Recruiting woes have yet to cease for the armed services and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth had a unique take on how “woke” was responsible.
After falling short of fiscal year ’22’s reduced recruitment goals by 15,000, FY23 is expected to be another bust for the U.S. Army after insisting ideological initiatives weren’t having an impact. During a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing earlier this year, officials denied that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs were hurting their numbers, only to now have Wormuth blame public criticism for their shortcomings.
“We are a ready Army, not a ‘woke’ Army,” she insisted to reporters recently during a media roundtable. “That’s something, frankly, the chief [Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville] and I said throughout posture season in hearings, in meetings with members of Congress.”
As reported by Task & Purpose, Wormuth was speaking out against ramped up politicization of the military as the 2024 presidential race is underway and she took aim at leading figures tarnishing her branch’s reputation.
“I think one of the things that we see that’s contributing to a decline in trust in the military is a concern on both sides of the aisle about politicization of our military leaders,” she said. “I think the more our military leaders are sort of dragged into spaces that have been politicized like that, I think the more it contributes to this perception that they’re political when they really aren’t. So, I hope that we don’t see more of the kind of talk that’s been out in the past few days.”
Candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, himself a former member of the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps, have vowed to return the military’s focus to defending national sovereignty and eliminate the unnecessary and costly efforts to satisfy Marxist ideologues.
Speaking on Memorial Day, the governor said in part, “I think the military that I see is different from the military that I served in.”
“I see a lot of emphasis now on political ideologies, things like gender pronouns. I see a lot about things like DEI, and I think that that’s caused recruiting to plummet,” he continued while vowing to “destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dustbin of history.”
DeSantis talks ‘big changes’ in US military if elected, vows to ‘beat Biden… destroy leftism in this country’ https://t.co/qbE1xqEpZy pic.twitter.com/wn8gqUvuaa
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) June 1, 2023
“I think it’s driven off a lot of warriors and I think morale is low,” DeSantis noted, but it was exactly talk like that that Wormuth blamed for the Army’s 25 percent shortfall.
“What I am trying to do is talk about now how that drip, drip, drip of criticism about a ‘woke military,’ I do think is having some counterproductive effects on recruiting,” she told the media.
But politicians haven’t been the only ones raising concern as service members called out what they’re witnessing anonymously to Fox News. “I do perceive the Army leadership as woke, and probably the lower enlisted (they have been indoctrinated in school). Equity-diversity is another way to divide and control the masses. It does nothing for the warfighter,” one said.
“I 100% believe the military is woke,” another expressed. “I see daily minorities, overweight people and women not adhering to military standards. Nobody corrects them due to the fear of being fired and labeled a racist or a sexist.”
Service members warn of ‘extremely woke’ military: ‘It does nothing for the warfighter’ https://t.co/4EUlmPjBKM
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) October 11, 2022
While the secretary contended the Army was recruiting more people now than it had been this time last year, she did not provide data for FY23 and admitted she did not expect to meet the goal of 65,000 new soldiers.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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