October 7, 2025
The U.S. military services have a very specific, narrow and critical duty: to protect the United States from its enemies. That requires the personnel in all of the individual services to be highly capable, well-trained, well-disciplined and laser-focused on and heavily devoted to their duties.
Those who served during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and in the years following know well how the military operated, and how the various branches were focused on their duties.
In recent years, particularly during the tenure of former-President Joe Biden, that attention to the critical and highly focused job of the military took a sharp turn away.
Some of the mis-focused elements came before Biden took office, but they reached a critical level during those horrible four years.
Two people in the highest military leadership positions during that time were Lloyd J. Austin, the Secretary of Defense, and General Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and were guilty of pushing these ideas.
For many years the “woke” syndrome infected the military, replacing sensible ideals such as military capability and lethality, with foolishness like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). This caused division among members of the military forces, and diverted needed funds away from the necessities of the military.
One important thing the military had been emphasizing for decades was discouraging racism. But in June of 2020, Mark Esper, the Defense Secretary at the time, employed a new idea: teaching service members about “implicit bias.” This is the idea that there is an unspoken bias favoring white male service members, to the disadvantage of female and non-white service members.
He also established a system of DEI, which expanded during the Biden administration. Spending on this system totaled $68 million in 2022, increased to $86.5 million in 2023, and in 2024 the Department of Defense requested $114.7 million for DEI.
The DEI system included pushing critical race theory, which is a Marxist concept where everyone is either an oppressor or is oppressed. Ideas such as white privilege, and systemic racism even infected the military academies, accompanied by encouragement of academy students to report any private conversations that contradicted the DEI concept.
Instead of military personnel spending their time maintaining and improving their high levels of performance and their sharp focus on military readiness, much of their time and mental attitudes were sidetracked toward ideals that are not just non-military, but are anti-military.
So, a bad trend that began small quite a few years ago has been growing, and growing quite fast in the last few years. But blessedly, the newly elected Donald Trump administration has a much clearer view of how the military must function, and why.
A new day has dawned at the Department of Defense. And two things are now prevalent and have created much controversy. The second of those is the decision by Trump to return to the Department its original title: The Department of War. As with everything Trump does or says, this has brought criticism.
But not nearly so much as the first of those two things: his choice for the Secretary of the then-Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Prior to his nomination, Hegseth worked for Fox News as a co-host on the network’s Fox and Friends Weekend program.
Needless to say, the left went wild with criticism of his background at Fox News, and other things that the critics found to complain about. A predictable and fair question was, what qualifies him for this job?
Hegseth does have a military background, although some say it isn’t deep enough and broad enough for him to be in charge of our military forces. Some think that a better choice would be a flag officer with 20 years of service.
However, before his work in TV, Hegseth completed Reserve Officers’ Training Corps training while attending Princeton University. He later served as an officer in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2003 to 2021. He attained the rank of captain, and was deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 with Army National Guard’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division.
He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011-2012. He served in Kandahar province with the Minnesota National Guard’s 1-194th Armor Battalion. And during his service he was awarded the Bronze Star.
1. Ending “politically correct leadership”
2. Imposing new physical fitness standards
3. Tackling ideological “garbage”
4. Eliminating anonymous complaints
5. Reinstating discipline and grooming standards
6. Focusing on military strength
7. Emphasizing merit
8. Redefining “toxic” leadership
9. Purging “woke” leadership
10. Revising personnel record retention
The hoopla over gender and ethnicity equality must be put aside. The gender and ethnicity of service members are irrelevant. What is relevant is each person’s ability to meet a set of standards designed to put the most qualified people in uniform. We want and need the most qualified people possible, and the mix of gender and ethnicity will be whatever it turns out to be, based upon choosing highly qualified people.
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