Afghan debacle led by woke military

 Fox News:

As the Senate Armed Services Committee gets ready to grill military leaders about the Afghanistan debacle on Tuesday, multiple recent Department of Defense officials tell Fox News that an internal focus on left-wing cultural battles likely distracted top brass from Afghanistan planning and military readiness.

One former senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that under President Biden, top officials held meetings on "culture war" issues every week, and sometimes more. The roster of those attending included Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the secretaries of all the military departments, that official said.

"They never met once on readiness. But they met every week on transgender issues, extremism, racism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, et cetera," a former official said, adding that that the focus likely distracted from Afghanistan planning.

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"There's only 168 hours in a week. They were spending all their time on these things, particularly early on. Yes, they were distracted," an official said.

The U.S. military was slow to adjust its withdrawal plans even as the Taliban began taking the country piece by piece throughout the summer, culminating in the fall of Kabul and the seizure of billions of dollars of U.S.-supplied military equipment.

"The political leadership are unfocused on mission. They're focused on just waging a culture war against our service members," an official said.
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... the information provided to Fox from insiders comes on the heels of a host of political controversies for the military, such as the White House's appointment of Bishop Garrison to senior adviser and head of the Pentagon’s "Countering Extremism Working Group".

Garrison tweeted in 2019 that Trump backers were supporters of racism, misogyny and extremism. "Support for [Trump], a racist, is support for ALL his beliefs," Garrison argued.

The Navy also faced criticism in March after leaked slides from the military’s "extremism" training said sailors could not discuss "politically partisan" subjects on duty but that advocating for Black Lives Matter while on duty was acceptable.

Another controversy came when the Navy placed "How to be an Anti-Racist" by Ibram Kendi on its recommended reading list. Despite its title, critics consider the book itself to be racist, citing words from the book such as "the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination" and the book's opposition to a color-blind society.
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The so-called "woke" ideology exemplified by that book has led to trainings that many also call racist. Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw have created a tip line for soldiers to report "woke" mismanagement and have received hundreds of tips.

"An airman told us their unit was forced into a racist exercise called a privilege walk, where members of the wing were ordered to separate themselves by race and gender, in order to stratify people based on their perceived privilege," Cotton said in hearings this year.

"One Marine told us that a military history training session was replaced with mandatory training on police brutality, White privilege and systemic racism," Cotton noted.

"A member of the Special Operations community has told us that they are being instructed that, ‘The U.S. special operations community is racist,’" the senator added.

Cotton’s report also cited servicemembers who were angry, citing a Navy lieutenant who said, "sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy."

"It’s criminal. They think my only value is as a Black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and we’ll all bleed the same color," the lieutenant continued.

A senior official who spoke to Fox noted that the trust squandered by "woke" political actions had devastating consequences, especially in light of Afghanistan.
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In a rational administration, both Austin and Milley would be fired by now.  Their concentration of CRT is having a devasting impact on the effectiveness of the military,  That Navy lieutenant is spot on in her evaluation.  The CRT garbage needs to be removed from military training and return the focus to the mission.