Biden is downsizing, politicizing our military Want to avoid war? Prepare for one Don Feder
https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/
History teaches us that the best way to avoid a war is to prepare for one.
After World War I, another global conflict was unthinkable, the leaders of the democracies declared. Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists thought otherwise.
In the 1930s, Britain effectively disarmed, and France relied on static defense. The United States embraced isolationism, relying on two oceans for protection, while Germany rearmed and Japan invaded China. The cost of that lack of imagination was another world war and 75 million dead.
When World War II ended, shortsighted politicians rushed to downsize our military, even as communism advanced on four continents.
After Vietnam, the peaceniks who had taken control of the Democratic Party couldn’t wait to put our armed forces in mothballs. Then came Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, 9/11, ISIS, and radical Islam’s war on the West.
The Biden administration’s death march of folly began with the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, with 13 service members dead, thousands of Americans stranded and $7 billion in military equipment left behind. The weakness we displayed to our enemies set the stage for the next round of aggression.
President Biden is Neville Chamberlain, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter rolled into one.
He accelerated the politicizing of the military and put it on a starvation diet. Memorial Day should remind us that our security depends on patriots willing to fight who have the means to fight.
Like the commander in chief at the Air Force Academy’s 2023 graduation, our military has fallen and can’t get up.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Index of Military Strength rates the Army as “marginal,” the Navy “weak,” the Air Force “very weak” and the Marine Corps “strong but too small.” Overall, the report says our armed forces are at “significant risk of not being able to defend America’s vital national interests.”
The services consistently fail to meet recruitment goals due in part to the reluctance of many who want to serve to join an organization focused on fighting the left’s culture wars.
The House Oversight Committee recently charged that “promotions are being awarded based on sex, gender, ethnicity and race at the expense of merit.”
While military families have to go on food stamps, the Pentagon is asking for $114 billion to fund diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it claims are “ensuring our entire workforce lives by fundamental values that bolster unit cohesion.” Translation: Indoctrination isn’t cheap.
There are drag queen shows at military bases. Officers are instructed on how to respond to women who object to sharing showers with individuals with male genitalia. The Air Force Academy has banned the words Mom and Dad and requires cadets to ask for colleagues’ gender identity, so they’ll know which pronouns to use when addressing them.
Officer: “Son, I want you to take the objective.” NCO: “Sorry, sir, I can’t. You didn’t use one of my preferred pronouns.”
Those whose assignment should be smashing things and killing people are taught to march in lockstep into a future where saluting the idols of the age trumps every other consideration.
In response to the Navy’s use of a drag queen named Harpy Daniels (aka Petty Officer 2nd Class Joshua Kelley) as its digital ambassador, a Navy SEAL veteran who was part of the team that got Osama bin Laden laments: “I can’t believe I fought for this bulls—-!”
In bolstering morale, the home front is vital.
We ask the military to fight for our security as we let millions of unvetted aliens into the country (including at least 27,000 Chinese men of military age in fiscal 2023), our cities have become free-fire zones, and overprivileged brats protest for Hamas.
Iran fights us with proxies in the Middle East with funding Mr. Biden provided by easing sanctions. China’s real military budget is probably close to our own. Russia makes major advances in space weapons and drone technology.
Mr. Biden wants to tell Israel how to fight terrorism in the Gaza Strip, while our State Department sends condolences to Iran — the chief sponsor of international terrorism — over the death of President Ibrahim Raisi, known as the “butcher of Tehran.”
If you’re ever in Honolulu, you might visit the USS Arizona Memorial above the wreck of the battleship of the same name. It marks the final resting place of 1,102 sailors and Marines who were killed in the attack of Dec. 7, 1941.
They died at the outset of a war we weren’t prepared to fight.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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