Duty, Honor, Country...and DEI?

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth beg to differ

Who will speak for them…?

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Donald Trump’s pledge to purge DEI from the federal government, and particularly from the Department of Defense, has roiled the turgid waters of the progressive fever swamp. Here, for example, is that well-known supporter of a strong American military, The Nation, throwing a hissy fit.

The story, written by Michael T. Klare, is titled “Pete Hegseth’s Dangerous War on America.” Its subhead haughtily informs us that “Every one of [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth’s predecessors emphasized unity and a diverse military as key to national progress and defense.” Well, that’s nice to know. And as a matter of fact, the makeup of the armed forces of the United States already was quite diverse when DEI appeared on the scene—leading to the reasonable conclusion that DEI in the Pentagon was a solution in search of a problem. For that reason alone, the time and money being wasted by DEI justifies its elimination.

But Klare has visions of the Apocalypse:

Instead of a diversified force that’s broadly representative of US society, he seeks a force largely composed of white, presumably conservative, men. This requires, first of all, eliminating all measures aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the military and the removal of any officer who may have espoused support for DEI efforts or might have been promoted as a result of them.

This, of course, is patent nonsense. Neither the Trump Administration nor Pete Hegseth personally have any intention of turning the armed forces into a white supremacist organization—Klare’s clear implication. It is true that the new Defense Secretary aims at the elimination of DEI, and Klare treats this as if it were a bad thing. His tactic is to repeat those soothing words, diversity, equity, inclusion, without explaining to the reader what they signify in context. Well, allow me. Diversity sorts people into groups based on racial, ethnic, and gender categories. Equity demands equal outcomes regardless of ability or performance. Inclusion requires proportional representation of groups, again regardless of performance or ability.

These requirements are radically inimical to military culture, whose organizing principles are uniformity and discipline, and whose core values are well summed up by the West Point motto: Duty, Honor, Country.

The armed forces aren’t interested in your background or your life story, except as far as they affect your qualifications for commissioning or enlistment. You’re not a diversity hire. On the contrary, you’re expected to embrace the culture of the organization you’ve joined, to enter into the spirit of the body. That espirit de corps is one pillar of the military. The other is discipline—which is the nail, the screw, the bolt, the clamp, the glue that binds a military unit together.

DEI not only wastes time and money that would be better dedicated to training and readiness, but it undermines the organizing principles and core values of the military. In his famous to his troops prior to D-Day, General George S. Patton put it succinctly: “An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team.” That teamwork is forged in the classroom, on the drill field, during field training exercises and war games, in the course of a routine duty day. Combat skills are honed by constant repetition and practice, until the response becomes automatic, a matter of muscle memory.

I know a former soldier, an Army veteran of Afghanistan, who bitched and complained about the constant drills required of her during training. One such drill had to do with a vehicle rollover—in training as well as in combat, an ever-present hazard. “We practiced it over and over and over!” she said. “It drove me nuts!”

Then came the inevitable deployment, and one day she was manning the machine gun turret of an MRAP (Mine Resistant Armor Protected) vehicle on convoy escort duty. An IED detonated alongside. Fortunately, it had been too deeply buried to cause serious damage or casualties. But the explosion did undermine the shoulder of the road, and the MRAP started to tip over. This was a dangerous moment for the gunner, whose position exposed her upper body. But she didn’t hesitate for a nanosecond, hitting the quick release on the harness that stabilized her in the turret, tucking in her arms and legs, and allowing herself to fall into the vehicle interior. A moment later the MRAP crashed down on its side. But no member of the crew suffered anything worse than scrapes and bruises. They all knew what to do.

Every hour spent on DEI indoctrination is an hour stolen from the training and practice that keeps soldiers alive in combat.

The record shows that the Pentagon’s obsession in recent years with DEI and related policies has done nothing to foster readiness or buttress the organizing principles and core values of the US armed forces. Indeed, it’s served only to undermine them. Can anyone doubt that the Biden Administration’s profoundly misguided investigation into the threat of “white supremacy” in the ranks was a blow to morale? And it was ultimately futile, the investigators concluding that the whole performance was nugatory. No such threat existed; it was a figment of the progressive imagination. And what soldier, active, reserve, former, or retired, could not have winced, hearing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressing a desire to learn more about CRT and that fantasy syndrome, “white rage”? Is it any wonder that during the Biden Administration, the military’s recruiting crisis significantly worsened?

I raised an eyebrow when President Trump nominated Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense. The same criticism that’s been levelled against him by critics—lack of management experience—occurred to me as well. But then, how successfully have successive previous incumbents performed? They possessed glittering resumes and years of supposedly relevant experience. Yet today, the armed forces of the United States are in bad shape at a time when the world is an increasingly dangerous place. Some of the blame for that falls on Congress, some on the Executive Branch, some even on the American people—but Pete Hegseth’s predecessors were also part of the problem.

Whatever else may be said of Secretary Hegseth, he’s served on the battlefield with today’s soldiers. He knows them: the young men and women whose names are seldom if ever mentioned in the media. He led them in combat. He’s of the troops and for the troops. And he’s absolutely right about the toxicity of DEI and related progressive obsessions, especially in the military context.

Reflecting on all these things, I concluded that Pete Hegseth deserves a chance to show what he can do.

What’s dangerous is the idea that we should take the advice of The Nation or any other such source when the subject is military policy or national security. The motto Duty, Honor, Country is nowhere to be found on that publication’s masthead.