Mattis wants to reorient defense education efforts to winning wars

Fox News:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wants to overhaul military education and training to “regain” the art of warfighting following complaints by thousands of service members that their time is being wasted by hours of mandatory training, according to a new memo obtained by Fox News.

The training that is the subject of complaints covers everything from alcohol use to active shooters to sexual harassment to stress management.

Addressing the service secretaries and chiefs of the Armed Forces, Mattis has ordered the formation of a new working group to “determine changes to military personnel policies” to “equip more ready and lethal forces.” The working group will include the second in command of each branch of the U.S. military and report to the deputy secretary of defense and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The secretary wants each service to examine its military education to “regain a concentration on the art and science of warfighting” and look into the hours of “mandatory force training that does not directly support core tasks” such as flying jets, jumping out of planes, and hundreds of other U.S. military missions essential to defending the United States and its allies.

One official with knowledge of the discussions surrounding the memo told Fox News, “service members spending too much time on senseless training that is really a waste of time.” One U.S. military officer said there is “too much sexual harassment training” and not enough time spent at places like the shooting range, for example.
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This makes a lot of sense.  It is another example of how the "social justice warriors" are distracting the military from its core mission.  AS I have said before, fighting a war is hard dangerous work and it should not be made harder by imposing distractions upon the troops.

Dan McLaughlin makes a similar point:

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The military is no place for social experiments, or really any other social-policy battles, from the Left or the Right. The stakes are too high. The only issue in determining who serves in the military should be military fitness, readiness, and loyalty. Any deviation from those priorities gets people killed. Unfortunately, liberals and progressives have a habit of (1) hand-waving away any issues presented by, say, introducing women into previously all-male combat units, and then (2) setting about complaining that the culture of those units needs to change to accommodate women. We can expect the same pattern here.
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