ANALYSIS – Despite the mounting global threats to the United States and the increasing potential for significant conflict between great powers, the Biden Pentagon can’t understand why it is facing its worst recruiting environment in decades.
It is time they look inward and see how their own leftist policies at the Department of Defense (DoD) are mainly to blame.
While obsessing over woke leftist causes and ‘diverse’ recruits not normally interested in military service, the Pentagon is alienating the vastly greater number of patriotic conservatives who normally fill our military ranks. (RELATED: The Left’s LGBTQ ‘War on Straight White Folks’ – From DoD to Our Schools)
At the May 5 Army posture hearing with the Senate Committee on Armed Services, top military leaders sounded the alarm about recruitment. The Christian Post reports:
According to top DoD leadership, this is the most challenging recruiting year since the beginning of the all-volunteer force almost five decades ago. The Army announced that even after being forced to cut 12,000 soldiers, it still cannot fill its ranks. In addition to this, the percentage of young Americans qualified to join the Army is now at the lowest point ever at 23%.
While an increasingly obese, unfit and mentally unhealthy society is partly to blame for fewer young Americans qualifying physically or mentally for service, the Pentagon itself is a big part of the recruitment problem.
Much of this crisis is caused by a growing lack of trust and confidence in the U.S. military. And much of this among its core recruiting pool – conservative patriotic young Americans.
Currently, only 11% of all those aged 16-21 answered “definitely or probably” in their likelihood to “serve in the military.”
According to a Reagan Institute survey, the percentage of Republican respondents saying, “they had a great deal of confidence in the military,” dropped dramatically from 87% in 2018 to “53% in 2021.”
And look no farther than the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, for a prime example of why this is happening.
The Post continues:
The loss of trust by many conservatives comes primarily from a perceived liberal bias at the top of DoD. Many conservative media sources have decried what appears to be DoD following “political” priorities of the Biden Administration, including perceived targeting of conservatives in uniform. The bias became so obvious that even traditionally liberal news sources have opined about the problem.
The Atlantic, a known liberal source, published the following: “Where (Milley) deserves greater criticism is his congressional testimony from a few weeks ago … he went on to connect racism to the attack on the Capitol: ‘I want to understand white rage … What is it that made thousands of people assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?’”
The “white rage” statement by General Milley infuriated conservatives, as it was perceived both as an endorsement of critical race theory and of partisan political narratives. The bias perception was compounded by Bob Woodward’s and Robert Costa’s book Peril quoting senior military and civilian DoD leaders with statements undermining Trump and showing partiality to Democrats.
If the Pentagon doesn’t quickly step back from its far left, woke policies and rampant Democrat-linked politicization, conservative Americans’ trust and confidence in the military will only continue to plummet. (RELATED: Guess How Many Troops Out of 1.4 Million Were Charged With ‘Extremism’?)
And with it, the recruitment numbers for our nation’s fighting forces. ALD
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Liberty Defense News. As a Marine Corps officer, he led Marines, served aboard ships in the Pacific and jumped from helicopters and airplanes. He was also a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies worldwide. He later ran for state and federal office, taught political science, wrote for the editorial board of a major newspaper and had his own radio show. A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten our American liberty – at home and from abroad. To read more go to: paulcrespo.com.
Are these people so stupid that they cannot realize that they are the cause of the problems, not the American people?? When any people, black, red, yellow, or white lose trust in their leaders, they will NOT follow.
If the people at the top (including Biden) fix their own man-made problems, only then will the citizens follow….!!
Fix what problems??
The Democrats are easily implementing their Marxist agenda.
They have no problems!
DUH!
I am not surprised by this article. I would not join again under the current leadership, nor would either of my sons who are also veterans. The military is totally politicized by the Democrat Party. This is the real treason and threat to democracy. Like many of our other institutions, they cannot cure their illness. The cure can only come from a new president committed to a non-politicized military. White supremacy in the military is a false manufactured issue. Leftist supremacy is a real problem everywhere.
Correct!
What a disgrace.
I’m a Vietnam vet and son of a WW2 vet. My grandson is in the process of either choosing college, trades or military. Sadly I was compelled to talk him out of the military option at this time. I have very little confidence in the current leadership.
Those who want to be soldiers are not interested in Milley and Austins’ crt woke bull shit. They are not creating warriors, they are creating racist sissies. No warrior minded person wants any part of that libtard bs. Thye have to go right after November.
I’m no longer young – way too old to join the military. But if I were of fighting age, sadly, I still would not join the US military. The focus is on fulfilling leftist pipe dreams – more women, more minorities, more gays and transgenders, and this doesn’t make for a prepared military. That’s not to say that women, minorities, gays, and transgenders cannot be of military caliber. But the focus is not on finding qualified individuals who HAPPEN to also be women, minorities, or LBGT. The rush to include such people means that being a woman, a minority, or LBGT is often the SOLE criteria. That’s a military that’s easily defeated.