I suspect many of us can remember former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley testifying alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on June 23, 2021 at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. In this setting, Milley was asked about reports that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point taught critical race theory along with a seminar on “white rage.”

Via Politico, Milley responded:

I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military … of being ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there[.]

…

I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?

In typical bureaucratic Pentagon fashion, just a couple of months earlier on April 9, 2021, Secretary Austin issued a memorandum “announcing immediate actions to counter extremist activity” within the Department of Defense; the directive also established a “Countering Extremist Activity Working Group (CEAWG),” designed to “build upon the lessons learned through individual unit stand downs.”

In addition, Austin ordered an independent study to determine “greater fidelity” on extremism in the ranks. We recently learned that the think tank tasked with the report, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society. A review of Pentagon data suggested “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years [emphasis added].”

So, three years later after General Milley’s “Inquiring Minds Want to Know” moment, we got the answer that anyone who has ever served in the military could have told him. Yes, there are extremists in the military just as there are in the general population, from which the military draws its force. But yet once again, bureaucrats have slandered the reputation of many honorable men and women who place their very lives in jeopardy defending this nation under the mantra of political correctness. Meanwhile Rome burns while we dither.

Image: U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.