Remember General Mark “Thoroughly Modern” Milley? As Chairman as the Joint Chiefs of Staff he called his Chinese counterpart and told him should America plan action against China, he’d let them know in advance. He pushed our military to new lows of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity madness. It was he whose priority was to discover “white rage,” among our forces. So determined was he to find and obliterate “extremism”—anything other than leftist thought, word and deed—he sent our military on a hunt for the thousands of domestic terrorists he was certain lurked in the ranks. Not only were few, if any, found, Milley, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have presided over a recruiting deficit that has emboldened our enemies, horrified our allies, and directly threatens national security. 

A recently released independent study showed that there was no extremism problem in the United States military, despite the Biden Pentagon making it a top priority to root out alleged extremists.

The study, which was commissioned by the Department of Defense, conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, and publicly released just four days before Christmas, “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society.

Image: Mark A. Milley With Christopher C. Miller at Arlington National Cemetary

Wikimedia Commons.org. Public Domain.

This is hardly surprising. The system, including basic training, is designed to weed out people unfit to serve.

The report noted that the Pentagon’s own data showed there were fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years.

This too is unsurprising. One of the primary duties of the Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) Corps is ensuring such problems are detected and eradicated. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is also hell on such problem troops.

However, the Biden administration’s — as well as the establishment media’s — focus on so-called extremism in the military came after some veterans were found to have participated in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Biden’s then-top military adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, famously told members of Congress during a hearing that he wanted to understand the “white rage” that he believed was behind the riot.

And some of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first moves as defense secretary were to stand up a “Countering Extremism Working Group” and to implement a force-wide “stand down” for commanders to discuss extremism with their troops.

Again, an unnecessary waste. The military runs on discipline, and expected standards of behavior are intensively taught from a recruit’s first day in basic training.

The IDA looked into whether currently-serving troops were among those charged in relation to the events of January 6, 2021 and found fewer than 10 who were charged.

“Of the more than 700 federal cases in which charges were publicly available a year after these events, fewer than ten were for individuals who were serving in the military at the time,” the study said.

“Based on the size of the military relative to the general population and considering the rate of charges for males and females, we find no evidence that service members were charged at a different rate than the members of the general population,” the study added.

The study also found that there were only 73 veterans out of the more than 700 people charged, and that on average, they were separated from the military for nearly 15 years.

A Wall Street Journal editorial board piece noted that the study was a “welcome rebuke to the narrative that the military is a breeding ground for domestic terrorism.”

One would think people like Milley and Austin, who served for decades, would know better.  Obviously, they were careerists, attuned far more to political than military reality and needs. Our military members are more than smart enough to recognize the difference and quickly lose faith in “leaders” that hate them or see them as pawns to be played for career advancement.

The piece also credited the study’s authors for warning that the risk of widespread polarization and division in the ranks “may be a greater risk than the radicalization of a few service members.”

Covid mandates, failure to protect our troops and deter our enemies, the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, DEI lunacy, and every aspect of woke orthodoxy have been imposed on our military at enormous financial and personal cost. DEI bureaucrats, in uniform and out, are Soviet-style political officers, enforcing political uniformity and ruthlessly punishing thought crimes. General Milley has, thankfully, retired. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin continues to damage our military in his Javert-like hunt for virtually non-existent “extremists,” trans and pronoun-deniers.

Is it any wonder the sons and daughters of the regions and families that have traditionally produced our warriors are opting for different, and far less politically hazardous, careers?

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.