RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-43-drop-in-white-recruits-caused-the-armys-recruitment-crisis/

The military recruitment crisis that has crippled our defense capabilities has been talked to death by generals, politicians and pundits who have blamed everything from rising minimum wages to obesity to Gen Z culture for the problem. They have raised enlistment bonuses to unprecedented levels, spent fortunes on ad campaigns that feature lesbian weddings and doubled down on DEI as the answer to the crisis. And yet the crisis has grown worse.

That’s because recruitment was a self-inflicted problem caused by a woke racist military.

Between 2018 and 2023, white Army recruits, once the mainstay, fell from a bare majority of 56% to a minority at 44%.

This was not an unintended effect, but policy.

“We are an Army that wants to look like America,” Maj. Gen. Kevin Vereen, the first black head of Army Recruiting Command, had proclaimed.

Gen. Gary Brito, the first black head of Army Training and Doctrine Command under whose purview recruiting falls, and the former deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, had boasted of Army “listening sessions” on racism, diversity and inclusion in order to maximize diversity.

Military brass had been tasked with creating a military that “looked more like America” and as a result the number of white Army recruits declined year by year and fell 43% from 44,042 in 2018 to 25,070 in 2023.

Black, Hispanic and other minority recruits became a majority, but there weren’t any more of them than there had been before. Minorities were joining the Army at the same rate as they had before, but with fewer white recruits they had become a majority by default.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/12/intel-officials-hezbollah-could-strike-in-u-s/

On Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials warned that the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah could launch attacks against Americans abroad, or even carry out an attack against the homeland directly.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the four anonymous officials voiced their concerns to Politico, with one saying that “Hezbollah could draw on the capability they have … to put people [in] places to do something. It is something to be worried about.”

Hezbollah, the officials noted, has more capabilities than any other terror group in the region, including a vast international network. The ongoing tensions in Israel after the October 7th terrorist attacks by the Islamic terror group Hamas have led to broader chaos throughout the Middle East.

Hezbollah is one of the groups that has been clashing with Israeli forces since October 7th. On Tuesday, Hezbollah struck an Israeli base with drones, to which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by killing three Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah tried to justify its attacks by claiming they were in retaliation for the killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut last week.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate in December that the threat of a foreign terrorist organization attacking the U.S. has increased since October 7th, saying that he sees “blinking lights everywhere I turn.”

Other escalations throughout the Middle East include the Yemeni Houthis repeatedly attacking ships in the Red Sea, disrupting a major maritime shipping lane, as well as militants in Iraq and Syria repeatedly attempting to attack American troops in both countries over 100 times. There was an explosion in Iran during a ceremony honoring the late Qasam Soleimani, killing roughly 100 people, for which the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took credit.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-incompetent-elite-is-opening-up-america-to-attack/

My first Townhall Column of the year was my top 2024 predictions, but one prediction did not fit with its snarky vibe. Let me make it now. In 2024, we’re going to see a massive terrorist attack here in the United States. I’m not going to sugarcoat it – I’m worried that we’re facing a terrorist threat unlike anything we’ve ever seen and that a lot of Americans are going to die. It does not have to happen, but because the people running this country are so corrupt, malicious, and incompetent, it will.

The people running this country have made choices – like throwing open the border – that are going to kill a lot of Americans because our enemies, unlike our alleged leaders, are serious people. They’re serious about subjugating and killing us. But the only things our leadership is serious about are keeping their names off pervert passenger lists, skimming endless Ukrainian cash, and pronouns, pronouns, pronouns, always pronouns. We have a distinctly unserious elite in the most serious of times.

When October 7 happened, we saw the Israelis caught unawares by an asymmetrical attack where a determined and cunning foe leveraged all its limited strengths against the Jewish state’s very few weaknesses, allowing Hamas to execute a short but bloody rape and murder spree. Understand that 10/7 was not a military assault, though it used violent means. It was an information operation, an operation designed not primarily to destroy the combat power of the IDF but to attack the will of the Israeli people and force Israel to change its policies. That did not work. Israel was stronger than Hamas imagined, and it hit back harder and more consistently than the terrorists expected, despite the shameful backstabbing by the Biden administration and the screaming of the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party here at home.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/01/11/second-largest-us-land-owner-is-a-ccp-member-n2633516

The second-largest foreign landowner in the United States is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

According to a report reviewed by the Daily Caller, Chen Tianqiao— founder, chairman, and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns nearly 200,000 acres of land in Oregon. 

The Chinese national made billions from online gaming, making him one of the most significant non-American landholders in the U.S. In only five years, Tianqiao became one of China’s largest Internet companies, producing some of today’s most popular games, such as, “The Word of Legend,” “Dungeons & Dragons Online,” and “Final Fantasy XIV.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-does-a-navy-sailor-spying-for-china-come-away-with-only-2-years-in-prison/

I have no idea why the DOJ is putting out a press release about this. It seems more like the sort of thing to never mention again.

A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments.

According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe.

Between August 2021 and at least May 2023, Zhao received at least $14,866 in at least 14 separate bribe payments from the intelligence officer. In exchange for the illicit payments, Zhao secretly collected and transmitted to the intelligence officer sensitive, non-public information regarding U.S. Navy operational security, military trainings and exercises, and critical infrastructure. Zhao entered restricted military and naval installations to collect and record this information.

Zhao transmitted plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, operational orders and electrical diagrams and blueprints for a Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar system located in Okinawa, Japan.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/03/global_conflicts_expose_dire_us_munitions_shortage_1002444.html

The United States military is severely short on high-end and artillery munitions at a crucial and strategic moment. As the calendar turns to 2024, Ukraine, using bombs and bullets from the United States, continues its slog of a war with Russia with no foreseeable end. Simultaneously, the U.S. continues sending artillery rounds to Israel amidst the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assault on Hamas in Gaza. In the Indo-Pacific, American tensions with China remain high as Taiwan prepares for a general election with fears of Chinese interference and Chinese leader Xi Jinping promises the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China. In DC, alarm bells ring regarding the dearth of rounds required for these three distinct kinds of conflict. Central to this issue is an American paucity of rare earth minerals indispensable in producing these bombs, shells, and rockets. To address this shortage and ensure the long-term viability of ammo for high-end conflict, the U.S. must invest in and maintain innovative systems for processing and refinement of rare earth minerals.

An Empty Cupboard: A Paucity of Rare Earth Elements

Rare earth minerals – a set of 17 metallic elements – are the essential materials of bombs, bullets, rockets, and missiles. They are critical in manufacturing powerful magnets used in precision-guided munitions. Some rare earth elements possess temperature stability necessary for some high-tech bombs exposed to intense heat during launch toward target, such as the Javelin missiles so crucial to allowing Ukrainian forces to fend off Russian tanks. Rare earths are in the fuzes of the 155mm artillery shells used in enormous volumes by both the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the IDF. Many air-to-air missiles needed in a fight with China, including the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, require these materials. Rare earths are used to build actuators for many surface-to-ground rockets.

The rare earth minerals are not particularly rare – these materials are bountiful in the earth’s crust. It is rather the production and refinement capability for the use of these materials – turning these elements into usable material – that is scarce within the U.S. The chemical properties of these materials are nearly identical from one another, making it difficult and costly to separate and refine each one for industrial use. The process also incurs environmental hazards that require expensive cleanup, often making large-scale production economically infeasible.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/12/28/army-numbers-smallest-since-wwii-what-units-face-cuts-in-2024/

The new year will likely prove to be one of significant force structure changes for the Army, according to its senior leaders.

Although the service has maintained for years that embracing multidomain operations will require it to “transform” its force structure into one leaders believe is suited to tomorrow’s battlefield, back-to-back recruiting shortfalls led top officials to admit by mid-to-late 2023 that some pending cuts are influenced by a deepening numbers shortfall. The Army finished fiscal year 2023 with only 452,000 active duty soldiers, its smallest force since 1940.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Army Times in June that the service will see reductions to “close-combat forces” that were purpose-built for the War on Terror, in addition to other organizations based on their purpose or other factors like deployment rates.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-is-on-a-wartime-footing-defense-industrial-base-shipbuilding-16e22a87?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

The good news about U.S.-China relations is that last month the two countries restored military-to-military dialogue after a 16-month rupture. The bad news is that it hasn’t slowed the military buildup in Beijing, which increasingly appears to be on a wartime footing. The U.S. needs to do likewise and reassemble what President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to as the nation’s “arsenal of democracy.”

Chinese leaders have articulated a long-term national strategy to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts,” including developing a world-class military. Over the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party has ramped up defense industrial production and significantly improved its process of researching, developing and producing advanced weapons systems. As Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III recently observed, China is preparing “specifically for a war with the U.S.”

China’s defense industrial efforts have strengthened its military capabilities. The People’s Liberation Army is amassing a formidable arsenal of medium- and long-range precision missiles capable of striking U.S. and allied bases in the Indo-Pacific. The PLA is also building a web of integrated air-defense systems to challenge U.S. forces in the region. Three of the world’s 10 largest defense companies are now Chinese enterprises: Aviation Industry Corp. of China, China North Industries Group and China South Industries Group.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/02/xi-jinpings-goon-squads/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

At a ritzy gala at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco on November 15, a crowd that included America’s top business leaders twice gave Xi Jinping a standing ovation as he delivered a speech full of reassurances about his fine intentions and the state of the ailing Sino–U.S. relationship.

Next door, from the fourth floor of a parking garage, a group of masked thugs came close to killing five Tibetan activists. “Before the secret entities and the clearly pro-CCP — and what looked like a bunch of trained — men, before they came in and ambushed us and stole our banner from the fifth floor, they actually started from the fourth floor and started pulling on the banner,” said Chemi Lhamo, an activist with the group Students for a Free Tibet. She told me that she and others lost their balance and almost fell off the side of the garage. Fifteen masked men who “really marched like a unit” then came up to the fifth floor and attacked them.

That was not an isolated incident. Outside the hotel that night, and throughout the week, pro-Beijing gangs stalked and assaulted opponents of Xi, most of them pro-democracy Chinese, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, and Tibetans, who had flocked to the city to protest his attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Estimates vary, but it appears that at least 1,000 pro-CCP demonstrators from across America were involved. The anti-Xi crowd was around 100 people, if that.

The harassment started upon Xi’s arrival at the airport on November 14 and didn’t let up until after his departure on November 17, Allen Chen, a lawyer and leader in the pro-democracy Chinese community, told me.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-u-s-military-is-not-woke-but-the-woke-threat-is-real/

I remember the day vividly, standing in formation in the hot Kentucky sun at Ft. Knox. “Look to your left and to your right,” the sergeant said. “You are all wearing the same uniform, you all bleed the same color blood. There is no color here other than green.” But by the end of my career, there were directives coming down from Washington D.C. telling us that some of our service members were somehow different, as was the case when we were told we should counsel some of our soldiers letting them know they can change the gender on their ID cards. I wasn’t about to single out a soldier, and I doubt very many did in any branch of the services.

But aside from causing a few eyerolls, woke policies in the military are more of a distraction at this point than anything else and are thankfully being largely ignored other than service members being ordered to sit through the regularly occurring death by PowerPoint. However, that in no way diminishes the very real threat it poses.

The United States military remains the most effective fighting force on the planet, and although wokeness has not yet significantly infected the military, the woke cancer continues to grow, threatening the cohesion of America’s fighting forces. Every hour that a service member wastes sitting through unnecessary woke briefings, is an hour lost that should have been spent on warfighter training, leaving us less prepared for the next war.

Woke policies, unnecessary political correctness at the expense of readiness or the success of a mission, have been and continue to be pushed at the behest of politicians inside the beltway. But the problem with their efforts to change the way our military operates is that it doesn’t need changing. The military is one place where true diversity has already been achieved.