The American Military vs. Tucker Carlson

Allow me to add a little context to the ongoing battle between the American military, led by a woke group of officers, and one Tucker Carlson, Fox News host.

One notes that the Marines have already seen the light, and have withdrawn their forces.

We are human and we messed up. What was intended as a tweet in support of our female Marines and sisters serving in uniform was clearly not aligned with our standard practices or an appropriate representation of the Marine Corps. We will do better and serve the people.

As for context, consider what happened in the Pentagon in July of 2017. You might recall that Secretaries Tillerson and Mattis, along with Economic advisor Gary Cohn, convened a meeting with President Trump somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. The meeting was attended by other officers.

The officials wanted to tell Trump that they were going to take over administration foreign policy. In more polite circles, it would have been called a mutinous action. No one seemed to care about what we might well call an insurrection. 

You might recall that Trump responded forcefully, calling them a bunch of babies and accusing them of not knowing how to win wars. Of course, when the story was reported, we were told that Trump was out of line and had thrown a tantrum. The military was more offended by being called babies than by not winning wars.

For further context, consider what happened during the First Gulf War, when America’s co-ed military set out to smite Saddam Hussein. On one aircraft carrier two dozen or so fearless women warriors chose to get pregnant while sailing to Kuwait. They had to be repatriated, thus undermining group cohesion, etc. Profiles in courage they were not.

Nowadays, under the Biden presidency, the military will deal with the issue by redesigning uniforms in order to accommodate pregnancy,

And then, Roger Kimball wrote an excellent article about the hubbub yesterday in American Greatness. He exposed the military’s efforts to achieve peak political correctness. He explained, after Victor Davis Hanson, that it was part of the Obama legacy.

No matter what Lloyd Austin or the media tells you, the trouble with the U.S. Armed Forces is not political extremism but the enervating rust of political correctness. As Victor Davis Hanson has shown, the upper echelons of the U.S. military were purged by Barack Obama. If they are politicized today, it is firmly in the direction of the woke ideology of identity politics.

Today’s commander in chief is most concerned with fashion, with fitting uniforms to the female body.

Thus we have the commander-in-chief, Joe Biden, speak about the “intensity of purpose” that will be devoted to “designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating requirements for their hairstyles.” This was not a joke—or, rather, it was not said in jest. 

Perhaps the Biden means to prepare the distaff side for a different sort of Battle of the Bulge. True, he would be modestly more reassuring about the U.S. military if he could remember the name of his defense secretary or the name of the building where he works. “I want to thank the—former general . . . the guy who runs that outfit over there.” Oh, dear. 

In addition, the Army will change its performance standards, so that we will have more underqualified soldiers on the battlefield. Because, if we do not have a sufficient number of women warriors, that can only mean that the tests are skewed against women. Better yet, if a man wants to become a woman, the Biden military will pay for the surgery.

Meanwhile, the Army is about to revise its standards for physical performance downwards so that women will be able to compete more effectively with men. Once upon a time, the Army’s slogan was “Be All That You Can Be.” Today, it might as well read “Be Whatever You Want.” Among the avalanche of executive diktats signed by Joe Biden in his first weeks in office is a directive approving sex reassignment surgery for active duty personnel. 

Kimball points out that wokeness has moved from the academic world to the media to the military to the corporate world. Even Bill Maher, of all people, has declared that Americans can no longer build anything. But they are very good at renaming things that they will then tear down.

In Kimball’s words:

The metastasis of the preposterous ideology of wokeness from academia into the corporate world is alarming. Do we really need to be lectured by Coca-Cola about the evils of “whiteness”? Or Gillette about “toxic masculinity”? But the sudden spread of wokeness from the corporate world to the military is more than alarming, it is an existential threat. 

Why, after all, do we have a military? It is not to provide a level playing field for social justice warriors or a point d’appui for people experiencing “gender dysphoria.” It is to protect the United States from hostile foreign powers that mean us harm. Period. End of discussion. 

So, the American military is self-deconstructing. It’s not as though they do not know how to win, as President Trump said. It’s that they do not even care any more.