Pete Hegseth enlisted in the Army in 2001 to fight extremism. He fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and was awarded two Bronze Stars. But as the “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host writes in his new book, “The War on Warriors: The Betrayal of the Men and Women Who Freed Us,” (June 4, Broadside Books). He is viewed as an unwelcome extremist by the military he once served in. In the name of diversity and social justice, the woke elites who now run our military have lowered standards and alienated the brave young patriots who once so deftly defended America and its allies. “They believe that power is evil, that merit is unfair, that ideology is more important than hard work, that whiteness is a thing of the past, and that safety is more important than risk-taking,” he writes. “Yet our enemies still understand that soldiers must be strong, skilled, and brave.” Here is an excerpt:
Ordinary men have fought and won wars all the time. Please prove me wrong.
Picture an 18-year-old — skinny, muscular, wearing muddy pants, an American flag hat, and a cross tattooed on his forearm — and Democrats immediately think “rural white rage.” Republicans think “hopefully illegal immigration won’t dent my future wages.”
Both should think, “This is the man who has saved us in every war since the founding of our country, and he will save us again someday.”
After years of sending sappy, ambiguous recruiting messages, the U.S. Army recently began producing television commercials that depict mostly white men (surprise!) taking on tough missions and taking risks.
These are the types of masculine ads that actually inspire the sense of honor and heroism that healthy young men aspire to.My phone was soon flooded with text messages from veterans, and there was just one message: It must be time to start a war again!
Of course, we can’t wait until a crisis hits to recruit our largest and most important pool of military personnel. But that’s exactly what Biden’s woke policies have done. After Obama poured over its social justice platform, over the past three years, the Defense Department, across all branches, has been incorporating social justice messaging into its recruiting efforts: gender equality, racial diversity, climate silliness, and the LGBTQA+ alphabet soup.
The only problem is that there aren’t enough people from San Francisco who want to join the 82 lesbian groups.and Airborne. Not only are lesbians turning away, but these same ads are alienating the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.
Social justice militaries are simply unable to recruit manly men to make up their warrior class. This much is self-evident. My high school, in a mostly blue-collar rural part of Minnesota, produced some incredible warriors: tough football players looking for their next manly milestone.
One of my friends joined the Marines and the other joined the Army Rangers. They were later wounded in combat and decorated. They were in high school and saw the patriotic, tough, manly messages in Marine and Army ads and thought, “Yeah, I want that, too.” In both cases, the military molded immature, supposedly “toxic” masculinity into disciplined, disciplined, respectable masculinity. Who knows what the untrained, unconstrained world did to these alpha males, but the military made great warriors and now great citizens.
A conscious army cannot fail to recruit the less manly men who, through proper discipline and training, become the manly men required for the army, who make up a large proportion of the young men who do not come from military families but who love their country.
In some ways, I fall into this category. I wanted to “give it my all” but knew nothing about military life. This category reminds me of two friends from high school. Neither of us played sports or were particularly tough or “cool”, but we came from good, patriotic, Christian families and went to basic training after high school.
Call it a duty or a challenge, but they did it. One just retired after 20 years as the Air Force’s top jumpmaster. The other is still a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. They went from weak and timid to tough and disciplined. A military that values social justice probably wouldn’t have hired either of them.
The military cannot become an institution like Harvard fraternities, catering to an increasingly obscure constituency. Our important constituency is Normal guyWe strive to be heroes, not victims. We are not a collection of victimized tribes. Equality is our foundation, lethality is our trademark. Our class is not black and white. We are all green. Our strength is do not have Not only our diversity, but our unity and love for one another, for our families, and above all for our country — this is a truth I experienced firsthand in Iraq.
My platoon members followed my hand signals. There was no hesitation. It was the most special moment I have ever experienced. Watching these men. Strong, tough. From Nowhereville, USA, just like me. My men. They all look different. Different races, different dialects. But they are all just regular guys. They are all unique, but not tonight. Right here, on enemy territory, when a shot from a Dragunov could take someone’s life at any moment, we are one. No excuses, no drugs, no women, just men. Men trained to fight. Men tough as iron. Men with no distractions. I knew exactly what they were capable of. They earned this place, this rank, this position. We snaked our way through the country roads just like we trained. 100 percent dedication. 100 percent for each other. These 37 men would have run headfirst into the fire for each other if Lucifer himself had been across the street.
Is it any wonder that today’s military is experiencing a massive recruiting crisis, especially among young white men? Why would devout, traditional, patriotic kids be excited to fend off accusations of racism, decide on their pronouns, and then patrol with “men” who are more interested in being women than they are in being warriors? Once upon a time, we were all in this together, Army Green.
Now it’s urban camo, that ugly black, white, and gray camo. We are seen, just like we were, by the color of our skin: black, white, or otherwise. And the gray area, that’s where the left is pushing everything else aside. It’s pushing black soldiers and white soldiers into a corner, pitting men and women against each other. They should be together, back to back, guns out. The military wasn’t built for radical social engineering, but when it comes to weapons, it’s woefully good at it. We can no longer expect to win the wars the country commands us to fight if sniper fire comes from inside our ranks and from the front of our ranks.
The military has always distrusted the “higher ups” for good reason, but they’ve never been on opposite sides of a culture war with the military leadership. The gulf between privates and generals is wider than it’s ever been. World War II generals were fired. Vietnam War generals were fired. But today’s generals aren’t being fired.
No matter how poorly they perform, they can still get promoted, especially into good jobs with defense contractors after retirement, but only if they follow through with the ad-hoc rituals of social justice. GI “Joe” deals with half-baked social theory implemented at the unit level, and knows that somewhere a general is being promoted following the stupid orders of an ignorant, ideological politician. Joe also knows that if he loses his rifle he will be instantly demoted. But nothing happens when the general loses the war or loses billions of dollars of military equipment.
In the old days of endless wars, we spoke of mission creep, the slow and unplanned shifting of objectives that bogs us down. In today’s military, we can rightly say that our fundamental purpose, our common creed, our contract, has been lost.
The “erosion of mission” has also occurred within our ranks, where our original purpose as warriors and servants of the Constitution has morphed into a rigid bureaucratic machine bent on ideological conformity and social change.
An inefficient, woke, unaccountable military is an affront at every level to the young men and women who actually pull the trigger. Their jobs become harder, less satisfying, and more chaotic. And people die so that generals and politicians can say their military is more “diverse” than it has ever been. The Joes know who to blame: the middle finger.
You know who’s doing a good job recruiting “heroic men” these days: Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other radical left-wing groups. I stared at them outside Lafayette Square in 2020, carrying a riot shield. They may be miseducated about God and country, but that doesn’t erase their genetic makeup. These are men. Brave men. They’re risking life, limb, and reputation to fight for… well, God and country.
Thankfully, there are still more “us” than “them.” Antifa activists are loud, but masked, thin, and marginalized. Hundreds of thousands of patriotic, strong, manly men are still available for recruitment, from small town to small city across America.
The military just needs to talk to them and stand with them. They give their lives for this country, but this country, and our military, needs to show them that they matter first.
source: The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Defend Our Freedom by Pete Hegseth. Copyright © 2024 FOX News Network LLC. Published by Fox News Books, a HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpted with permission.
