their units, affirming the core values of the military, condemning racism, and promoting diversity and inclusion both in the military and in society — issues that, we hasten to add, should not be seen as political and instead rather as the ultimate comparative advantage of a capable U.S. military and society.
There’s some serious mental gymnastics at work here. No matter what anyone thinks of what happened to George Floyd, there’s no evidence, then and now, that his death was the result of racism and insufficient diversity and inclusion in the military and society. The only reason why military leaders felt the need to chime in on the matter is because it became a moral panic which whipped up an alarming, self-destructive frenzy and nearly ripped the nation apart. However, instead of reassuring Americans that they stood ready to provide support and render assistance necessary to restoring order (which is exactly what the military’s role would’ve been, had they been called into action), military leadership took sides. Granted, they took the side which had the most popular support, but, in doing so, they validated the burning, looting, and, in some cases, killing, in the name of George Floyd. It’s not often the military provides cover to chaos and disorder, but that’s what happened in June 2020.
Characterizing “racism” and “diversity and inclusion” as non-political is an absurdly dishonest take and really showed the hand of authors Jim Golby and Mara Karlin. It’s tiring having to listen to elites and the professional-managerial class (PMC) lecture to Americans that racism is bad, hardly a controversial statement. More important, both racism and diversity and inclusion have become political terms, in large part because America’s largest political party (the Democrats, if you weren’t sure) have built their entire platform around both. While racism still exists in America in certain forms and will likely never go away, people being people, the Left has expended obscene amounts of capital trying to convince Americans their country is rabidly racist, irredeemably so, and nothing short of a revolution is going to correct this problem.
The reason there existed an apolitical norm, once upon a time, is because, once the political genie is let out of the bottle, it becomes impossible to put back in. It’s difficult to establish clear limits on political behavior, as these two scholars concede, but the answer isn’t to make it easier for the military to talk politics. Are we not to expect those in uniform to exercise the discipline necessary to maintain the military’s apolitical front?
The reason this issue possesses so much urgency is because the military both protects and threatens the country at the same time. Think of it this way: if you own guns for home defense, as the Constitution permits, those guns can also be used to harm those living inside that home. It’s for this reason the Founding Fathers were against the establishment of a professional standing army, fearing it could be used to establish and enforce tyranny, after having fought so hard to escape it.
The way to minimize the threat the military poses to society is to not only place it under civilian control, but, to also secure the integrity of the institution. In practice, this means you give the military one task to focus all its energy and resources: protect the country. Once you start adding duties or set the expectation the military must be willing to talk politics in the name of “upholding values” (whose values, anyway?), this opens the military up to compromise and you can only be compromised once. The military cannot exist without a value system of its own, but those values are drawn from society. In the absence of a strong, cohesive, American citizenry, the military’s values, along with its mission, have been perverted and subverted to achieve ideological aims.
A quarter-century ago, the ruling class was worried the military was at risk of becoming too conservative, divorced from society, and independent from the civilians who are supposed to hold the reigns. Today, it turns out the real problem is that the military has been co-opted by people, both inside and outside the institution, who ascribe to a revolutionary ideology and are willing to fulfill the Regime’s dictates. The worst-case scenario isn’t a coup d’etat, but an armed force all too willing to turn its guns inward on the order of its leadership, against its own citizens, many of whom elected to serve or have family members who did.
In our time of upheaval, the military remains the one institution most Americans still overwhelmingly trust, even as that trust has eroded, especially concerning its leadership. When those charged with exercising violence on our behalf are viewed as the only institution worth preserving, it becomes easy to think they can solve all of our problems. Followed to its logical conclusion, this becomes an excuse to weaponize the armed forces against those viewed as obstacles to the Regime and impediments to social progress. We might not be there yet, but we can see it coming.
Maybe the military isn’t so trustworthy, after all.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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