The late Rush Limbaugh had a way of summarizing the issues in a concise, pithy way.  On matters regarding the armed services, he would always remind his audience that “the purpose of the military is to kill people and break things.”

That’s not to say that there aren’t a thousand specific details about the military that are worth talking about.  We have to discuss the force strength levels in peacetime and the force strength levels in time of war.  We have to hammer out how much to pay the enlisted men and the officers, the infantry and the artillery, the JAG officers in the field and the engineers and clerks on desk duty stateside.

Which munitions should we use, how much ammunition should we stock, how thinly can we spread our forces, how much should we spend on advertising to bolster recruitment?

There is a reason we have numerous defense committees in Congress and whole departments in the executive branch dedicated to the armed forces and their veterans.  There’s a lot to decide, a lot to keep track of.

But what’s its purpose?  In the final analysis, everything they do is about defending the nation and its allies from attack by foreign armies, and, when needed -- hopefully, only when needed -- going out on offense and waging war.  

In other words, every discussion, every budget allocation, every hire, must be in the service of this ultimate need: to occasionally kill people and break things.

Throughout our nation’s last hundred years, we have often had to remind people of this, as various issues have popped up that interfere with the mission of the armed services.  For example:

Feminists wanted women in combat; traditionalists said “Look, this is nothing against women, but having both men and women in combat together will jeopardize the mission.  Chivalrous men will be distracted from their duty in combat if women fighting alongside them are injured; regular guys will be distracted from their duty in peacetime if hormones kick in and romances occur. And then we have to consider the undeniable differences in physical ability -- as groups -- and how it affects the ability of the corps.”

Homosexual activists wanted to remove the traditional bans on same-sex relationships in the military.  “Look, this is nothing against gays and lesbians, but you have to admit that all the same challenges posed by temptations and risks, from romance to abuse, that plague the challenge of women in combat go double if you allow homosexual activity in the military.”

Over the years, America essentially lost both of those arguments.  What has it done to our forces?  The statistics show the results: pregnancies, venereal diseases, abuse, depression, drug addition, suicide. 

All because we lost track of the key focus. We allowed our military to get distracted from its mission, and to cater instead to the sociopolitical desires of the Washington establishment and its NGOs, the New York press, and the Hollywood-controlled pop culture.

Our military is worse off for it.  And that means the homeland, the defense budget, and our allies are worse off for it as well, because anything that degrades our military readiness hurts all these too.

The social issues are back in the news today, as the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is debated in Congress.  As it originates in the House of Representatives -- as all budget matters must, by law -- the Republican-held House has had to deal with destructive changes that the Biden-Harris regime and the prior Democrat Congresses have inserted into our armed forces, often in secret.

As soon as the Dobbs ruling came out, the Biden-Harris Defense Department created a new authority for military travel to obtain abortions, despite the military having always banned abortion coverage in the past. As soon as transsexual surgery and hormone replacement drug abuse became de rigueur over the past few years, the Biden-Harris regime went all-in, authorizing so called “transitioning” in the service at taxpayer expense, despite the military having always banned coverage of elective surgery (as in fact virtually all traditional insurance programs always have).

Ever since the poisonous concept of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) started infecting America’s corporate boardrooms a few years ago -- turning the concept of equality on its head by mandating hiring and promotion quotas independent of talent and qualifications – the Left has sought to inject it into our military, to do as much damage to the military as such efforts have done to the business sector.

The NDAA that arose this week from the U.S. House therefore includes -- as it must -- provisions to rein in these errant policies.  It slaps down the effort to make taxpayers pay for abortion tourism. It bans the infestation of the military with DEI officers both at headquarters and on base. It warns against the inclusion of racist themes and invective (such as the poisonous claim that our Founding Documents are inherently racist) in official military training manuals and videos.

Frankly, none of this should be shocking.  None of this should even be disputed.  It’s a matter of keeping politics out of the Armed Services, and focusing on the mission: to have an efficient military that can best defend our homeland and our allies from foreign aggressors.

The Left is reacting to this NDAA bill as one would expect: they accuse the Republicans of injecting politics into the military budget. They claim that this is no place for politics and social issues.  They have the chutzpah to put on a shocked face and say how horrified they are that Republicans -- whom they now refer to exclusively as “Extremist MAGA Republicans!” -- are dealing with this reality… as if it wasn’t the Left that introduced all these issues in the first place.

The GOP would have been happy to never talk about these things in this context.  It’s the Democratic Party that put them on the table.

The GOP is only addressing these issues now because it has to.  The Democrats snuck in these programs, sometimes often illegally, through executive orders and internal policies under the cover of night.  It has fallen to the current House leadership to shine the light of day on them and cast the hard votes, in support of the real mission.

The military is not there for social engineering. It’s not there to mainstream deviant behavior, to equalize outcomes in the American public, or to plant toxic race theory in the minds and hearts of our recruits.

The military is in place to protect the United States of America, to deter wars and to win them.

Anything designed to distract from these legitimate purposes has no business in our military.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional and consultant.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009.  His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available on Amazon.

Image: National Archives