Biden’s ‘woke’ military recalls MacArthur’s farewell address

FPI / March 30, 2021

"But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory. That if you lose, the nation will be destroyed." — Gen. Douglas MacArthur, farewell address at West Point, May 12, 1962

Critics say MacArthur's "duty, honor, country" is being replaced by the social justice warriors inhabiting Team Biden's Pentagon by "wokeness, identity politics, and intersectionality."

Here is a pledge that is being proposed by Task Force Navy One, which was formed to develop strategies to combat discrimination in the Navy:

"I pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every sailor in the Navy. I pledge to engage in ongoing self-reflection, education and knowledge sharing to better myself and my communities. I pledge to be an example in establishing healthy, inclusive and team-oriented environments. I pledge to constructively share all experiences and information gained from activities above to inform the development of Navy-wide reforms."

The pledge is a "warning of how deep woke-think has penetrated American institutions – even the Defense Department," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.

"Should this pledge be instituted, we will soon have a brainwashed military spouting largely partisan ideological nonsense," Gingrich said. "Members will be told their survival in the military and their chance for promotion is dependent on learning left-wing baloney."

"This isn’t what we want in a military," Gingrich added. "We want a military dedicated to war fighting, learning the lessons of military history, and preparing to defeat our opponents if we are militarily threatened. The kind of potentially heroic young men and women who rally to the flag to fight for America are not going to be strengthened in their dedication to winning by having to learn an ideology that has been foisted on a gullible country by woke flim-flam artists (the modern grifters of phony sociology and politics)."

But Joe Biden's "woke" overhaul of the U.S. military is continuing far beyond a Navy pledge, critics say, pointing to U.S. Special Operations Command (SoCom), which oversees such elite covert forces as the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and Delta Force, announcing the hiring of Richard Torres-Estrada as the command's first “chief of diversity and inclusion.”

Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness and monitors the military’s gender policies, has analyzed SoCom’s 12-page Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan.

Donnelly told The Washington Times the command declares that “diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives. How would the inclusion of women and LGBT sexual minorities for purposes of diversity in Special Operations Forces improve the ability of offensive combat teams to survive, fight, and win against the enemy? What evidence, in actual military experience, supports this assertion?”

Donnelly added: “Hiring a civilian ‘diversity’ expert to impose this extreme ideology will do irreparable harm to our Special Operations Forces, weakening America’s ability to wage the toughest fights in an increasingly dangerous world.”

Torres-Estrada was formerly the equal opportunity officer for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

A Twitter user commented: “Look at his work history on LinkedIn. Government diversity career professional. No mention of uniform service. Not sure how this improves USSOCOM as an organization.”

Said another: “I thought SOCOM was a meritocracy.”

And another posted: “Our enemies are laughing at us.”

As Gingrich noted: "Can you imagine Xi Jinping – who is in the middle of simultaneously orchestrating the genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the suppression of the pro-freedom movement in Hong Kong – being briefed that the U.S. Navy has decided to become a social work experiment in feeling warm and understanding about each other? Do we think this will make the Chinese Communist dictatorship more or less likely to test our resolve in the South China Sea or the Taiwan strait? Do we think this newly emerging sensitive U.S. Navy will lead them to stand down because they realize what nice people we have become?

"Similarly, can you imagine Vladimir Putin – in the middle of planning the poisoning of one or more opposition leaders – being told that the new woke American Navy was prepared to contest the Black Sea or the Baltic? Do you think he would be more likely to back off or more likely to test this new social sciences experiment?"

More from MacArthur's farewell address:

"Others will debate the controversial issues national and international which divide men's minds but serene, calm, aloof you'll stand as the nation's war guardian as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict and its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom of right and justice.

"The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab and brown khaki in blue and gray would rise ... thundering those magic words duty, honor country."



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