I served in the Army from 1981 to
2010. I entered as a private, going through basic training at Fort
Leonard-Wood, earning my commission as a 2LT in 1988 and eventually retiring
after twenty-plus years as a Lieutenant Colonel. During my career, I served at
all levels of command, spent two tours in Germany, deployed to combat multiple
times, worked with various allied armies, and engaged in operations on four
different continents. This is not unusual. Anyone spending over twenty years of
active-duty service will have enjoyed a similarly varied career path. I
witnessed the deep cold war, the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of
communism, the drug wars, and many other tumultuous events of those days. I
also participated in the growth and restructuring of the Army.
When I joined in 1981, the Army was
struggling to throw off the chaos of the Vietnam Draftee Army, endemic racism,
and the disorderly drug and alcohol drenched years that followed. At all levels
with varying degrees of awareness and success, we sought to build an
institution which lived up to our oath to protect and defend the constitution
from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The changes in the Army were titanic,
involving significant upheaval. These changes effected all ranks and all levels
of command. As with any major change or restructuring, the changes came with
periods of uncertainty and misunderstanding.
Despite all of this, we built an
institution that I was proud to serve in. Of course, it was not perfect. It was
built and staffed by humans, so it was imperfect; however, we truly sought to
do the right thing while always completing our mission. The Army that emerged
from those years was an institution that embraced meritocracy.
Promotion depended upon a
demonstrated ability to operate at the next higher rank. In other words, as a
lieutenant I was expected to act like and make the kind of decisions that a
captain would make. Performance outweighed race and connections. As an
institution, the Army remained apolitical during these years. Now, under the
influence of the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), Pete Hegseth, much of this hard
work is being rapidly undone.
The SECDEF has fired or put out to
pasture many high-ranking officers simply because they do not fit his picture
of what a modern warfighter looks like, believes, or endorses. While it has
always been true that at the flag-officer ranks, political considerations held
great sway; during my years of service, I never witnessed such a wholesale reordering,
especially one done on such diaphanous grounds. Some appear to have simply been
of the wrong race or gender. Others seem to have been guilty of supporting the
previous administration’s stated goals with too much fervor. Whatever the case,
this heavy-handed approach has had two deleterious effects.
First of all, the departure of so
many high-level officers deprives the Department of Defense of the wisdom
gained through years of experience in combat and peacetime. Given the highly
volatile nature of modern warfare and geopolitics, we can ill afford to discard
such a large knowledge trust.
Secondly, these mass firings change
the promotion and assignment dynamic from one that is focused on mission
accomplishment to one of political conformity. During my time in the Army, I
never really cared about, knew, or investigated the political leanings of my
fellow soldiers. Of course, I understood their general political leanings. You
cannot spend so much time around each other and not know; but, dependability
and professionalism mattered most, not political party. Suddenly this changes. Now,
devotion to duty and competence take a backseat to political allegiance.
Thirdly, this politicization of the
military damages trust; trust between peers, trust of leaders, and trust of the
system in general. Previously, the Army culture laser focused on
professionalism and competence built trust in the person on your left or right
flank. You knew that they were devoted to personal professionalism and mission
accomplishment. Now with this new emphasis on conservative political correctness,
one never knows. Now one must wonder if their command will extract some sort of
punishment for pulling the wrong lever in the ballot box.
These factors will exert a corrosive
effect on the rank and file of the military. In years past one could generally
trust the system to produce competent and motivated Officers and NCOs. Yes,
there were exceptions to the rule; however, for the most part, the system
produced excellent leaders at all levels. The system included various
mechanisms that enabled a service member to seek redress should they encounter
rank prejudice based on race or gender. While these levers often brought
uncomfortable scrutiny, they ensured the institution as a whole remained one in
which professional competence and mission accomplishment were the standard.
Those unwilling to embrace those as the standard for evaluation were outliers
and once identified swiftly delt with.
The SECDEF’s efforts to cleanse the
military of WOKEness will not result in a higher level of readiness. Instead,
he has weakened the military, opening the door for a continuing cycle of political
readjustment. The systems designed and refined during the latter years of the
twentieth century produced an organization that promoted and assigned based on
demonstrated ability to work at the next higher level and approached each day
with an intense focus on completing the assigned mission. The Army, while not
perfect, fully embraced the lofty goal of “protecting and defending the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
