Tag Archive for: Navy

Over 100 ‘Secretly Shot’ Pornographic Videos Of U.S. Naval Service Members Uploaded Online: REPORT

/in , , , , , , , /by

Over 100 explicit videos of U.S. Navy personnel were uploaded to a pornography site in January 2020, according to court documents unsealed in April.

The videos featuring the personnel in bathroom stalls had been uploaded to Pornhub and appeared to be “secretly shot,” but were taken down within days of being reported to the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), according to court documents obtained by Military.com. A NCIS agent investigating how the videos were uploaded later obtained subscriber details from Pornhub after obtaining a subpoena and later a search warrant, according to Pacific Daily News.

“Many of the videos — which included audio — appeared to depict various U.S. military members masturbating in bathroom stalls to pornographic materials viewed on electronic devices,” a court document alleged, according to Military.com.

Some of the videos were labeled with the rank and last name of the victims, Military.com reported.

The case was unsealed April 17, according to the Pacific Daily News. No arrests have been made or charges filed in the case, Military.com reported.

Pornhub, one of the largest online porn sites, has come under fire for allowing underage individuals to view its material and had responded to legislation requiring age verification by blocking access to users from states that pass such measures.

The Navy and Pornhub did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Virginia Governor Signs Bill Requiring Porn Sites To Verify User Age

Military Could Hit Troops With Courts-Martial For Refusing To Use Preferred Pronouns, Experts Say

The U.S. Navy faces a new crisis: Years of delays expected for new warships

RELATED VIDEO: Biden Spends Half His Speech to the Wounded Warriors Looking at the Wrong People

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Woke Department of Defense is Opening Up a New Avenue of Data Collection

/in , , , , /by

Great news for the Communist Chinese who have flooded our Republic with over 400,000 male military age illegal immigrants.

The U.S. Navy led by the woke/Communist Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has approved a program that will allow sailors to utilize their iPhones and Androids etc. with an internet connection while out at sea in an effort to improve their living conditions as per the woke Navy leadership as per a public directive on March 12th, 2024.

In a The Conversationalist column titled “Soldiers with smartphones can be a gift to the enemy”, Maria Farrell wrote,

With security risks and data-leaks, why do some serving soldiers bring smartphones on deployment, and how do countries differ?

A few years ago, my husband deployed to Afghanistan where the British Army had categorically banned all soldiers from using their phones. He called once a week at most, and our conversations were stilted and short. It’s hard to share sweet nothings in front of a line of soldiers waiting their turn. All was well until one morning I had coffee with another army wife. Her husband was working in the US Marine Corps Camp Leatherneck, and she got to facetime him every. single. morning. What I’d thought was an iron law of deployment – no personal communications devices for anyone, anywhere, anytime – turned out to be more an evolving set of practices.

Cell phones are wildly insecure. They’re the most vulnerable node in a network designed to generate and exploit user-data and share it with a wide range of actors, from device manufacturers, operating system owners, content-creators, software and app-designers, phone companies and partner networks. And those are just the organizations officially permitted to pull down mobile device data. Many apps leak data continually, as a consequence of either poor design or the user’s failure to install updates. We also have a perennial problem of apps that access and share personal and device data they have collected unnecessarily.

These Communist Chinese illegal immigrants who, under the Biden reign of Marxist terror have been given a free pass into the USA via Mexico and even can join the U.S. Navy after they get their Social Security Numbers and then they can join the Navy and get to work uploading the sensitive information to their handlers in Beijing from our warships.

The Navy currently prohibits using cell phones with internet connectivity aboard warships due to security reasons. Well you would think right? Obviously these cell phones will also expose their users’ location data and, in turn, those of the vessels they have boarded.

Much like the CIA and the FBI illegally are tracking American citizens in the United States unconstitutionally by collecting their cell phone data now the communist Chinese will have the same opportunity on board our warships.

Boot camp is a joke and literally anyone can pass this gauntlet that used to separate the men from the boys in the past era of military training. Now Boot Camp is a free pass if you can wake up on time and don’t need assistance with wiping your own behind.

Under this so called “let’s make life easy for the lazy weak and non productive new younger generation of sailors trial program”, sailors aboard a warship which has not been identified by the weak woke Department of the Navy is actually based in Changwon, (Imagine that) 185 miles off the coast of Seoul, South Korea.

It will be easy to ID the ship once the sailors start calling their wives lol and once they will be able to use their phones connected to the internet via a taxpayer funded commercial low Earth orbit satellite, according to the woke Navy officials.

When I deployed in Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield I was allowed one radio message per week strictly controlled by Radio Central to protect the lives and security of our mission.

Now the Communist Chinese and the Iranians will be feasting at the trough of information flowing directly from the heart of one of our warships.

May God protect our republic from this current Marxist White House and Department of Defence.

©2024. Geoff Ross. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Navy sailors get 12 official mobile “apps”

EXCLUSIVE: ‘A Huge Blow’: Decline In White Recruits Fueling The Military’s Worst-Ever Recruiting Crisis, Data Shows

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Each U.S. military service saw a notable decline in white recruits over the past five years, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, likely factoring into the military’s crippling recruiting crisis.

The Army, Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting objectives by historically large margins in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, as the broader American public has grown wary of military service, according to Department of Defense (DOD) statistics, officials and experts who spoke to the DCNF. Since 2018, however, the number of recruits from minority groups has remained steady — or, in some cases, increased — while the number of white recruits has declined, according to data on the demographics of new recruits obtained by the DCNF.

The data “reveals the decline of white recruits is almost entirely responsible for the recruiting crisis,” Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute, told the DCNF.

“A smaller proportion of white Americans serve now than ever before. This is fundamental, because complimentary increases in black and Hispanic recruits have not taken place,” he added.

U.S. troops are under attack in the Middle East, maintaining a heightened posture against a belligerent Russia in Europe, and bolstering deterrence against the People’s Republic of China. The U.S. military is weakening, unable to respond to some of the most pressing challenges to U.S. national security, according to a report released by the Heritage Foundation.

“This is a huge blow as the recruiting crisis is the worst in the history of the all volunteer force,” Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at Heritage, told the DCNF, referring to the plummeting numbers of white recruits since 2018.

A Dramatic Decline In White Recruits

Other demographic groups have fluctuated over those five years, but none consistently tumbled over time like the white demographic.

In fiscal year 2018, 44,042 new recruits to the Army — or 56.4% of the total — were white, according to data obtained by the DCNF. That number collapsed to a low of 25,070 — or 44.0% of the total — in fiscal 2023.

Over the same time period, black Army recruits increased from 19.6% of the total in 2018 to 23.5% in 2023, and Hispanic Army recruits rose from 17.2% to 23.5%. However, the real number of recruits from the remaining non-white demographic groups also dipped from fiscal 2018 to 2023, as the total number of new personnel the Army signed on each year fell dramatically, the data shows. None of these groups saw the same degree of decline as white recruits, however.

Military.com first reported the precipitous drop in the number of Army soldiers recruited in fiscal year 2023 from five years prior.

“What we’re seeing is a reflection of society; what we know less of is what is driving all of these things,” an Army official told Military.com. “There is no widely accepted cause.”

Click here for Army New Recruits By Race infographic.

The Army implemented new race categories in fiscal year 2023 that split Asian or Pacific Islander into individual categories and introduced multiple options combined under “Two or More” in the data obtained by the DCNF. For visual aid purposes, the DCNF re-combined Asian and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander in 2023.

While the Army may have experienced the worst of the military’s recruiting woes, the data obtained by the DCNF shows that a similar pattern exists across all branches of the armed services. White people are joining the military in lower numbers than before as other racial or ethnic groups do not demonstrate the same shortfalls.

Data for the Air Force shows that Asian recruits increased from 1,110 — or 3.7% of a total 29,831 recruits — in 2018 to 1,471 — or 6.1% of a total of 23,967 recruits — in 2023. While the number of black Air Force recruits was nearly identical during this period — 5,144 in 2018 and 5,155 in 2023 — they comprised a larger percentage of the incoming force in 2023, at 21.51%, than they had in 2018, at 17.2%, as the Air Force’s incoming classes shrunk.

White Air Force recruits, by contrast, dipped from 21,593 in 2018, or 72.4% of the total, to 15,068, or 62.9% of the total, in 2023, the data shows.

Hispanic recruits were tracked as a separate, binary measure of ethnicity. The number categorized as non-Hispanic dropped from 24,204 in 2018 to 17,913 in 2023 — a decline of 6,291. At the same time, the number of Hispanic recruits increased only slightly — from 5,627 in 2018 to 6,054 in 2023.

It was unclear precisely how many white Air Force recruits also selected Hispanic as their ethnicity, or how many Hispanic recruits selected the “white” or “multiple” race category. Data for the Space Force was not included in the DCNF’s analysis.

Click here for Air Force New Recruits By Race infographic.

In the Navy, the number of white recruits fell from 24,343 in fiscal year 2018 to 18,205 in fiscal year 2023, accounting for some of the overall drop of about 9,000 new recruits over the same time period, the data shows. The numbers of black and Asian Navy recruits increased over the same period, with black recruits increasing from 6,798 in 2018 to 7,947 in 2023 and Asian recruits increasing from 1,518 to 2,075 over the same period.  As with the Air Force data, Hispanic recruits were not included in the dataset as a category.

The ethnicity of 10% Navy recruits in 2018 was listed as “none-unknown,” but that number dropped to nearly zero by 2021, potentially clouding any true comparison of data between years. There were also small drops in recruits listed as American Indian or Alaskan Native, “multiple races” and Native Hawaiian-Other Pacific Islander.

As in the Air Force, a separate measurement of ethnicity for Navy recruits included only two categories: Hispanic and Non-Hispanic. The proportion of Hispanic recruits grew from 18% in 2018 to 25% in 2023, while the real number of Non-Hispanic recruits actually dropped from 31,977 to 22,746.

Click here for Nave New Recruits By Race infographic.

Unlike with the Air Force and Navy, the Marine Corps calculated race and ethnicity together, placing Hispanics in a separate category alongside white, African American and “other” recruits. It also included specific data for officers and enlisted recruits, further complicating any comparison between the services. However, this data appears to suggest that, although the Marine Corps has not struggled to meet recruiting objectives like the other services have, any decline in overall numbers of new recruits has been driven by a smaller pool of white Marines in the new cohort.

White enlisted Marine Corps recruits dropped from 21,455 — 58% of the total — in fiscal 2018 to 14,287 — 43% of the total — in fiscal 2023. Hispanic recruits climbed from 9,984 — 27% of the total — to 12,859 — 39% of the total. The number of black recruits did not change appreciably: 3,708, or roughly 10%, in 2018 to 3,603, or roughly or 11%, in 2023.

The “other” category for enlisted Marine recruits jumped from 1,765 to 2,574.

The largest drop in white enlisted Marines occurred between 2021 and 2022, when they declined by 3,090, accounting for most of the overall decline of 3,214.

Combining both enlisted personnel and officers, there was an overall 32.2% decline in the number of white Marines joining. In 2018, there was a combined total 22,699 white enlisted personnel and officers recruited; in 2023 it was 15,387. The number of African American Marine recruits decreased marginally — from 3,708 to 3,603 — while recruits categorized as Hispanic increased from 9,984 to 12,859, as did recruits categorized as “other” — 1,765 in 2018 to 2,574 in 2023.

Click here for the Marine Corps Recruits By Race infographic.

Behind The Decline In White Recruits

Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps officials could not explain why there has been a decline in whites recruited to serve.

“Factors influencing recruitment demographics can be complex and multifaceted,” an Air Force spokesperson told the DCNF.

Spokespeople for each of the services cited various reasons recruitment overall has fallen dramatically in the past three years.

For example, only 23% of 17-to-24-year-old Americans meet the minimum physical and academic standards for joining without a waiver and even fewer — about 10% — express a desire to join, according to an Army press release. The civilian job market may present more attractive opportunities with better benefits, while fewer members of the younger generation are familiar with the military at all, officials say.

Young Americans are also losing trust in institutions in general, including the U.S. military, the Army has said.

In a 2022 survey the Army commissioned, young people cited safety concerns and the stress of Army life as inhibitors to enlisting and also said they didn’t want to steal time away from pursuing other careers.

“Additionally, recognizing that Generation Z represents the newest cohort of service members, it is essential to meet their expectations for an inclusive workplace. As we engage with youth, a fundamental principle remains steadfast – the recruitment of qualified Americans who mirror the society the Department of the Air Force serves,” the Air Force spokesperson said.

Army officials attributed factors including drug use, obesity and a drop in white male representation in the labor market in comments to Military.com. They also blamed Republicans’ partisan attacks against perceived left-wing infiltration of the military, saying an excessive focus on “wokeness” had presented the military as an institution hostile to white people, according to Military.com.

Conservative lawmakers and media highlighting the Army’s preoccupation with diversity could contribute to the problem, some Army officials told Military.com.

“No, the young applicants don’t care about this stuff,” one Army official told Military.com. “There’s a level of prestige in parts of conservative America with service that has degraded.”

The Army did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment on the data.

Experts cast doubt on the Pentagon’s talking points about problems with eligibility to serve.

“All of that historically has been a challenge, and it is no different today. Those aren’t the reasons why they’re not getting recruits,” Greenway told the DCNF.

And, they don’t explain why the numbers of white recruits are falling.

“Fewer white Americans see the military as a righteous way to serve their country, but it is readily apparent the military is trying to recruit fewer white Americans in order to meet various policies of race composition in place throughout the Armed Forces. For every diversity objective, there is an imperative to reduce the proportion of white recruits. Since 2018, that’s exactly what has happened,” Thibeau said.

Race-Focused Recruiting

The military for years has prioritized reaching out to women and minority racial or ethnic groups, adding new initiatives each year aimed at increasing the proportion of underrepresented groups among the total ranks.

Pentagon officials and official documents outline the military’s goals to increase the proportion of minority ethnic and racial groups in the total ranks.

The military does not have explicit quotas for representation in the ranks. But, the Pentagon’s guiding strategic plan through 2026 sets year-over-year targets for “increased representation of racial/ethnic minorities and women” in military career fields where the breakdown is seen as out of balance. It also sets goals of having more minorities included in the pool of applicants eligible for promotion to higher ranks.

The Pentagon’s top military officer has stated that he hires “for diversity.”

“We focus on recruiting the best and brightest of America,” a Navy spokesperson told the DCNF.

“Though faced with a challenging recruiting environment, the Navy has and continues to provide several opportunities to all who choose to wear the uniform, and we will continue to build pathways for all qualified individuals to serve.”

The Air Force “seeks to reflect the broader population to ensure a well-rounded force,” the spokesperson told the DCNF.

A Marine Corps spokesperson explicitly denied the service follows diversity-focused recruitment policies.

“Marine Corps Recruiting Command does not have diversity-oriented policies. Applicants must be morally, medically and physically qualified in order to serve,” the spokesperson told the DCNF.

A shift in emphasis to criteria aside from performance, such as race, ethnicity or gender, “is going to impact the groups that would be disadvantaged by that for the perception that that they would be disadvantaged by that,” Greenway told the DCNF.

“The services are prioritizing racial goals, and when you pursue racial goals and composition, you’re going to change your recruiting policy,” Greenway told the DCNF. It also contributes to declining trust in the military as white young people who would otherwise be eligible and interested in service lose confidence they would be evaluated and promoted based on their qualification, he added.

Complaints about the military’s diversity-oriented policies emanating from Congress are more likely reflective of feedback lawmakers receive from constituents, Greenway said.

The Worst Recruiting Crisis In 50 Years

The size of the active-duty force fluctuated between 2018 and 2023, but reached dramatic lows at the end of 2023, data shows.

The DOD maintained an estimated 1,314,000 active-duty troops out of an authorized end strength of 1,322,500 at the end of fiscal year 2018, according to department statistics. The Army missed its active duty recruiting goal by 6,528 troops, while the other services slightly exceeded theirs, data shows.

Congress’ fiscal year 2024 defense policy bill capped military end strength at 1,295,700 active-duty personnel, down from an authorized 1,316,944 in 2023, when it achieved only an estimated 1,296,271, data shows.

“This fiscal year was without a doubt the toughest recruitment year for the Military Services since the inception of the all-volunteer force. The Marine Corps (active and reserve components) and the Space Force are the only Services to achieve their FY recruitment goals. The Department continues to work collaboratively to develop innovative ways to inspire service and mitigate recruiting shortfalls,” DOD said in a statement announcing the fiscal year 2023 recruitment numbers.

The Army fared worst, achieving just 76.61% of its target — 50,181 out of 65,500, according to DOD data. Only the Marine Corps and Space Force met their goals.

The Army had 485,000 active-duty troops in 2021, but it finished out 2023 with just 452,000, the smallest full-time force since before WWII. Sweeping reforms to the Army’s recruiting structure announced in October have yet to materialize.

Some steps the Army has taken so far appear to be successful. The Army’s Future Soldier Prep Course, which provides academic tutoring or physical fitness training for prospective soldiers who don’t quite meet entrance standards, has graduated nearly 9,000 Army recruits since implementation in August 2022.

The U.S. Navy missed active duty recruiting objectives for 2023 by about 20%, despite rolling out a score of initiatives aimed at relieving pressure on recruiting — including offering bonuses up to $75,000 for enlistees in certain highly technical occupations and raising the maximum age to join from 39 to 41.

It also pushed the limit of the congressionally-mandated maximum percentage for recruits who score between the 10th and 30th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, according to the statement.

Seeking to recreate the Army’s success in boosting the test scores of potential future soldiers, the Navy also implemented “Future Sailor Preparatory Courses” at boot camp to help possible recruits meet the Navy’s academic and physical standards, the statement said.

The Navy strove to take on a total of 40,232 active-duty officers and enlisted personnel, but only achieved 32,316 in fiscal year 2023, according to a press release.

The Air Force achieved only 24,923, or 89%, of its goal 27,851 new active-duty officers and enlisted troops for the fiscal year, while the Air Force Reserve fared even worse.

The Marine Corps reached its recruiting goal, Commandant Gen. Eric Smith announced on social media on Sept. 28. “I’m mindful of how challenging an environment this is and want to publicly give credit to our professional recruiters and all our Marines who uphold our rigorous standards 24/7,” he said.

In addition, the Space Force had obtained more than 99% of its proportionally small accessions goal by July.

“The Marine Corps recruits the best this country has to offer who reflect our culture and values in every demographic which is reflective of the American population,” the Marine Corps spokesperson told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Like A Business That’s About To Go Bankrupt’: US Military Is Stretched Too Thin To Deal With Threats, Report Says

EXCLUSIVE: Air Force System Exists Just To Track ‘Progress’ In Diversity

RELATED VIDEO: Biden Puts U.S. Troops in Harm’s Way in Middle East | TIPPING POINT

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Amid War, Naval Academy Seeks Another Gender and Sexuality Professor

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

In the Middle East, thousands of innocent civilians are losing their lives in the crossfire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group. Since October 7, men, women, the elderly, children, and infants have become victims of war — and the fighting only continues. “This is very bad,” said Linda Robinson, a senior fellow for Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The risks for a wider war and for the region going back into full-scale war are very, very high.”

Women have been raped in the streets, babies are found decapitated, protests are breaking out globally, and the Naval Academy has decided to put their effort — not into lethal combat training — but gender and sexuality studies.

According to the Academy’s website, the school’s mission is to “develop Midshipmen morally, mentally and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to graduate leaders who are dedicated to a career of naval service and … to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.” Apparently, the Navy has interpreted that to mean hiring gender and sexuality “experts” and featuring drag queens in recruitment videos. And it’s not just the naval Academy.

The U.S. Military Academy, considered among the most “prestigious universities in the nation,” has also incorporated gender and sexuality into Army officer education. West Point and the Air Force Academy even offer a minor in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Additionally, Nellis Air Force Base has developed a track record of hosting drag shows, regardless of opposition.

National Review contacted the Naval Academy for clarification on the purpose of the new position and whether it “would prepare graduates to fight the nation’s war,” but officials did not respond. But in 2021, shortly after West Point added critical race theory to their curriculum, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied that the armed forces were “going woke.” Rather, he stated it was a “complicated topic” he was “not going to address.”

However, Travis Weber, a Naval Academy graduate and vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, did address it with The Washington Stand. “This job posting — while only one data point — is an indicator of where our nation’s military is focused. And it’s not good,” he said.

He insisted the U.S. should be focused on “fires burning around the world [such as] the Russia-Ukraine war, an emerging war involving Israel in the Middle East, Azerbaijan displacing the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in the blink of an eye without much notice from anyone, and the looming threat of China invading Taiwan.” But instead, the U.S. is “pouring our nation’s increasingly thinning economic resources into a tenure track faculty position at one of our nation’s top military institutions that is focused on ‘Gender and Sexuality Studies.’”

Lt. General (Ret.) William G. Boykin, FRC’s executive vice president, also shared his concern with TWS, stating that “the hiring of a gender and sexuality studies Professor for the Naval Academy is another example of how unaware this administration is in training and preparing young men and women for war and to be victorious.” He emphasized the Navy seems “oblivious” to what midshipmen really need.

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at FRC, agreed, adding that ironically, the more gender studies increase, “the less people [seem to] understand … men and women.” She continued, “Whether in the field of education or military service, basic understanding about how bodies work and human nature itself should be as uncomplicated as possible.”

Experts say that not only is this topic being overcomplicated by the LGBT narrative, it is also having devastating consequences on recruitment. According to The Heritage Foundation, “[L]eaders from the Army, Navy, and Air Force all dutifully reported that they expected to miss their annual recruiting goal this year by thousands.” Despite adding new benefits and bonuses, recruitment rates continue to worsen. Woke “actions are a major contributor to the low enlistment in all our military services,” Boykin said.

As military institutions prioritize gender and sexuality education and recruitment suffers, “China is taking advantage of our distracted world to deport hundreds of North Korean defectors back to North Korea — where they will almost certainly be sent to forced labor camps,” Weber emphasized. He further noted that the West’s influence is on decline, and the East is seeking to “take its place.”

What this means, Weber continued, is “an unstable, multipolar world order, in which violent flare-ups are more likely.” He concluded, “This is a world that needs American leadership, not American naval gazing. The diversion of resources into areas like this one faculty opening portrays a distracted America, not an America focused on dealing with the challenges of its day. We need an adjustment of our focus if we are going to effectively lead into the years ahead.”

As Boykin stated plainly: “It is time for the Navy and all other services to wake up and start providing good leadership.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Men’s Mag Lists Biological Man on List of ‘Hottest’ Women

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Russian, Chinese Warships Operating In Alaskan Waters, U.S. Dispatches Destroyers In Response

/in , , , /by

In an unusual move, four U.S. warships were dispatched to the Aleutian Islands after a group of 11 Russian and Chinese warships was discovered operating in Alaskan waters. Republican Alaska Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski confirmed the presence of the foreign vessels and highlighted the significance of the situation.

In the joint statement, Senator Sullivan expressed his concern over the Chinese and Russian naval operations, noting that such cooperation is an unprecedented occurrence.

“First, this is unprecedented, not just for Alaska, but for America to have 11 warships jointly being operated by the Chinese and Russians — who are increasingly working together — essentially doing freedom of navigation and navigation operations incursions into Alaska’s area,” Sullivan said according to Alaska News Source. 

The incident marks an improvement in the U.S. response compared to a similar event the previous summer in which the Chinese and Russian navies maneuvered off the Alaskan coast. Senator Sullivan voiced his satisfaction with the more robust reaction this time, as opposed to the “tepid” previous response from the U.S. government, emphasizing the importance of protecting vital national interests. (RELATED: Two Navy Sailors Charged with Funneling Defense Secrets to Chineses Agents)

“I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four U.S. Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message to Xi Jinping and Putin that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.”

Senator Murkowski joined in emphasizing the strategic location of Alaska near foreign adversaries China and Russia. She stressed the pivotal role Alaska plays in national defense and territorial sovereignty, calling for increased investment in the military’s capacity and capabilities within the state.

“This is a stark reminder of Alaska’s proximity to both China and Russia, as well as the essential role our state plays in our national defense and territorial sovereignty. Incursions like this are why we are working so hard to secure funding and resources to expand our military’s capacity and capabilities in Alaska, and why our colleagues must join us in supporting those investments.”

AUTHOR

ALYSSA RINELLI

Contributor.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Even Veterans Are Steering Their Families Away From America’s New Woke Military

/in , , , , , , , /by

Veterans are pushing their family members — who represent an overwhelming majority of new recruits — away from military service, deepening U.S. armed forces’ recruitment crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Nearly 80% of new recruits have at least one family member with a service record, but these family members are increasingly questioning whether the potential costs of military service — which include rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide and a reliance on welfare programs — are worth it when compared to a career in the private sector, particularly following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, the WSJ reported. The military has faced significant criticism from GOP lawmakers over its focus on “woke” initiatives, which they say prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and deepen the recruiting crisis by alienating potential recruits.

“We’re left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, ‘What was it all for?’” asks Navy veteran Catalina Gasper, who was injured in a Taliban attack in July 2019 that has left her with lingering brain damage. “I just don’t see how it’s sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out” the nation’s youth, she said.

Gasper said that she and her husband, an Army veteran with over two decades of service, used to talk to their children, now aged 7 and 10, about joining the military, but now she intends to ensure her kids never join, according to the outlet.

Just 9% of Americans aged 16-21 expressed a willingness to consider a military career in 2022, down from the pre-pandemic norm of 13%, the WSJ reported, citing Pentagon data.

Recruiters are facing the twin challenges of both historically low fitness eligibility and interest among young Americans, and the deepening crisis has led the Navy this week to begin having recruiters work six-day weeks in an “all-hands effort” to boost recruitment. The Navy utilized an active-duty drag queen — Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, stage name Harpy Daniels — as a “digital ambassador” from October 2022 to March 2023 in a bid to “explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates,” a Navy spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The lowest-ranking service members make less than $2,000 per month, and while this may be offset by the military paying for food and housing, some 20,000 active-duty soldiers are currently on food stamps, the WSJ reported. Various service branches are issuing large bonuses both to new hires and experienced veterans in a bid to boost both recruitment and retention.

“To be honest with you it’s Wendy’s, it’s Carl’s Jr., it’s every single job that a young person can go up against because now they are offering the same incentives that we are offering, so that’s our competition right now,” Sgt. Maj. Marco Irenze of the Nevada Army National Guard, told the WSJ.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Navy Making Recruiters Work 6-Day Weeks As Enlistment Crisis Deepens

U.S. military has gotten ‘hyper-politicized’ and ‘sexualized’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘The Only Thing That Should Be Dragging in the Navy Is an Anchor’: Congressman

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Anheuser-Busch hasn’t exactly been teaching a master class on marketing after its poisonous partnership with Dylan Mulvaney. When sales crashed, CEO Michel Doukeris tried the “It wasn’t a campaign — it was just a can” excuse for Bud Light’s relationship with the trans influencer, but it was $6 billion too late. Now, the U.S. Navy seems to be floating the same alibi for its drag queen recruiting videos. “The program has concluded, and the Navy is evaluating it,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claimed. Well, the evaluation from House and Senate Republicans is in, and if this doesn’t stop, “heads will roll.”

For the last two months, the Navy has defended the salacious posts of 2nd Class Petty Officer Joshua Kelly (who goes by stage name “Harpy Daniels”) against the criticism of leaders like Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who asked how and why the branch chose a drag queen as one of its five “digital ambassadors.” “Do you believe TikTok videos of sailors dressed in and performing in drag is the best use of the Navy’s recruitment efforts?” he asked, before pointing out that Kelly is dressed in lingerie, underwear, or nothing with captions too grotesque and profane to repeat.

Lt. General (Ret.) William Boykin, who spent 36 years serving his country, openly seethed about Kelly’s posts. “I can’t even watch that,” he told Family Research Council Tony Perkins of Kelly’s videos, revolted. “I mean, I saw it earlier today on the computer, and I can’t watch. … They’re trying to add another 5,000 people to the Navy,” and this is the “kind of nonsense [they think is] going to help recruiting?”

Boykin wasn’t alone in his disgust. Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, held nothing back on Twitter, fuming, “Alright. The U.S. Navy is now using an enlisted sailor Drag Queen as a recruiter. I’m done. China is going to destroy us. YOU GOT THIS NAVY. I can’t believe I fought for this bull—-.”

Yet officials defended Kelly’s involvement, insisting that his social media presence didn’t violate military policy since it wasn’t technically endorsed by the Navy. That’s interesting, House and Senate Republicans fired back, since the branch asked their ambassadors to use their accounts to attract new recruits.

“[The Navy said] they weren’t paying him,” Perkins, a Marine veteran, pointed out. “But when you’re in the military, all of your time belongs to the military. … And this is what he is — a ‘digital ambassador’ as a drag queen representing the Navy. I mean, think about what our enemies [are saying], how they responded. They’ve got to be laughing at this.”

The sick images caught the attention of more than a dozen senators, who sent a letter to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro on May 3, demanding to know if the Navy approves of these sexually explicit performances. “Would the Navy enlist burlesque or exotic dancers to reach possible recruits? Such activity is not appropriate for promotion in a professional workplace or the United States military,” Republicans Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), and 11 others insisted.

The controversy has been even more infuriating when you consider that the Biden administration was already under fire for hosting Drag Queen Story Hours on military bases. At a House hearing in March, Secretary Austin testified that the DOD does not “support or fund” drag shows. But, Banks argued, “If he was testifying honestly, then he has an obligation to discipline the officials who decided that sexually explicit content should be featured [here] in the Navy’s Digital Ambassador’s program. [This] divisive and woke insanity [is what’s] helped drive recruitment to a record low.”

Like Bud Light, which should be a cautionary tale on how to offend heartland consumers, the Navy is alienating the very patriots who’ve historically made up the military. Putting a man in women’s lingerie isn’t how you appeal to people with conservative values, the most likely pool of future soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

Congressman Mark Alford (R-Mo.) agreed. “I’ll tell you what … the word salad that you just heard from the DOD [defending Kelly’s role], that is standard for the Biden administration,” he said on Thursday’s “Washington Watch.” “What is happening here, I think, is an abomination. … This is not any way to recruit anyone into the military. The only thing that should be dragging in the Navy is an anchor.”

“When we have China on the march, Russia threatening nuclear activity, China launching warships almost on a weekly basis, and we’re focused on pronouns and drag queens,” Perkins shook his head, “something is seriously wrong.”

Worse, Alford pointed out, “only 9% of young people surveyed recently said they had any interest whatsoever in joining the military. … [W]e could possibly be at war with communist China in less than three to five years. We’ve got to rebuild our military. We’ve got to bring some sanity back to the Department of Defense.”

In his testimony, Austin said he would get back to the committee in “due time.” “I’m here to tell you, Secretary Austin, it better be quick,” Alford warned. “We have some serious answers that we need on these serious questions … about the wokeness that has infected our military. … We have got to put a stop to this … and someone’s head is going to roll on this. I don’t know who, but we cannot continue down this path where we are turning our military into [a] circus.”

And before someone accuses him or other conservatives of being “anti-gay” or “transphobic,” he reminded them, “If this were a woman doing burlesque in an oversexualized manner trying to recruit people into the military, it would be wrong as well. … This is not getting people passionate about America again. We need Normal Rockwell … not the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ And that’s what we’re living in.”

Kelly, meanwhile, was quite content to play the martyr. He blamed critics for creating “toxic environments and hate.” “You only want to support the military when it benefits you and doesn’t involve queer people. … Well, as a service member, a queen, and an open queer person, you don’t scare me and you won’t stop the LGBTQ+ community [from] thriving,” Kelley continued. “Haters only hate when we’re winning.”

But winning — as a nation — is exactly what Republicans are concerned about. “The situation … is so serious with China,” Alford warned. “They are getting ready to invade Taiwan; Russia [is] in this illegal war against Ukraine. What’s going on in the Sudan? We have serious problems in America, and we are asleep. … The big bad wolf is at the door. As I’ve said before, he is huffing and puffing. Our house right now is not made out of brick. And I’m worried that it’s going to be blown down.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

SEAL Who Helped Kill Bin Laden Fuming Over Navy’s Drag Queen Ambassador: ‘Can’t Believe I Fought Bor This Bullsh–t’

/in , , , , , , , /by

Thank you, hero. Everyone is so afraid to state the obvious.

The military has a huge recruiting and retention problem because they went woke. They’ve hit bottom. So why keep digging?

SEAL who helped kill bin Laden fumes over Navy’s drag queen ambassador: ‘Can’t believe I fought for this bullsh–t’

By: NY Post, May 4, 2023:

A decorated Navy SEAL veteran, who was a part of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, has spoken out against the Navy’s new recruitment campaign.

Former US Navy SEAL Team Six member, Robert J. O’Neill, took to Twitter Wednesday morning to share his disapproval of the Navy’s hiring of an active-duty drag queen to help recruit “the most talented and diverse workforce” for the military branch.

“Alright. The US Navy is now using an enlisted sailor Drag Queen as a recruiter. I’m done. China is going to destroy us. YOU GOT THIS NAVY. I can’t believe I fought for this bulls-t,” O’Neill wrote to his 590,500 followers.

O’Neill’s comments were targeted at Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, the first of five new “Digital Ambassadors” for a new program the Navy piloted from October to March.

Kelley, who identifies as non-binary and goes by the stage name Harpy Daniels, has shared their journey of being a non-binary, drag queen with the Navy through their Instagram and TikTok accounts.

“Thank you to the Navy for giving me this opportunity! I don’t speak for the Navy but simply sharing my experience in the Navy! Hooyah, and let’s go Slay!” Daniels said in a November post.

Kelley was an ambassador of a program “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates” as the Navy battles “the most challenging recruiting environment it has faced since the start of the all-volunteer force,” a Navy spokesperson told Fox News.

O’Neill, who was self-credited with delivering the fatal blow to bin Laden during the May 2, 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has published two books since leaving the military in 2014.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘The Only Thing That Should Be Dragging in the Navy Is an Anchor’: Congressman

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

NDAA Fails to Stop Biden’s Purge of Military

/in , , , , , , , /by

“An inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, and should be discontinued by the Department of Defense immediately.”

Unsurprising.

While Republicans rolled back some of Biden’s military cuts and managed to end the vaccine mandate for the military, they failed to reinstate military personnel forced out due to the mandate, they did nothing about wokeness in the military, which at this point is so great a threat that spending hundreds of billions on weapons systems is practically surplus to requirements if there will be no one reliable to operate them.

And the military purge of “extremists” launched by Biden’s political operatives has not been checked.

The “big win” here is a non-binding statement criticizing the political purge of opponents.

The final bill largely eschews issues related to the Pentagon’s efforts to root out extremism, but the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report accompanying its version of the bill calls for those plans to be curtailed, though the language is nonbinding.

The report language was added by Republicans with the backing of Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). It argues that the low instances of extremism in the ranks “does not warrant a Department-wide effort.” It further argues that the Pentagon anti-extremism effort “is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, and should be discontinued by the Department of Defense immediately.”

Which everyone is free to ignore.

This is a lawless administration whose Treasury and State Department are in violation of federal law by refusing to comply with SIGAR, the watchdog on Afghanistan. The Biden administration has responded to court setbacks on its student loan bailout or open borders by doubling down.

Senate Republicans get to claim that they did something by way of a non-binding statement in a report.

Mission accomplished.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED VIDEO: This Week In Jihad with David Wood and Robert Spencer

RELATED ARTICLES:

Afghan officials smuggled $1,000,000,000 out before Taliban takeover as Biden poured in billions more

Sharia in Minnesota: Instructor fired for including painting of Muhammad in course on Islamic art

New Jersey: Hamas-linked CAIR wants January to be ‘Muslim Heritage Month’

Canada: Islamic conference features hate-filled, pro-jihad, pro-Sharia, anti-Semitic Muslim clerics

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Rise of Wokeness in the U.S. Military — Let me give some examples of what I mean by wokeness.

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on July 20, 2022, at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C. campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.

Complaints by veteran soldiers about younger generations who lack discipline and traditional values are as old as war itself. Grizzled veterans in the Greek phalanx, Roman legions, and Napoleon’s elite corps all believed that the failings of the young would be the ruin of their armies. This is not the chief worry of grizzled American veterans today. The largest threat they see by far to our current military is the weakening of its fabric by radical progressive (or “woke”) policies being imposed, not by a rising generation of slackers, but by the very leaders charged with ensuring their readiness.

Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change. The push for it didn’t begin in the last two years under the Biden administration—nor will it automatically end if a non-woke administration is elected in 2024. Wokeness in the military has become ingrained. And unless the policies that flow from it are illegal or directly jeopardize readiness, senior military leaders have little alternative but to comply.

Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.

Wokeness in the military also affects relations between the military and society at large. It acts as a disincentive for many young Americans in terms of enlistment. And it undermines wholehearted support for the military by a significant portion of the American public at a time when it is needed the most.

Let me give some examples of what I mean by wokeness.

In 2015, then Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus rejected out-of-hand a Marine Corps study concluding that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries. He rejected it because it did not comport with the Obama administration’s political agenda.

That same year the Department of Defense opened all combat jobs in the U.S. military to women, and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter committed to “gender-neutral standards” to ensure that female servicemembers could meet the demanding rigors involved in qualifying for combat. Since then, the Army has been working for a decade to put in place the gender-neutral test promised by Carter. But after finding that women were not scoring as highly as men, and under fierce pressure from advocacy groups, the Army threw out the test. Now there is no test to determine whether any soldier can meet the fitness requirements for combat specialties.

In 2015, near the end of his second term, President Obama initiated a change to the Pentagon’s longstanding policy on transgender individuals in the military. Before that change could take effect, the incoming Trump administration put it on hold awaiting future study. Subsequent evidence presented to Secretary of Defense James Mattis—including the fact that transgender individuals suffering from gender dysphoria attempt suicide and experience severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population—raised legitimate concerns about their fitness for military service.

This led the Trump administration to impose reasonable restrictions on military service by those suffering gender dysphoria. But only hours after his inauguration in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order that did away with these restrictions and opened military service to all transgender individuals. Since then, the Biden administration has decreed that active members of the military can take time off from their duties to obtain sex-change surgeries and all related hormones and drugs at taxpayer expense.

Along similar lines, the Biden administration has recently ended support for a longstanding policy prohibiting individuals infected with HIV from serving in combat zones. The policy had been based on sound science tied to the need for HIV medications and the danger of cross-infection through shared blood.

Physical fitness has long been a hallmark of the U.S. military. But in recent years, fitness standards have been progressively watered down in pursuit of the woke goal of “leveling the playing field.” The Army, for instance, recently lowered its minimum passing standards for pushups to an unimpressive total of ten and increased its minimum two-mile run time from 19 to 23 minutes. The new Space Force is considering doing away with periodic fitness testing altogether.

Back in 2016, Navy Secretary Mabus decreed that Navy sailors would no longer be known by traditional job titles such as “corpsman,” adopting instead new gender-neutral titles such as “medical technician.” The resulting blowback was so severe from enlisted sailors who cherished those historic titles that the Navy was forced to reverse the changes. But wokeness has a way of coming back, and last year the Navy released a training video to help sailors understand the proper way of using personal pronouns—a skill Americans have traditionally mastered in grade school. The video instructs servicemembers that they need to create a “safe space for everybody” by using “inclusive language”—for instance, saying “hey everybody” instead of “hey guys.” Can the return of gender-neutral job titles be far behind? 

Much of the emphasis of wokeness today is on promoting the idea that America is fatally flawed by systemic racism and white privilege. Our fighting men and women are required to sit through indoctrination programs, often with roots in the Marxist tenets of critical race theory, either by Pentagon diktat or through carelessness by senior leaders who delegate their command responsibilities to private Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion instructors.

These indoctrination programs differentiate servicemembers along racial and gender lines, which runs completely counter to the military imperative to build cohesiveness based on common loyalties, training, and standards. Traditional training and education programs used to combat racial and sex discrimination have been supplanted by programs that promote discrimination by replacing the American ideal of equality with the progressive ideal of equity—which in practice means unequal treatment based on group identity.

The Biden administration’s Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, decided last year to add Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist—one of the leading sourcebooks on critical race theory—to his list of recommended readings. To give an idea of how radical Kendi’s book is, one of its famous (or infamous) arguments is that “Capitalism is essentially racist,” and that “to truly be antiracist, you also have to be truly anticapitalist.”

Last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House Armed Services Committee, “We do not teach critical race theory, we don’t embrace critical race theory, and I think that’s a spurious conversation.” Despite repeated denials by Austin and others in the Pentagon that critical race theory is being taught in the military, there is no shortage of evidence to the contrary.

Indeed, last year a senior officer in the U.S. Space Force, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, was removed from command for publicly describing the role of critical race theory in indoctrinating servicemembers at his installation. And just this summer, multiple media outlets reported on training materials on the problems of “whiteness” obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide read: “In order to understand racial inequality and slavery, it is first necessary to address whiteness.”

Congressmen have obtained curricular materials from West Point showing lectures titled “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage” and classroom slides labeled “White Power at West Point.” When challenged about this, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley became defensive: “I wanna understand white rage, and I’m white,” he said. “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.”

The rationale for reading communist writings in the service academies in the past has been that by doing so, we learned about our Soviet enemies at the time and how they thought. How is that analogous to reading Leftist tracts accusing white people (including servicemembers)—just by virtue of their being white—of racism?

Last year, Secretary Austin alarmingly called for a one-day military-wide stand-down to address the so-called problem of “extremism” in the ranks, despite the fact that there has been no evidence presented—including in testimony by senior officials—that there is a problem of extremism in the military. Commanding officers were required to discuss the topic using a PowerPoint presentation that included Ted Talks asking the question, “What is up with us white people?”

Since 2008, the Air Force has created at least eight “Barrier Analysis Working Groups” to “create an inclusive culture regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, orientation, religion, or disabilities.” These groups include the “Indigenous Nations Equality Team” and the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, or Questioning Initiatives Team.” President Biden signed an executive order in 2021 requiring all organizations in the military—as well as in the rest of the federal government—to create Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices, to produce strategic DEI plans, and to create bureaucratic structures to report on progress towards DEI goals. The overall goal, Biden said, was “advancing equity for all”—again using the Left’s euphemism for achieving desired outcomes through discriminatory policies.

Wokeness also comes in the form of conflating the mission of the military with environmental ideology. A year ago, President Biden told a group of overseas Air Force airmen that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that the greatest threat facing America was global warming—a claim the Joint Chiefs had to walk back. In the same vein, Biden signed an executive order imposing a massive regime of environmental goals and requirements for the Department of Defense. These goals included transitioning to all electric non-tactical vehicles by 2035, carbon-free electricity for military installations by that same year, and net zero emissions from those installations by 2050. As a result, the Pentagon recently announced it will devote over $3 billion of its already stretched-thin military budget to climate-related initiatives in 2023 alone.

Although direct “cause and effect” studies on the impact of woke policies such as these do not exist, common sense suggests that the consequences for military readiness are dramatic. Spending billions on woke programs while the Chinese are outpacing us on hypersonic weapons, quantum computing, and other important military technologies is one piece of evidence. Recent reports showing the military’s dismal failure to gain new recruits in adequate numbers is another. Is anyone surprised that potential recruits—many of whom come from rural or poor areas of the country—don’t want to spend their time being lectured about white privilege?

These ideological policies move the military in a divergent direction from the American mainstream. In a recent poll of voters, for instance, 69 percent oppose the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Relatedly, Americans are increasingly losing confidence in the military. Between 2021 and 2022, the percentage of Americans who report a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military decreased five percentage points, from 69 to 64. In 2012, this confidence level stood at 75 percent.

The bottom line is that precious time and money are being poured into woke programs and projects that would be better applied towards making the military more capable. The billions of dollars that will be spent on Pentagon climate change programs, the time and money spent in creating DEI structures and hiring DEI commissars, and the time spent indoctrinating servicemembers in critical race theory and addressing an imaginary crisis of extremism in the ranks—all this detracts from the purpose of our military: preserving the security and freedom of the American people and nation.

These costs come at a time when the current administration is not even proposing to fund the Department of Defense to keep up with the rate of inflation—and a time when serious threats from China and other adversaries have never been greater.

Last month, Ramstein Air Base in Germany scheduled a drag queen story hour at its base library, where drag queen Stacey Teed was scheduled to read to children. When lawmakers back home got wind of the event and wrote to the Secretary of the Air Force, the event was cancelled. This suggests that pushback can be effective against the tide of wokeness plaguing our military. But there needs to be a lot more pushback.

Legislation introduced this year in Congress would stop the teaching of critical race theory in the military, the creation of the multitudes of diversity offices and officials, and the rolling back of physical fitness requirements. While the ultimate success of these proposals in the legislative process is uncertain, they are a start at least.

The American military remains a faithful and loyal servant of the republic. Most Americans are still proud and trusting of our military. But this trust and support cannot be taken for granted. If Americans perceive that the military is being exploited for political purposes or being used for experiments in woke social policies, that support will evaporate, and the consequences will be dire.

My hope and my prayer are that we figure this out before it is too late.

AUTHOR

Thomas Spoehr

Thomas Spoehr is director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation. He served previously for over 36 years in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of Lieutenant General. He earned a B.A. from William and Mary, an M.A. from Webster University, and an M.A. from the U.S. Army War College. While in the Army, he served in numerous leadership roles, including senior positions in the Pentagon and Commandant of the Army’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School. His operational experiences include service with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 1st Armored Division. He participated in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, and in 2011 he served as Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Forces Iraq.

EDITORS NOTE: This Imprimis Digest column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Carter and Transgenderism

/in , , /by

Department of Defense Secretary Ash Carter has issued instructions to all military branches that transgender people may now join the military and serve openly as to what gender they identify with and those currently serving may disclose themselves without any repercussions, or problems.  This paper is to bring to light that women, who identify as men, are looking to do a man’s job in the military.

The transgendered women who desire to become an artilleryman will face strength challenges.  It is not so much as opening a powder canister, or screwing on a fuze, it is the lifting of the round itself (97.7 lbs, 155mm).  Also, setting the weapon up for “action”, takes a lot of physical effort from swinging a sledge hammer, to a lot of pushing and pulling.

The person who loads the Howitzer is required to have the leg and upper body strength that is required to lift and chamber the round.  The method of chambering a round is done hydraulically, if the Howitzer is self-propelled, manually, if towed, but the rest is the same.

The infantry is quite different.  These people go on patrols, engage the enemy and they do this with an 80 pound rucksack on their back.  The infantryman’s upper body must be in top form.  They must also be able to carry their wounded to safety.  This means carrying the weight they have and the wounded soldier’s weight and equipment.  Women who transgender to men, can they fulfill these tasks which are primarily designed for men?

Secretary Ash Carter has said the military will pay for the sex re-assignments. Exactly, how does this fit into the roles of the military?  It has no defense purposes and it hinders the purpose of being combat ready.  Secretary Carter among other politicians are pandering and costing the taxpayers frivolous amounts of money by pandering to special interest groups.  The statement of frivolous amount of money is really not frivolous at all.  These surgeries are in excess of thirty to forty thousand dollars.  Also, to find the cadaver is an expensive process in itself.

Secretary Carter does not understand the term, “lost time”.  If a woman is re-assigned to be a man and if they are a member of the combat forces of the military, it may take them a year or better to return to normal duty status.  This results in lost time.  The taxpayer is still paying the person for a job they cannot do and it results in extending their enlistment to have the person do the work that needed to be done in the first place.  Since Secretary Carter has allowed this, our armed forces will experience more lost time than ever before.

Due to the physical nature of the Army and the Marines, the ground combat forces will lose an insurmountable number of people to the Air Force and the Navy.  While these two services have their own special combat operations, these two services are more technical within their job structures and do not rely as much with boots on the ground.

The Army and the Marines constantly rely on the physical aspects of getting the job done.  Women who transgender to men every element of standards must be reduced to accommodate these transgenders.  We must remember the women who participated in the Marine Combat Officers program.  They were cut because they failed the requirements of the course.  In the end, the combat arms element of the Army and the Marines will suffer great loses.  The standards will be so far degraded a 5-year old will pass the requirements necessary to become an artilleryman, or an infantryman.

Men who transgender to women is not a primary concern of this paper because of the nature of the military; any job in the military can be done by a man.

Any job in any branch of the armed services that requires the physical element of their job and each service will face a myriad of lost time when a transgender undergoes sex re-assignment.  Besides the cost of doing the re-assignment, it will cost the taxpayer in lost time wages because the healing process of this surgery may take up to two years for a full recovery and depending on the pay grade of the individual, the taxpayer can expect to pay out around $50,000 a year, or more in lost time wages, then expect to pay that much after the individual returns to full duty status.  Because of the stupidity of Secretary Ash Carter, he has cost the American taxpayer more money that is required to support the military personnel in the performance of their duties.

Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner maybe the poster child for transgenderism, but this is an apples/oranges conversation.  Jenner’s situation is that of a civilian.  No military service member can be equated to Jenner’s position, or vise-versa.  Every person in the military must maintain their fitness for duty and what Secretary Carter has done is allowing this to destroy the main purpose of the military which is to train and maintain their combat readiness for war.

We must also look at the possible disability status if something like this goes wrong.  If a person becomes injured in some way during the course of their service to the country, on a normal basis, a disability claim can be made.  If, one of these re-assignment surgeries goes wrong and it fails, the taxpayer will be on the hook for disability compensation.  We as taxpayers must look at this as an elective surgery, not as a necessity.  Look at this surgery as an elective it will have the propensity of releasing the taxpayer from all liabilities that are incurred from this surgery.

RELATED ARTICLES:

LGBT Groups Seek to Entrench Agenda at the UN

How the Left Is Using Intimidation to Silence Free Speech

VIDEO: The U.S. Military is Shrinking — the Numbers are Alarming

/in , , , /by

President Obama has fundamentally transformed the United States military from a global fighting force into a social change petri dish incapable of dealing with growing global threats from the nation states Russia, China, Iran and North Korea and even the Islamic State JV team.

The Middle East is exploding because the Obama foreign policy is based upon smart power rather than real power.

The Obama administration now seeks dialogue and engagement with those who wish to do us harm. Negotiation is part of diplomacy. What Americans see is our stature decline in an ever more dangerous world. What are enemies see is an opportunity to advance their national interests at the expense of America.

The below video by Dennis Michael Lynch explains the decline and fall of the U.S. military by the numbers and from a historical perspective.

Today our U.S. Air Force pilots are flying aircraft that are older than they are. Today the sea born U.S. Navy is commanded by officers who are much younger than the ships under their command.

Watch this short NEWSMAX TV analysis of our incredibly shrinking military:

American president Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to Henry L. Sprague of the N.Y. City Union League Club dated January 26th, 1900, wrote, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” This proverb advises using the tactic of caution and non-aggression, backed up by the ability to do violence if required. This proverb became Roosevelt’s foreign policy.

The greatest challenge for the next president will be restoring America’s big stick. 

RELATED ARTICLES:

Donald Trump Has a Coherent, Realist Foreign Policy

It’s a Crazy, Crazy World out There

Presidential Candidates ‘Should Oppose Forcing Women to Register for Selective Service’

/in , , , /by

WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, Family Research Council Action’s Executive Vice President, released the following statement regarding comments made during Saturday’s presidential debate in which several candidates expressed support for requiring women to register for Selective Service:

“Some of the presidential candidates appear to be espousing the politically correct position that women should be required to register with Selective Service. In supporting this draft registration policy, these candidates demonstrate a serious misunderstanding of the imperative for combat effectiveness and of the American people. Ask the question of why America, since the passage of the Selective Service Act, has never required women to register for the military draft. Americans do not want the government to send our daughters into battle against their will, and it is frankly shocking that any Republican candidate for president would not oppose the suggestion in the strongest terms.

“The real issue is whether we should place women in Infantry and Special Operations units where the mission is to close with and destroy the enemy. Removing the restrictions on the types of jobs women may hold means necessarily that some women who are drafted will be involuntarily assigned to units that will be directly engaged in combat with enemy ground forces. Every candidate who wants to earn the trust of the American people should oppose the Obama administration’s policy that is paving the way for requiring our daughters to go to war against their will,” concluded Boykin.

Girl Sues Draft for Only Registering Males by Ilya Somin

/in , , , /by

A recent lawsuit filed by a teenage girl in New Jersey (in conjunction with her mother) challenges the constitutionality of male-only draft registration, arguing that it violates the Constitution because it discriminates on the basis of sex [h/t: Elie Mystal of Above the Law]:

A New Jersey teenage girl has brought a federal class action against the Selective Service System, claiming its refusal to consider women for the draft is discriminatory.

“With both males and females available for such roles today, the two sexes are now similarly situated for draft registration purposes and there is no legitimate reason for the government to discriminate against the female class, so equal protection applies,” the complaint states. “Further, with both males and females available for such combat roles, there is no reasonable basis for infringing the associational interests of the female class by preventing them from registering.”

Noting that she will turn 18 this year, E.K.L., as she is named in the complaint, says she attempted to register for the draft on the website of the Selective Service by filling out the online form.

Once she clicked “female” during the online registration process, however, the website prevented her from registering….

E.K.L. and her mother call it undisputed that the Military Selective Service Act creates a sex-based difference.

Banning women from the pool of potential recruits is not rational given the role females currently play within the military, according to the complaint.

“If the two sexes can fight and die together, they can register together; if not, then no one should have to register,” the complaint states.

More information about the lawsuit is available in this article.

I predicted that such a case would arise back in early 2013, when the Pentagon made women eligible to serve in nearly all combat roles (though I expected it to be brought by men forced to register for select service, rather than by women excluded from doing so).

The Supreme Court previously upheld the constitutionality of male-only draft registration in the 1981 case of Rostker v. Goldberg. However, as I also pointed out in that post, that ruling was partly based on the theory that women would not be as valuable draftees as men in an era when the armed forces excluded women from most combat positions.

Obviously, that logic is no longer valid. I also noted other reasons why the Court might overrule or at least severely limit Rostker if the issue came before it today:

Lower courts applying Rostker could therefore still conclude that male-only draft registration is constitutional, though Rostker is ambiguous enough on the amount of deference due [to federal government] that the issue is not a slam dunk.

If the issue gets to the Supreme Court however, I’m far from certain that Rostker wouldn’t be overruled or severely limited. As compared with 1981, the idea of women serving in combat is far more widely accepted by both elite and public opinion. And sex discrimination in draft registration is likely to seem like an outdated relic of the days when women were barred from numerous positions in the military.

If the Pentagon sticks to its new policy on women in combat, I think it’s likely that some male plaintiff will bring a new challenge to the Selective Service registration system, and that plaintiff will have a good chance of succeeding. Like most other constitutional law scholars, I think that Rostker was a dubious decision, and would not shed many tears if it were overruled.

For reasons outlined by Steven Calabresi and Julia Rickert, there is also a good originalist case for courts taking a strong line against sex discriminatory laws.

I would add that, since 1981, the Supreme Court has taken a tougher line against sex-discriminatory laws and policies. Most notably, it invalidated the exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute in the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia. The exclusion of women from a military college is not exactly the same as their exclusion from draft registration. But the two situations have obvious similarities.

There is a chance that this case will end up being thrown out on procedural grounds. A court could potentially rule that women exempt from draft registration don’t have standing to sue because they don’t actually suffer any harm as a result (draft registration is usually considered a burden, not a benefit).

This is one of the reasons why I thought a case would be more likely to be brought by men subject to draft registration than by women exempt from it.

Also, a court might deny the plaintiff’s bid to certify the case as a class action on behalf other similarly situated women. But if the case does go forward, there is a real chance it will ultimately result in the invalidation of male-only draft registration.

To avoid misunderstanding, I should emphasize that I do not support either drafting women or forcing them to register for a possible future draft. But I also oppose drafting men. Conscription is both a severe infringement on individual liberty, and tends to reduce the quality of the military relative to an all volunteer armed forces.

Ultimately, the best way to avoid conscripting women is to not have conscription – or draft registration – at all. By taking that step, we could simultaneously reduce the likelihood that the draft will be reimposed in the future and eliminate one of the last bastions of open sex discrimination in government policy.

In my view, a decision striking down male-only draft registration is more likely to lead to the abolition of draft registration altogether than to its extension to women.

This post originally appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy. 

Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Men and Women in U.S. Armed Forces Treated Worse Than People on Welfare

/in , /by

This past week or so has been a little trying for me and my family. I saw first hand how a nation takes care of its own. Oh sure, you may think I am referring to the welfare state. People who get money from the taxpayer to help pay their rent, their food bill, their energy bills, their phone bill and maybe even help pay for a car. Sure it is important to help those who really are in need and are down on their luck. Sure it is important to give these people a hand up.

All to often, however, what we taxpayers end up giving via our various layers of government is nothing more than a hand out. But these are not the people I am referring to.

I am referring to the people who risk their very lives to provide us with safety and freedom. I am talking about those who volunteer to lay down their lives so that the rest of us may live our lives fully and in peace. I am talking about our military veterans. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people who do not know the truth talk about all the “free” health care that the military gets. Truth is, its not so free. Never has been. There is always a price. A double price. A financial price for sure but also a human price. A sacrificial price. Let me be boldly clear on this. A nation that does not take care of their own Military Veterans will not remain a nation for long.

You see, every time in history when a nation forgets or mistreats those that actually do the fighting to keep the enemy at bay will soon not have those individuals willing to sacrifice everything. Then you end up with a draft.

A conscription of those who do not wish to be a part of the military and who do not wish to sacrifice everything they have including their very lives, in defense of the homeland. This is when you have desertion in large numbers on the battle field. The non-volunteer soldier thinks that what they do will not be rewarded or appreciated by the general public so they decide not to risk their own lives for such ungrateful citizenry and they flee.

Today, in the United States, we are doing this to our men and women of the military. Those that populate the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force and even the Coast Guard. These people put everything on the line yet they get little pay in return. They often get poor medical treatment at substandard facilities. We have seen the news reports of how bad the VA Hospital system is yet you probably think they are still getting their care for free. Well, they don’t get that substandard care for free. Yes the vet has to pay at least a portion of his care out of his own pocket. His own pocket!

Yet the welfare mother gets far better treatment at the local clinic. Their welfare benefits sometimes are greater than the compensation given to our military. In fact, we treat our military with such disdain that often times, young military families are forced to apply for and obtain Food Stamps and other welfare programs. These are ambitious and well trained individuals who eventually see the light and realize that the citizenry do not care for them at all. They are treated worse than dogs in some cases. They decide they will not put their lives and their families’ lives in jeopardy for such an ungrateful mass. They decide to leave the service, often as early as they can. Taking with them their experience, their training and their dedication and never to return.

You may say that they volunteer to do the job and that they know the risk. But let me ask you, what will you do when nobody, and I mean nobody is willing to volunteer to do that job? Will you volunteer? Why not? Most likely it will be because you know how poorly you treated those who came before you and thus you would never subject yourself to such treatment.

You elect the officials who treat our military vets with disdain and dishonor and only you can elect officials who will reverse that trend. After all, if you don’t start believing that our veterans deserve all we can give them, you soon won’t have anything at all to keep because you won’t have a free nation that allows you to have what you have.

So let me ask you, if you won’t volunteer to keep you, your family, your neighborhood, your state, your nation safe and free, then who do you think will? Maybe we should demand better treatment and pay for those that do volunteer and so we will always have those that will volunteer.

The alternative, well lets just say, you would not volunteer for the alternative.

RELATED VIDEO:

RELATED ARTICLES:

After Deaths of Veterans, Federal Agencies Stonewall Probe of ‘Candy Man’ Doctor

Study – Are Veterans Subjected to Social Indifference?