F. Peter Brown: Wokeness Will Weaken America's Military, But Conservatism Is a Perfect Antidote
The U.S. military has increasingly become an ideological battlefield.
With “woke” progressives on one side and conservatives on the other, the conflict could have powerful consequences for our nation’s warriors.
Conservatives such as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Fox News host Tucker Carlson have both argued that our military is headed down a dangerous path.
Cruz recently contended that liberal Democrats and the media are trying to turn the “greatest military on earth” into “pansies.”
Erin Perrine, a Cruz spokesperson, said in a statement to Politico:
“Sen. Cruz passionately supports the brave men and women of the United States military and has repeatedly expressed concerns that Democrat politicians, left wing bureaucrats, and the media are politicizing our armed forces to promote a fringe woke agenda based on identity politics.”
Another critic of the Department of Defense has been Tucker Carlson. He recently said:
“Most of the generals we see quoted in the press seem more committed to meeting some counterproductive diversity goal — hiring more pregnant Air Force pilots, assembling the world’s first transgender SEAL team — than on defending the United States.”
Cruz has had his critics. Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute argued:
“Politicians like Senator Cruz are disgracefully trying to draw the military into culture wars that are terrible for cohesion in our military. Cohesion and commitment are what wins wars, and these attacks damage it.”
What damages our military, though, is not valid attacks from figures such as Cruz and Carlson, but rather a blind insistence on focusing on “woke” policies to the detriment of our military’s first imperative: to defend the United States.
Political correctness in the military is a dangerous thing. It threatens to turn the military from a focus on toughness to a focus on overly sensitive “wokeness.”
Our military heroes deserve appreciation and a professional work environment. It is wokeness that threatens to degrade this environment, not the conservative values that used to matter so much in our military: freedom, tradition, duty and honor.
Fortunately, in the hearts of many servicemen, these values do have a place. For instance, the core values of both the Navy and the Marines are honor, courage and commitment.
Let us hope that these will remain the core values for a long time to come and not be undone by political pressure from the left.
Cruz and Carlson should be applauded for their stance on making sure that the U.S. military stays in its position as the best fighting force on the planet.
If wokeness continues to have a prominent place in the U.S. military, our armed forces’ place of great respect from the nations of the world could quickly crumble.
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