How To Erode the World’s Greatest Military

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

The U.S. Army has met only 40 percent of its 2022 recruiting goals.

In fact, all branches of the military are facing historic resistance to their current recruiting efforts. If some solution is not found quickly, the armed forces will radically shrink or be forced to lower standards—or both.

Such a crisis occurs importunely as an aggressive Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea believe the Biden Administration and the Pentagon have lost traditional U.S. deterrence.

That pessimistic view abroad unfortunately is now shared by many Americans at home. In 2021, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute conducted its periodic poll of attitudes toward the U.S. military. The result was astonishing. Currently, only 45 percent of Americans polled expressed a great deal of trust in their armed forces. Confidence had dived 25 points since an early 2018 poll.

Military officials cite both the usual and a new array of challenges in finding suitable young soldiers—drug use, gang affiliation, physical and mental incapacities, and the dislocations arising from the COVID pandemic and vaccination mandates. But they are too quiet about why such supposedly longer-term obstacles suddenly coalesced in 2022—as if their own leadership and policies have had no effect in discouraging tens of thousands of young men and women to join them.

The Greatest Skedaddle in Modern American History

A year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were assuring the country not to worry over Joe Biden’s strange ideas of abruptly pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The radical step was purportedly to coincide with Biden’s planned 20-year celebratory event marking his role in ensuring an iconic end of the war on terror that began on September 11, 2001.

What followed was the worst U.S. military humiliation since Pearl Harbor.

U.S. forces abandoned hundreds if not thousands of American contractors and loyal Afghan employees, a $1 billion embassy, a huge $300 million refitted air base, and reportedly somewhere between $60-80 billion in military equipment and infrastructure. That sum was nearly double all the current military assistance sent to Ukraine.

Thirteen Americans were murdered by terrorists during the chaotic flight. In response, the United States mistakenly blew up 10 innocent Afghans after misidentifying them as ISIS terrorists. The horrific scenes at the Kabul airport surpassed the 1975 catastrophic ending of the Vietnam War on the U.S. embassy roof.

The global aftermath was eerie. Russia in a few months thereafter invaded Ukraine. Iran proudly announced it would soon have enough fissionable material to make a nuclear weapon. North Korea resumed its provocative missile launches. China openly talked of storming Taiwan.

The common denominator was the global perception that any president and military responsible for such colossal, televised incompetence would or could neither deter enemy aggression nor protect allied interests.

In response, widely reported furor arose among the ranks of some American officers and the enlisted. Mid-level officers especially claimed they were ignored after warning that the abrupt withdrawal was suicidal, that Pentagon grandees were lying about the dire facts on the grounds in efforts to lubricate the Biden agenda, and that thousands of Americans and loyal Afghans would be cast adrift, along with our NATO allies.

The shame of defeat and the cloud of incompetence from Afghanistan has continued to harm recruitment efforts of the military.

The White Rage Unicorn

About a year ago Austin and Chairman Milley took time out from assuring Americans that all would be well in Kabul, to testify before Congress about the Pentagon’s effort to address “white rage” in the six-month aftermath of the January 6 riot.

Both were also asked to explain why the armed services were recommending soldiers read inter alia the often-discredited “antiracist” theories of Ibram X. Kendi. His polarizing doctrine asserts that the entire U.S. system of government, all social and political life, and our very culture are racist to core. As a result, Kendi’s solution requires radical and overt racial preferencing and discrimination supposedly to fight such an insidious system.

Yet what was startling about the two officials’ testimonies was the utter lack of data showing any general trends that white soldiers were any more or less likely to practice racial discrimination or chauvinism than other ethnic and racial groups in the military. An array of officers defended various workshops and course work at the military academies purporting that white rage is an existential problem in the military.

The subtext of the entire testimony debacle was that the two titular heads of the military wished to reassure progressive majorities in the U.S. Congress that they were sympathetic to the woke movement and, along with other high-ranking officers, wanted publicly to virtue signal to that effect.

In their emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion—the latest euphemisms for using race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps, Austin and Milley seemed entirely oblivious that the U.S. Army depends on generations of family loyalty to the armed forces. Such heritage and legacy considerations have ensured a steady stream of recruits for front-line combat units.

In other words, over generations the same families, drawn from mostly middle-class cohorts, have served disproportionately in combat units in Vietnam, the various Iraq conflicts, and Afghanistan. Indeed, if the military was consistent in its racial fixations, it might have noted that white males—the purported targets of the Austin and Milley efforts to ferret out supposed white rage cells— died in three wars at roughly twice their numbers in the general population.

Current analysis of the recruiting crisis reveals what almost any observer would have predicted a year earlier from the haughty virtue signaling of Austin and Milley: traditional military families are not sending their sons and daughters into the ranks. It is not the danger of combat or the rigor of military life that families fear, but the suspicion their offspring will be targeted for ideological indoctrination and coercion that is either extraneous or antithetical to military efficacy.

Traditionally, 40 percent of new recruits cite the military service of their parents—not to mention their veteran grandparents. Currently only 13 percent of new recruits arrive from such military families. Yet Austin and Milley made no connection between the Pentagon fixations on current hot-button social issues and its apparent inability to secure an honorable and safe withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Weaponization of the Pentagon

There is a general perception in and outside the military that the top ranks of the services are increasingly politicized. High profile officers have used the great authority, influence, and power of the Pentagon in polarizing progressive advocacy roles from transgenderism to abortion—to the detriment of military efficacy and lethality. Much of unhappiness with the military arises partly from the woke hysteria, the institutional disdain for Donald Trump and his response to it, and the perceived rewards for those retired military lobbyists and corporate board members who reflect a new woke creed.

The nadir in politicization came in 2021 when it was revealed that Milley secretly contacted his Chinese communist counterpart during the height of the 2020 presidential election. Milley claimed he believed that his own commander-in-chief, Trump, was unstable. And so, after his layman’s diagnosis, he wished to assure the People’s Liberation Army’s ranking officer that he would tip the Chinese off about any thought of a preemptive American strike on China. Milley also ordered his own subordinate theater officers to report to him first should Trump contemplate any nuclear action against China.

Upon public disclosure of those facts, Milley should have been summarily fired. By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an advisory official only. The position enjoys no operational command.

Milley violated the chain of command by usurping theater authority that was not his. Nor can a military long exist, if its iconic leader freelances in contacting enemy counterparts without the knowledge of the commander-in-chief.

Can we imagine the outrage that would now ensue, if Milley should once again warn his Chinese counterpart that another president, Joe Biden, in the chairman’s own opinion, suffers bouts of cognitive debility and early onset senility, forcing Milley to take matters in his own hands? Yet such freelancing insubordination is now Milley’s legacy.

In fact, some in the retired U.S. military for over four years systematically violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sometimes to the extent of engaging in a sort of coup porn.

In a Washington Post op-ed, retired generals Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson melodramatically and without evidence warned the nation of a supposedly impending coup should their commander-in-chief Donald Trump be elected again in 2024.

In August 2020, two retired officers John Nagl and Paul Yingling, wrote an op-ed urging Milley to simply remove Trump from office should Milley himself feel such a move was necessary after a disputed election. That was a de facto call for a possible coup d’état. But it was not unique.

Earlier, civilian Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-era Pentagon legal official, published an inflammatory call to arms in Foreign Policy. She discussed three major possible avenues to remove newly inaugurated Donald Trump from the presidency. One of her alternatives was a military coup.

For the entire Trump presidency, retired four-star generals and admirals had routinely smeared their commander-in-chief as a veritable Nazi, a Mussolini-like figure, an abject liar, and comparable in his policies to the architects of the Nazi death camps. One retired admiral called for the removal of Trump “the sooner, the better” as if regularly scheduled elections were insufficient remedies.

Aside from clear violations of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, these officers were oblivious that nearly half the country supported the president and his policies. And so, millions of people would logically conclude that the highest-ranking retired officers, and by extension the culture of the current military, had nothing but contempt for their own views and voting decisions. Alienating nearly half the country is not a wise strategy of military recruitment.

Nor is hypocrisy. The perceptions in the ranks have grown that applications of the law are asymmetrical and politically warped. Article 88, applicable to retired generals and admirals, prohibits military officers from using contemptuous words about top civilian elected and appointed officials. It says nothing about the spouses of said officials.

None of the retired officers who in the media libeled their commander-in-chief from 2017-2021 faced any consequences—reprimands, court martials, or sanctions from doing business with the Pentagon from their corporate billets. Yet one recently did.

The U.S. Army just fired retired consultant Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky from a contractual position with the Pentagon because he poked fun at First Lady Jill Biden. Note that Volesky did not suggest Jill or Joe Biden was a Nazi, a fascist, or liar —much less that her husband should be removed from office “the sooner, the better.” Retired General Volesky’s crime was mocking Jill Biden’s purported hypocrisy on the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Unfortunately, the crisis in the U.S. military transcends even the Afghanistan misadventure, unsupported accusations against an entire demographic, the erosion of military familial loyalty, freelancing politicized officers, and asymmetrical applications of laws and codes.

Fairly or not, the perception among the public and our enemies is that the U.S. military has become a political entity with an agenda that transcends defending the U.S. and its interests.

Its perceived main agenda by half the country is progressive social justice, administered top-down from a cadre of elites who can implement controversial policies through the chain of command without the messy work of the Congress—to the delight of the Pentagon’s newfound sunshine friends on the woke Left.

Such military social engineers unfortunately appear to share contempt for a large group of Americans who voted for a president they despised. And this is a fact warmly welcomed by our worst enemies abroad.

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62 thoughts on “How To Erode the World’s Greatest Military”

  1. Spot on. One of my grandsons has planned military service after high school for most of the past decade from listening to grandpa tell him of his own military service. No more. He is now looking at a different path at my urging.

    1. Similar story here. I know a young man who was kind of directionless and stuck in dead-end jobs. I helped him study to get his GED and pass the ASVAB with flying colors. He was very excited with the idea of going into the Air Force (I’m a former Air Force Officer).
      Then, the woke cancer flared up. The LGBTQUIDNG insanity, Milley’s treason (yes, Treason), the Vaxx, Anti-White propaganda, etc. He asked me if he should still go in … and I said it was his decision, but my advice was “Hell No” – why offer up your life for scumbag officers who want you to hate yourself and your country?
      So now, the path will probably be trade school … thanks to the Communist sycophants in the Pentagon.

      1. Yes, trade school, trade school, trade school. The only skills worth having at this point are hard skills. They are very difficult to outsource and they serve the person who possesses those skills first. Whatever replaces this leviathan government and society will need to be rebuilt by hand.

  2. It’s remarkable what poor leadership can do. As a Freshman my son was so pumped about applying to the military academies his senior year in high school, last week I asked him which academies he was interested in applying to this Fall and he said “None”. I asked him why? He said, “What’s the point of risking my life for Taiwan?” I really couldn’t argue with him. Democracy in this nation is only a ghost of what it once was; Our personal family’s vaunted American middle-class Catholic family-first values are ridiculed and my kids can see that we are struggling financially, using our savings to pay for gas and food. My Grandfather was in the U.S. Hawaiian Expeditionary Force in WW1, my Dad was in the U.S. Army M.I.S. translating captured Japanese documents during WW2, 3 of my uncles served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, my Father-in-law was on a sub-hunter in the U.S. Navy during the Cold War, my Uncle was in a MASH unit in Florida during the Bay of PIgs, one cousin loaded Agent Orange onto planes during the Vietnam War, anther cousin who is a West Point grad was an Apache helicopter trainer during the Gulf War and I have 2 nieces doing surveillance in the U.S. Air Force having graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy during the Trump years…I have no doubt that if threatened at our borders we would fight but I think with the cut and run in Afghanistan and bark with no bite in Russia, Biden has destroyed the will to fight for a global Pax Americana forever.

    1. We have a similar military background. Our grandson is an AFA grad, was in fighter pilot training when the so-called vaccine mandate came down. Being in a long line of pro-lifers and early on aware of the dreadful shot , he applied for a religious exemption, was denied that, and is now lawyered up and in limbo. How insane.

  3. I am voting for Trump for his second term, and his third victory. I’d put all my money on Trump over anyone else to get us out of all these mess. You should do the same if you want results, rather than crying and whining.

    1. If you really believe Trump won in 2020 but Biden became President anyway, why do you want to vote for Trump again in ’24? If the previous election was rigged, what’s stopping them from rigging it again to keep Trump out of office?

      It’s time to move on from Trump. DeSantis has all the positives without all of Trump’s excesses and distractions (and DeSantis is 30+ years younger).

      1. Thomas O'Brien

        Precisely, and his day will come. And he is indeed great! But I agree with Phil; my vote is with Trump in 2024. The country must know what happened so as to prevent it going forward. No one will be as focused on ridding us of the “swamp creatures” like Trump.
        The Dems do not want DeSantis and they do not want Trump. So they will spare no dirty trick to retain power.

      2. Trump proved that he can take the heat like nobody ever did in the political history of this country while delivering on his promises to people who elected him. Desantis is not ready yet, he will be a great VP though to start with.

      3. Really. You don’t think they will try to destroy DeSantis too and steal that election???? Don’t let the democrats choose your candidate! DeSantis is young and can run in 2028!

        1. They’ll destroy him and his family just the same as they did Trump, and the powers that be (google, FB, etc) will turn the american people against DeSantis as well.

      4. DeSantis is a business as usual politician. If you liked the way things were before Trump, and the way things are after Trump was fraudulently kept from a second term, then DeSantis is your man.

      5. Denis C Monahan

        DeSantis wouldn’t exist politically if it wasn’t for President Trump. And what makes you think that if DeSantis is the Republican’s next presidential candidate, that the Dems won’t steel his election. The Repubs need to unite to win.

      6. Revenge. Some say, Americans know the election truth and want electoral revenge for President Trump. That’s why.

      7. Now that the globalists and groomers have discovered how simple and easy it is to rig elections, no one like a DeSantis or other America-firster will ever win a national election. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Brin, Gates, et al,, will never allow it.

      8. What is to stop the dems from rigging any election to keep conservatives out of office. Stop the Cheat, elect the strongest candidate. Stop the bogus elections, mail in ballots, drop boxes. Photo ID, citizenship must be required, security from the start to the finish of the voting and vote counting process.

      1. Lawrence Duffield

        Illogical. If you believe the 2020 election was rigged, re-electing President Trump is the only way to demonstrate we won’t stand for a steal. Anyone else who runs means the fraudsters won a complete victory and encourages the b#$terds to take on the next candidate without regard for laws or ethics. We nerd to cram The Donald down their collective gullets and make it perfectly clear their no holds barred election shenanigans won’t be tolerated, and, more to the point, won’t win.

        Dr Santos and the other up and coming national pols will still be around in 2028, and hopefully the RINO and Never Trump GOP won’t be there to muck up the works

        1. Please don’t forget the 73 million LEGITIMATE votes for xiden. What does that tell us about the american electorate?

    2. With all due respect, Trump is a poser. Trump ran from Fauci and Birx like a scared little girl, fearing for his political life. He let two stunningly incompetent partisan hacks shut the country down when we needed someone with guts to stand up and tell the sheeple in this “country” to shut the hell up, quit whining and get to work. Then there is the deadly “vaccine” he still touts, in that was he’s as deranged as biden. Trump is a typical loud, bellicose new yorker, all smoke and noise but no hay getting made.
      Don’t get me going about his choice of a small time leftist governor of a podunk state like Indiana

  4. kenxx.kenxx@yahoo.com

    An Outstanding, insightful, revealing, deeply concerning essay that serves as a clarion call for all of us that Love our Country. A 60% deficit Cannot be compensated for with discipline and training.
    The positions that require Outlayer genetics and peformance , the Jet And Helicopter Pilots, Rangers, Force Recon, et.al., will be dramatically and irreconcilably understaffed. THAT will showcase observable weakness for the myriad of Bad Actors and Purely Evil Psychopaths whose only intention in their existence is to do Harm to our Country. Disappointing and deeply saddening. Thank You again, Professor Hanson.

    1. Scattergun.12ga

      Well people tend to avoid dedicating their lives to an organization that severely violates their human rights and tries to murder them with EXPERIMENTAL mRNA shots that have caused the current military excess death rates to skyrocket to over 1700% above normal.
      Make no mistake, every single person who has taken the Fauci Flu shot will die within 3 to 5 years. Excess deaths are up by 40% in working age adults and up by 84% in millenials – and these are over and above the covid deaths. There was no excess death rates like this during the “pandemic” before the EXPERIMENTAL mRNA shots. Death rates were normal before the shots even despite there being a “pandemic”.

      1. Truth. COVID was a scam (with an overall survival rate of 99%) meant to scare people into taking the jabs, which were ready & waiting to roll out. The jabs are a depopulation mechanism, they’re the real killer & that’s what they’re doing right now. Our world’s on Death Watch. Wonder how much of the world population will be alive to fight anybody by 2024? Man, I hope I’m wrong.

  5. Craig Brookins

    Victor – Thank You! It is comforting to see in print that which so many of us find troubling within our souls. The litany of destructive actions by the biden gang against our great nation is ghastly. Future historians will acclaim your stance on the issues you enumerated in your article. At least I hope they will. Depends on whether the Constitution survives or is replaced by “Big Brother”!!

    1. No mention of the elephant in the room.. The mandating of killer clot shots designed to murder, maim or degrade the immune systems of everyone who takes them. Whether inside or outside job, this is the deliberate destruction of America.

      1. EXACTLY! I would reasonably conclude that the generational loyalty to the military by it’s soliders, sailors, airmen and marines will suffer such a devastating blow that it is likely to never recover once families awaken to the fact that the CINC, Sec Def, JCS and all the top generals conspired to murder their fathers, brothers, sons, grandsons, mothers, sisters, daugthers and grand daughters with the EXPERIMENTAL mRNA shot – and that those “leaders” committed severe crimes against humanity by coercing military personnel into taking the EXPERIMENTAL mRNA shots or being forced out of the military.
        Also the purposeful murder of large numbers of the military, thereby crippling the military is not only a national security violation but outright TREASON!
        And make no mistake, military excess death rates are up over 1000% since they were forced to take the EXPERIMENTAL mRNA shots, that don’t even work in the least capacity, in fact the Fauci Flu shots have a NEGATIVE EFFICACY ie you are more likely to get the Fauci Flu after you have the shot than if you never took it.

  6. Odd that HR McMaster has avoided discussions of the recent reports implicating him in the kind of behavior that put Flynn out to pasture. He was neck deep in undermining a sitting president, using his contacts and influence. Perhaps his ire in a recent podcast with Hanson is motivated by guilt? Lots of puffed-up mediocrities with medals have exposed themselves as nothing but careerist bureaucrats, covering their own backsides.

  7. This is another great article by VDH, who has consistently been accurate about the middle class America and the military in particular. I’m surprised though that aside from a brief mention on vaccine mandates being one part of the cause of low recruiting, he didn’t delve in to this more. It’s a huge issue and an embarrassment to America that the military is still sticking to them. Even Canada has dropped the military vax mandates!

  8. Mike in a Truck

    But…but….you…mean kids today aren’t thrilled to die for the “Liberal World Order” the WEF and the Party of Davos? I’ll tell you what tore it for me. When those N.G. troops occupied D.C. to protect the political elites from We The People. Every one of those Governors that sent troops,along with thire commanders and officers are scumbags. They all should have done the honorable thing and resigned thire commission’s. Dont think for a second that young people didnt take note of that.

    1. Victor, thank you for your clarity and insight on this and so many other topics.

      What our military and our nation needs is to get rid of diversity training and organizations. Instead we need to generate UNITY. We need to treat each other with dignity and respect, not disdain and hate. People need to set aside their personal differences and work toward the good of everyone. We need to focus on common goals, rather than differences, by recognizing common interests. Diversity punishes for bad behavior, where unity rewards for good behavior. Unity still maximizes uniqueness, but channels that toward a common goal.

    2. Scattergun.12ga

      And especially after those same governors and politicians let BLM/Antifa burn down city centers and do billions of $$ in damage, and even murder people while they did nothing and called it a peaceful protest.

  9. Charles Clifford Burgess

    As always, I enjoyed this article by Mr. Davis. Unfortunately he left out one important point. Southerners make up between 40-50 percent of enlistees, according to a recent report, and for a hundred years have served in disproportionate numbers in the military.

    In view of the ongoing attack on the South, Southerners, our history, our heroes, our traditions, and our good name, Southerners should refuse any military service and, if already in, should get the hell out as soon as they can.

    Why should any Southerner serve a faux elite that despises and hates us? Screw them. They can go fight their own damn wars. If Southerners refuse to serve and those serving leave, the U.S. military will collapse overnight.

  10. I once told every young person I talked to that they should consider a tour in the military as a good foundation for adulthood, as this was the path I took and have found lifelong success even without college. However, even without all of the shameful episodes detailed by VDH above, I no longer trust our politicians to prosecute and win conflicts into which they thrust our young warriors. We haven’t won a war since WWII – and even then we couldn’t have done it without the Soviets. It’s pretty freakin shameful, and I hope young men and women are counseled against military service until our country’s “leaders” pull their heads out of their 5th points of contact.

  11. Saul Shenezin

    While Prof Hanson is quite erudite he is yet another establishment oriented Parlor Conservative. When we gave America a way forward in the form of President Trump, Prof. Hanson was as obstinate as the left in rejecting him.

    It’s strange to me that a man so versed in history can be so obvious that we are living in it. It is the abstract perspective of academician, who can sit on abstract principles while the concrete of reality crumbles around him.

    1. Thomas Haslam

      Victor Davis Hanson, almost alone public intellectuals, wrote “The Case for Trump” — an entire book by that title. Whatever you are smoking, quit immediately.

  12. The military is becoming dysfunctional and promoting based on the willingness to accept a Woke yoke, not any level of competence. Loyalty to the United States has been replaced with loyalty to the corrupt ideological neomoral paradigm of the Left and support for a Fascist construct to implement it.

  13. I’m a 30 year retired Army Colonel. I actively discouraged my youngest son when he graduated High School 2 years ago from going into the military. Part of it was not wanting to expose my little darling to some of the risks I faced – I felt I had done enough for the whole family. But another part was my own loss of faith in the political and military leadership of the country, and loss of a sense of oneness with many of my fellow countrymen. Far too many of our people no longer are on the side of America. It doesn’t inspire a sense of patriotic devotion that is very much necessary to enduring military privations and challenges. I told him to wait for a cause that is more worthy – which might very well be a war here, against those who have betrayed America.

    1. You see what a lot of us see. One thing I wonder about is all the very capable military who are detached from service now, many recently forced out, millions waiting on stand-by. They love our country & the Constitution & hate what our traitorous leaders are doing. Obama stripped us of thousands of Patriotic leaders, some fired while active in theater. When needed, I pray they’ll rise to save the USA.

      But perhaps pharmakeia in everything, air, food, water has sedated us into docility; or maybe we’ve had it soft & easy so long it’s sapped all the vestiges of self-sufficiency & thirst for individual freedom out of us. I can’t think of any logical reasons for the people’s passive response to all the outrageous illegal acts perpetrated on us by our government. I expected us to be acting before now. Even Gandhi resisted. We seem woefully far removed from the fighting spirit of our Founders.

  14. I highly disagree. There is NO other conservative politician at this time that can stand up to the evilness and nasty attacks of the dirty democrat party. No other one, including DeSantis could have withstood the two impeachments and numerous investigations while building a great economy, energy independence and a respected status for America on the world stage. DJT has the unique position of being independently wealthy and owing no one a thing. I believe if he can take back the WH, and go hardcore against the swamp, it would set the stage for a great DeSantis presidency. DJT must go nuclear on the swamp first.

  15. I love everything you write, but while this is accurate, it too indirectly skims the point that a huge reason why young men (who have been and always will be the vast majority of our fighters) join the military is to feel/be macho and manly. When women and lgbtqwerty are featured in ads/recruitment, this aspiration dissolves.

  16. steven jackson

    I eschew these fools and their ilk. Satan has them by their ballsacks and they embrace that!
    They chose Barabus instead of Jesus daily. They willingly defile themselves and happily spread disease to make their evil “virtues” the mainstream principles that all must follow to assuage the guilt of their monstrous sins against the innocent. They absolutely refuse to admit their part in all things unholy that they partake in. They lead the children to early graves. They dig those graves themselves.
    I kick the dust off my feet and turn from them and walkaway never to turn back and be made into a virtual pillar of salt. They deny the lessons that the past teaches us and turn their faces from any higher power. They believe they are perfect vessels. There ain’t no such vessels! All are inadequate
    and come up short on occasion.
    They are cowards and when confronted with the truth will avert their eyes while baring their teeth
    in the face of the stark and unholy reality they embrace. Instead of owning up to their faults and becoming stronger for it they insist that they are blameless and that it is those who point out these
    imperfections who are guilty and are, in fact, the real perpetrators of these faults! As if all are ignorant and stupid except them! Their Hubris is intolerable to bear. They refuse to better themselves. They are remorselessly arrogant and thus will never be forgiven. They strive for the lake of fire.
    They need to find their God before it is to late for them.

  17. Obviously a purge of the military is needed!! I thought Trump appointed this set of Joint Chiefs. If so, it is just another example of what happened to Trump’s presidency by surrounding himself with insiders in DC rather than looking outside of DC for his Cabinet and inner circle advisors. That was his fatal mistake.

  18. Remember Lou Holtz… ? The 3 questions everyone wants answered before any significant relationship or endeavor can successfully proceed.
    1) Can I TRUST YOU ?
    2) Do you CARE about Me , ( as a person, not simply an asset )
    3) Are YOU COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE ? ( why should I Ride into the Valley of Death if you’re not serious? )
    Think on this reality and ask about declining enlistments again.
    I’m retired and it was easy during my service for me to answer YES to all 3. Can’t do that anymore.

  19. My understanding is that Mark Milley’s father was a WW2 Marine who advised Mark against applying to West Point. The elder Milley viewed top military brass as politicians and fools who cared little about the troops. Mark instead went to Princeton and got involved in ROTC. Ironic that Mark Milley has now become the ultimate military politician and fool. All of the qualities his father detested.
    In order to cleanse the ranks of the FBI, CIA and NSA of ‘resistance’ traitors, we will need the military to assume certain functions of those agencies, providing manpower for some period of time. But the military is going to need a complete reboot after the Biden Regime is finished with it. It is crucial for the next Republican President to have absolute power to fire any government employee without cause. That is our only hope for dismantling the Federal Government bureaucracy that is strangling our Republic while bankrupting it.
    As much as I appreciate what Trump has done to shed the light of day on our corrupt Federal bureaucracy, I look forward to the Republican debates and primaries. May the best person win and unite us all. What we must avoid, is a nightmare scenario where Trump loses the nomination but runs anyway as an independent. That could well split the vote and deliver the worst case scenario. As we debate vigorously among ourselves, we must remember the absolute need for unity by 2024. Be it Trump, DeSantis, or whoever else wins the party.

  20. I am an officer’s wife whose husband would rather retire than accept a promotion. If he continued, the leadership role he’d be required to fulfill would inevitably require a degree of “woke” acquiescence. The US military continues on a self-destructive ideological trajectory. Not only have we decided that we will no longer sacrifice our stability for this organization, but we have also curtailed any enthusiastic discourse that would encourage our sons to attend the academies, participate in an ROTC program, or join the military. We are a family with a strong military tradition, but I’ll be damned before any of my children die on behalf of some woke, lazy, anti-American activist who’d enthusiastically vandalize and tear down a statue honoring my ancestors who sacrificed for their freedoms! It seems we have quite a few of these ungrateful “citizens,” to include those with considerable political power. The military benefits and pay simply do not compensate for the utter ideological insanity, a lunacy made even more evident during COVID.

  21. It staarted much earlier. From the time they enter the public education system they are spoonfed that all evils in the world are the result of America. There is nothing to be proud of. People will not fight for a cause or country they are not proud of and feel deserves protecting.

  22. Joel Savransky

    Loved Trump but many of his ideas and policies were dictated by his daughter and son-in-law who as life long Dems told him to go along with the Dwarf and the shadow behind him Birx (horrible moves) which placed us in this situation now. Would love to see him go in and clean house and I mean break up all the institutions and scatter them to the winds but not if he’s bringing back those two! Desantis would do just fine cus the left hates and fears him as much if not more and believe he would make better choices! We are running out of time and doesn’t look good with McCarthy and Stafanic and McConnell needs to go to China with the wifey for retirement or all is still lost! They are all Traitors to our Nation and should be dealt with accordingly!

  23. thebaron@enter.net

    I’ll paraphrase Max in “The Lost Boys”: “Silly people! Never let Progressives have public office! It renders you powerless.”

  24. I think you’re mistaken about a man who wrote a book titled ‘ The Case for Trump”. VDH was a member to National Review at the time they published their “Against Trump” issue but he did not contribute. Three months later, he wrote only that he’d vote for an alternative in a 2016 GOP primary. His support only grew with many positive articles leading up to to his 2019 book.

  25. “…traditional military families are not sending their sons and daughters into the ranks. It is not the danger of combat or the rigor of military life that families fear, but the suspicion their offspring will be targeted for ideological indoctrination and coercion that is either extraneous or antithetical to military efficacy.“

    I’ll tell you who has “white hot rage” at the Biden Administration and its cast of fools in “leadership” positions! Me! The daughter, niece, wife, sister, mother and GRANDMOTHER of military men.

    Milley is guilty of TREASON and Austin is guilty of ineptitude.

  26. noreng@yahoo.com

    Thank you Team, Have Faith and Believe. Proverbs 6:9-19 (NIV) “How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest— and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. A troublemaker and a villain, who goes about with a corrupt mouth, who winks maliciously with his eye, signals with his feet and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with deceit in his heart— he always stirs up conflict. Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant; he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy. There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” VB, G

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