President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening the U.S. military with a “woke” political ideology, according to a new report published on Monday by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
The 18-page report, titled “WOKE WARFIGHTERS: How Political Ideology is Weakening America’s Military,” documents several instances of both uniformed and civilian military leaders promoting racially charged theories and promoting individuality among its LGBT members.
The report states the U.S. military is “the greatest fighting force in the
world” and its members “are driven by a love of country and a sense of service and honor that is increasingly rare today.”
“The United States and the world are better off because of these
brave men and women,” the report continues. “Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening America’s warfighters through a sustained assault fueled by woke virtue signaling.”
The Republican report points to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s order in February of 2021 for a standdown to discuss extremism within the ranks of the military. The report states that the military expended more than 5,359,000 personnel hours on these standdown discussions on extremism. At the same time, the Biden Administration’s “Countering Extremist Activity Working Group” (CEAWG) found that “cases of prohibited extremist activity among service members were rare,” with only 100 cases among the more than 2.1 million personnel in the active and reserve components of the U.S. military.
Rubio and Roy’s report notes how the military has brought on diversity specialists — like Pentagon diversity advisor Bishop Garrison and Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusivity Officer Kelisa Wing — who have made both racially and politically charged comments.
Garrison has promoted the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which argues that the true founding of the U.S. was when slavery began on the American continent and not when the American colonies issued the Declaration of Independence. In 2019, Garrison also publicly tweeted that support for former President Donald Trump is support for extremism and racism.
Wing came under scrutiny for her own racially charged tweets, including one where she referred to a white woman as having “CAUdacity,” a slang term blending the words “Caucasian” and “audacity” to describe the so-called audacity of white people.
The Rubio and Roy report further describes how U.S. military service academies have implemented “Critical Race Theory” and academy leaders have instructed their students to read “How to Be an Antiracist,” a book that promotes the idea that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
The Republican report further criticizes the Biden administration’s military leadership for “proudly promoting and celebrating sex reassignment procedures, which can have months-long recovery periods, with complete recovery taking ‘up to one year’ for some procedures.” The Republican authors note that having a peanut allergy or skin diseases like eczema can be disqualifying conditions for service members, while the Biden administration is allowing other service members to undergo these invasive sex reassignment surgeries with lengthy recovery periods.
The report also criticizes military leadership in general for promoting LGBT individuality. The Republican lawmakers argue that the military is “a forge in which diverse members are made one to serve the needs of their unit and their country” and that “the appeal to self is corrosive to unit cohesion.”
Military leaders have repeatedly defended against accusations that the services are “woke” and undermined by these diversity efforts, and have even touted such efforts as key to strengthening the military. Last month, the Biden administration released its new national security strategy, which states “we will strengthen the effectiveness of the force by promoting diversity and inclusion.”
Last month, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth also defended against accusations that being “woke” is hurting military readiness.
“I think woke means a lot of different things to different people, but first of all I would say if woke means, you know, we are not focused on warfighting, we are not focused on readiness, that doesn’t reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit,” Wormuth said.
Wormuth defended against charges that wokeness is hurting the military just days after the Army concluded its worst year of recruiting on record, coming up 15,000 recruits short and missing their recruiting goal by a full 25 percent. Wormuth did not directly attribute the recruiting struggles to “woke” ideology in the ranks, but did urge the service’s leaders to keep “out of the culture wars” online.
