The American Spectator

A Further Perspective

As the Ft. Hood massacre and military "diversity" talk clearly shows, ours is a tale of two militaries.

One military is battle hardened and forward deployed; the other is soft, bureaucratic and backward. One military champions Theodore Roosevelt's "manly virtues"; the other espouses leftwing feminist cant. One military takes the fight to the Jihadist enemy; the other cowers before the Jihadist lobby.

One military is faithful to America's martial traditions; the other seeks to undermine those traditions. One military champions Washington and Lee, Jackson and Grant, McArthur and Patton; the other champions a softer and gentler leadership archetype.

One military champions excellence; the other champions "diversity." One military champions fairness and equality; the other champions affirmative action, quotas and set-asides. One military is at war with the Islamists; the other is at war with the U.S. Constitution. One military is politically incorrect; the other kowtows to political correctness.

Yes, Virginia, multiculturalism and other dangerous nostrums have indeed infected the highest echelons of the U.S. military. So much so that the Army's highest ranking officer, General George W. Casey, Jr. said in the wake of a horrific massacre of American soldiers at Ft. Hood:

"What happened at Ft. Hood was a tragedy; but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

An even greater tragedy, eh? Even greater than the murder of 14 innocent men, women and a baby? Even greater than the likelihood that there are other Islamists in our midst who are now planning similar massacres of American troops?

So much so that the Navy's highest ranking officer, Admiral Gary Roughead, has said, "Diversity is our number one priority."

The Navy's number one priority, eh? Is diversity more important even than combating piracy and defeating al Qaeda?

So much so that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, elevated diversity to a "strategic imperative" when he was the chief of naval operations.

A "strategic imperative," eh? One wonders how the great armies and navies of the past, most of which were decidedly non-diverse, ever managed to win a battle, let alone a war. What about the all-Jewish Israeli military, which is widely recognized as one of the world's greatest fighting forces?

General Casey and Admirals Mullen and Roughead are not stupid men, and they surely mean well. But they have internalized the politically correct lessons of the academy and the popular culture, which propagate leftist nonsense like "diversity" (read: affirmative action and reverse discrimination). And they are actively seeking to impose these dangerous ideas on the U.S. military.

The Washington Post, for instance, reports that according to Bruce Fleming, the Naval Academy "operates a two-tiered admission system that makes it substantially easier for minority applicants to get in."

Fleming is a tenured professor of English at the Naval Academy and a former admissions officer there. "We're dumbing down the Naval Academy… [and] we're dumbing down the officer corps," he told the Post.

Of course, Naval Academy officials strenuously deny that this is happening; but Fleming makes a convincing case. "Don't want to believe me?" he writes. "[Then] have a lawyer sit in on a year's worth of admissions board deliberations. Or better still, pray that one of the stellar white students rejected to give a seat to a 'diverse' candidate sues us. That's the only way taxpayers will ever fully understand the price to them of 'putting diversity first.'"

The price of military "diversity" has been even more exorbitant, perhaps, than Fleming himself probably ever imagined. Indeed, as retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters reports, political correctness resulted in the Army's retention and promotion of the Ft. Hood killer, Jihadist Major Nidal Malik Hasan:

"A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers' promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don't call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn't hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It's almost impossible for the Army's politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician."

Herein lies the real outrage: Political correctness and "diversity" led to the Ft. Hood massacre. The Army's failure to apply its own standards fairly and equally throughout the ranks led to the Ft. Hood massacre.

General Casey is absolutely right about one thing: Diversity, properly understood, ought not be a casualty of this calamitous act. Affirmative action and reverse discrimination, however, should be banned from the ranks.

Equal rights for all and special privileges for none. Islamists and Jihadists especially are due no special deference. They are combatants with whom we are at war. We Americans ignore this reality at our peril. Indeed, 14 innocent men, women and a baby have paid the ultimate price for our dereliction of duty.

topics:
Affirmative Action, Fort Hood, Gen. George Casey