Obama's Military Fought the Culture Wars

Aside from Kyle Smith in the New York Post, no one is really talking about this. What is this? Well, it’s another part of the Obama legacy. This time it involves the American military and the Obama administration’s systematic effort to weaken it by making it a role model for diversity. No more dedicated to fighting wars against America’s enemies, the military was going to go all in for social justice. And cultural transformation.

You might imagine that the military defends the nation and wins wars. If you think so, you would be wrong. The goal of the Obama military was to put diversity into action, no matter the consequences. Now, Smith reports, a retired Army captain, by name of James Hasson has called out the Obama policy in a new book:

A curious thing happened in the second half of the Obama era: the commander in chief began viewing the military less as an entity designed to destroy enemies but a tool with which to achieve progressive goals. Warriors were turned into social-justice warriors. Men and women with risible-to-nonexistent military records were made heads of the services. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus (who had logged all of two years service as a junior officer) named ships after Cesar Chavez and Harvey Milk.

James Hasson, a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan, stresses in “Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging the Military” that he isn’t making a partisan, political case against President Obama’s efforts to reshape the military.

For instance, Smith continues:

Hasson takes a sobering look at such matters as drastically lowering standards in order to pass more women through Army Ranger school, ignoring data showing that all-male Marine units outperformed mixed-sex ones and that female recruits are more likely to suffer serious injuries.

Hasson reports on a program in which male soldiers were ordered to train in fake breasts and distended bellies so they could experience what life was like for pregnant soldiers. Ordering a recruit to do more than 10 pushups as punishment for minor misdeeds was declared unduly harsh.

We would add, as has been reported elsewhere, that the co-ed military saw a proliferation of incidents of what was called fraternization, accusations of sexual harassment. Many careers were ended. Many seasoned commanders were thrown out of the military.

Naturally, the Obama administration believed that the military would be strengthened if we had biological males bunking with females and vice versa. The transgender follies were put into practice by the Obama policy:

The Obama policy to overturn centuries of precedent and treat troops in accordance with whatever gender identity they declared, writes Hasson, is widely deemed within the military to be unlike the issue of homosexuality. For one thing, transgender individuals were already serving. Yet because the military ranks combat readiness ahead of soothing the psyches of its members, those individuals were required to meet standards according to their immutable biological sex.

If you are born male, you may call yourself female if you like, but you will still be held to the physical-fitness standards of other biological males. (The Obama policy decreed that troops could change their gender marker without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery or making any other physical changes.)

Among homosexuals, by contrast, the issue up for debate was not the individual readiness of the troops but whether the morale and cohesion of those around them would be adversely affected.

Moreover, once the concept of gender is ruled purely a psychological matter, it opens up other complications. What of the soldier who identifies as neither male nor female — the “nonbinary” individual? Four states now offer such an option on birth certificates, because it’s never too early to be uncertain about who you are.

Now they tell us that non-binary means, neither male nor female. What happens if a non-binary soldier insists on being called by neutered pronouns? Do we need to equip all ships and submarines with special facilities... gender neutered?

There is a reason, Hasson points out, that no generals were present when Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter held the press conference to announce the transgender policy. A 2016 poll found that only 12 percent of active troops thought Obama’s plan would improve readiness.

It used to be broadly accepted that the military is a special culture that is entitled to broad discretion about how it chooses its members. Military service is not a right extended to all Americans but rather a privilege extended only to the few deemed most able to accomplish the military’s mission.

Three-quarters of Americans are disqualified from service on various grounds — obesity, education level, physical fitness and so on. People with certain chronic conditions such as diabetes are barred, because of the difficulties such disorders might pose during deployment.

Winning battles is difficult enough without Washington visionaries ordering the military to operate like the Oberlin campus.