Who would have thought it possible?  Who would have ever guessed that today's military would be led by the very socialists and Marxists whom I and millions of other veterans battled during a 45-year cold war — not to mention hot wars such as Korea and Vietnam?

But apparently, that is the case.

Secretary of defense Lloyd James Austin III has ordered a radical leftist indoctrination of America's Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, and the newly created Space Force.  To make sure this Marxist assault is carried out, Austin has hired a radical socialist named Bishop Garrison to perpetrate so-called "diversity" training and purge and eliminate "extremism" in our armed forces.

Austin and Garrison have never effectively defined just which "extremists" they want to oust from the military, but it appears they mean anybody in the military who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 — in other words, those servicemen who are not Democrats.

One of those servicemen who is not a Democrat is Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a Space Force commander.  Lohmeier said last month that the Pentagon sent servicemembers a video declaring that America in general and white people in particular are "evil."

For blowing the whistle on that bit of insidious indoctrination, Lohmeier was relieved of his command.  Ultimately, he left the military and wrote a new book entitled Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military.

Lohmeier said the Department of Defense's new "woke" policies include several videos "that were sent out to every base [and] service member" and "we were told to watch [them] in preparation for our 'extremism' down days and discussions on race."  Those videos, Lohmeier added, "taught that our country was evil, that it was founded in 1619 and not 1776, and that whites are inherently evil."

You have to wonder how motivated members of our military are after being told that they are, in effect, putting their lives on the line for a systemically racist and evil nation still being run by malevolent white slavers.

It certainly isn't the kind of motivation I received in the mid-1960s when I was a SIGINT operative for the U.S. Army Security Agency with a top-secret and crypto-security clearance.  For those unfamiliar with SIGINT, it is one of the principal missions of the National Security Agency.  SIGINT is intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems used by foreign targets, such as communications systems, radars, cyberspace, and weapons systems.

Our mission was to gather and analyze intelligence we collected from external enemies — including the old Soviet Union and its East European Warsaw Pact allies, as well as Communist China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba.

Today, however, our men and women in the military are being told by President Biden and military leaders such as Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, that our number-one enemies are not external ones as in the past.

Instead, our foremost enemies today are climate change and domestic terrorism by white supremacists, otherwise known as Trump-supporters, and those who oppose the Democrat leadership in Washington.

Recently, Gilday was grilled by House Republicans in the House Armed Services Committee over accusations from several military whistleblowers of "wokeness" being infused into the psyches of U.S. troops.  Specifically, Gilday was pressed on the fallacious contents of Ibram X. Kendi's highly controversial 2019 book, How to Be an Antiracist, and its inclusion on sailors' list of reading materials.

The book argues that capitalism and racism are inextricably linked, saying, "Capitalism is essentially racist" and "racism is essentially capitalist," and therefore "capitalism should be destroyed" — not the most convincing or rational syllogism I have ever heard — but hey, when it comes to race-hustlers like Kendi, who's counting?

"Do you personally consider advocating for the destruction of American capitalism to be extremist?" Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) asked Gilday during the hearing.

"I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody's book," he said.  "This is a bigger issue than Kendi's book.  What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and the United States Navy as weak, as woke."

Trying?  Nobody is trying. The U.S. Military is already far down the yellow brick road to "wokeness."  One only hopes that the socialist Wizards of Oz who are leading today's military can be exposed and unmasked before it's too late.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), citing passages in Kendi's book, pressed Gilday on why such a fraudulent piece of rubbish should be included in so-called "voluntary" reading lists.

"How does exposing our sailors to the idea that they are either oppressors or oppressed, and that we must actively discriminate in order to make up for past discrimination, improve our Navy's readiness and lethality?" he asked.

Excellent question.  The answer is: it doesn't!

The military is not and should not be used as a laboratory to test harebrained theories on race or sham experiments linked to gender dysphoria and other social constructs.

For example, the U. S. Army's mission statement says its purpose is "to deploy, fight and win our nation's wars by providing ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force."

Where does it say in that statement that the United States is an evil nation?  That it is systemically racist?  That capitalism is evil and should be supplanted by socialism or Marxism?

And where does it say that in order to achieve its mission, it must address "extremism" in its ranks while swilling the poisonous Kool-Aid of "woke" ideology and Critical Race Theory?

The answer?  Nowhere.

Thank God, two Republican lawmakers, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, both decorated veterans, have begun a whistleblower campaign so that active-duty military members can report that garbage like the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory is being used as part of the military's diversity training programs.  The whistleblower campaign will protect men such as Lt. Col. Lohmeier from being summarily dismissed for speaking out about the appalling CRT indoctrination taking place in our military.

While Gilday may argue that our military is not weak or woke, the facts seem to contradict his argument.

Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mocked a U.S. Army recruitment ad that featured a female soldier who was raised by a lesbian couple in San Francisco and was inspired to serve a country that defends gay rights.  Well, whoop-de-doo.  As long as she defends gay rights and whatever other socially woke flavors of the day are making the rounds in our march to incessant wokeness, we can be sure we will be well protected by our military.

He compared that ad to a Russian military ad that showed a group of tough-as-nails male soldiers doing pushups, shaving their heads, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, jumping from airplanes, and firing rifles.

"Holy crap," Cruz quipped.  "Perhaps a 'woke,' emasculated military is not the best idea."

You think?

Ronald E. Yates is a veteran, an author, a former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent, and professor and dean emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois.  His website: http://www.ronaldyatesbooks.com.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

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