Recently, Army secretary Christine Wormuth, who never served a day in the military, grabbed the microphone at an event sponsored by the Association of the United States Army to address a topic near-and-dear to the left: wokeness.

"I'm not sure what woke means," Wormuth claimed (see at 14:48).  "If woke means we are not focused on warfighting, we are not focused on readiness, that doesn't reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit.  But we do have a wide range of soldiers in our Army and we have got to make them all feel included.  And that's why a lot of our diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are important."

So the secretary wants "diversity, equity, and inclusion" programs so that all the soldiers "feel included"?  And she claims not to know what woke means in the military? 

Here's a quick primer, Madame Secretary — just the tip of the woke iceberg you claim not to recognize.

• The unprecedented McCarthyesque sixty-day "stand-down" imposed in January 2021, to discuss alleged "extremism" in the ranks, as if the Army is full of "extremists," whatever that means.
• Recruiting self-identified transgender soldiers, so the government can pay for genital-mutilating surgery with taxpayer dollars.
• Proposing watered down physical training requirements for women, solely for the sake of "inclusion" of women in combat, when women, on the whole, are much weaker than men, and such forced inclusion runs the risk of getting Americans killed.
• Insisting upon foolish gender pronouns for so-called "nonbinary troops," like him/shim/it/they/them/that.
• Forcing troops into foolish wasteful training on the likes of "gender pronouns" and "gender dysphoria."
• Forcing Critical Race Theory into the United States Military Academy with racist, anti-white propaganda via lectures entitled "Understanding Whiteness and White Rage" and forcing West Point cadets to watch slides entitled "Queer Theory" and "White Power at West Point."
• Wasting taxpayer money by promoting so-called "Pride Month" celebrations, thus using federal tax dollars to openly favor one group over others.
• Wasting taxpayer money on so-called "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" programs, as if the military has not been a diverse institution, and, in doing so, pulling troops away from actual training that promotes military readiness.
• Dressing men in women's dresses, heels, and pantyhose, then commissioning them as officers or making them NCOs and asking them to lead troops when America's national security is on the line.  As a side note, we note that the Army's first "transgender" officer has now been indicted for providing classified materials to the Russians — a topic on which the secretary has remained curiously mum.
• Ridiculously claiming that "climate change" is an "existential threat to national security," as if the temperature caused Putin to invade Ukraine, or as if bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks because of some melting iceberg, or as if some rain storm might cause China to invade Taiwan.
• Draconian vaccination mandates, jabbing soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines with experimental vaccinations, although military members were never seriously threatened by COVID.
• The carte blanche denial of vaccination exemption requests based upon religious grounds.
• Removing good soldiers from the military who decline the experimental COVID vaccine.
• Paying for female soldiers, at taxpayers' expense, to travel across state lines to get an abortion, and thus arguably violating the Hatch Act.

All this foolishness embodies the Democrat party's political aims, rammed down soldiers' throats, detracting from force readiness and undermining morale among the troops.  And there's your "woke" in the military, Madame Secretary.

The secretary claims that the Army is operationally ready, as if she is somehow qualified to assess military readiness, though she never served a day in uniform.  She knows this, she says, because she's visited posts and installations at home and overseas.

Right.

Just over the last few weeks, the Heritage Foundation published its 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, noting that for the first time since it began publishing the annual study, the military is "weak" and "at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America's vital national interests."

Let that sink in.  Under Biden's stewardship, the American military has become "weak."

Perhaps Secretary Wormuth should explain how the Army can sustain operational readiness when it can't come close to meeting its recruiting goals.

Fox News reported on October 1 that the Army missed its recruiting goals by  25% this year — a dangerous shortfall.  Why the shortfall?  The wasteful woke, morale-devastating policies rammed down the Army's throat kill reenlistment.  That's why.

No wonder the Heritage Foundation concludes that the United States military is "weak."

The military's goal is to defeat the enemy, not get sidetracked with progressive political poppycock.

Madame Secretary, the Army is not your social breeding ground for woke experimentation.

Soldiers aren't guinea pigs running on your hamster wheel in a steel cage.

You're driving your own soldiers away and can't find enough replacements to fill the ranks.  Your claims that the Army is operationally sound are not credible.  Your insistence upon this woke foolishness threatens national security.

Let's axe "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion," cut the wokeness, and get back to combat readiness.

Let us wage war on "woke," with a vengeance, and cut it from our midst, like a surgeon removing a deadly cancerous tumor.  Throw woke on the rotting garbage heap of history, and return the Army to Trump-era levels.

The nation's security depends upon it.

Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer  and former special assistant United States attorney, is an attorney and  the author of 15 books, including the book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance and the national bestseller Last Fighter Pilot.  He was one of four former JAG officers serving on the Lorance legal team.  President Trump pardoned Lorance in November of 2019.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.