James Hasson - Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging Americas Military

To Lieutenant Colonel Ed Doyle, US Army, who inspired me to join the Army; and to my grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. Rice, USMC

T he Army that I entered as a second lieutenant during President Obamas initial years in office was nothing like the Army I left in late 2015. It was smaller, less-equipped, and struggled to maintain its vehicles and aircraft. Sequestrationthe deep and broad cuts in defense spending imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011and the massive personnel cuts ordered by President Obama provoked a readiness crisis that received, fortunately, a great deal of attention. I lived through it myself. For several months in 2013, at the height of sequestration, my unit was told not to use our vehicles during training because we lacked the funds to repair them if they broke down. We deployed to Afghanistan the following year well aware that we could never recover those lost training hours.

But the lasting readiness crisis is not the disrepair into which our planes, ships, and armored vehicles have fallen. Those problems, as real and grave as they are, can be remedied by a series of appropriations bills that prioritize necessary programs over congressional pet projects and pork-barrel spending. No, the lasting readiness crisis is the priority that has been given to progressive hobbyhorses over the needs of ground soldiers, and it is the continuing result of the Obama administrations eight-year social engineering campaign against our armed forces. The effects of this campaign are often hidden from the public, partly because they are harder to quantify than troop levels or combat-ready brigades and partly because only a narrow sliver of society experiences them directly. But the progressive policies of the Obama era, if unreversed, (and halfway through the Trump era, they have not been fully reversed), pose a greater long-term threat to the readiness of our armed forces than any budget cut. They will continue to undermine readiness long after we rebuild the manpower of our hollowed-out force and return to a pre-2009 training tempo.

The troubling policies discussed in this book reach the very core of our military. They invert the traditional military ethos, placing the affirmation of individual identity above the needs of the unit. They shift the militarys resources and focus away from the central task of preparing for and winning wars. And because they continue to receive support in spite of their damage to combat readiness, they suggest that the military has a new purpose. These policies were not imposed overnight or unintentionally. Throughout his two terms of office, President Obama appointed hard-left ideologues to some of the most influential national security positions. Some of these figures are well known, others less so. But all of them played a role in shaping the military as it now stands. This book tells that story.

To be sure, veteransand for that matter, most active service members more than six months removed from boot campare notorious for lamenting the softness of the current force and recalling the harder standards of the old days. I pray that this bookand the service members it quoteswill not be viewed in that light. This is not a rant about the glory days. I offer a comprehensive discussion of purposeful, monumental changes to the militarys culture. I examine policies set by persons who had no business setting military policy and had no idea what damage they were inflicting.

Certainly, progressive social policies are not the only contributors to the readiness crisis. A broken acquisition system and rigid promotion But some of those problems have been around for decades and are categorically distinct from the problems I write about; the others are the products of broader societal trends that are outside the scope of this book. It is important, however, to keep these other issues in mind as you read those discussed in this book, as they are the backdrop against which changes to the militarys culture and policies are being made.

The issues I discuss in this book, moreover, are the subjects of some of the most contentious debates of our era, though they are among the least understood by the general public. It is all the more difficult to discuss these changes openly and honestly because the military is now manned by a tiny fraction of American society and military bases are often far from population centers, keeping much of the country in the dark about the damage these policy changes are doing at the ground level.

The changes I write about in this book took place during my military service, including my preparation for and deployment to eastern Afghanistan, so I am keenly aware of their effects. But this book is not a memoir. It is a cautionary work of journalism, a warning about the state of our armed forces, and an appeal to the American people to demand changes. The stakes are too high to leave these policies unchallenged.

Some of these topics are sensitive and complex. They are not easy to discuss in polite company, so many people shy away from them. Believe me, they are no easier to write about. But the well-being of our military affects the safety of every member of our societyto say nothing of the safety of the twenty-year-old soldiers we send to the battlefieldand this conversation is therefore necessary. I am not staking out a position in Americas culture war. I am simply making an assertion about the fundamental purpose of our military and forcefully arguing against any policies that are incompatible with that purposewhatever the merits of those policies might be in other contexts. And as you will see in the chapters to come, the social engineering of the hard left is incompatible with the militarys sole mission of winning wars.

No one should think that these problems ended when Barack Obama left the White House. The disastrous effects of his policies on military readiness continue to the present day, and the longer those policies are left in place, the more damaging they become. Thats why this conversation is so necessary.

I am not arguing that the military should follow conservative policies and shun liberal policies. The men and women of our armed forces hold views that span the political spectrum. I know infantrymen who were Bernie Bros in 2016 and Apache pilots who were early Trump supporters. No, the problem with left-wing identity politics in the military is not the distinction between the right politics and the wrong politics. As former Secretary of Defense and Marine General James Mattis has pointed out, the military is conservative in the most traditional sense of the wordit embraces organizational conservatism as a fundamental principle, with an eye towards mission accomplishment above all, versus a social or fiscal conservatism. The problem is imposing on the military political goals of any sort instead of letting it pursue its apolitical mission.

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 directed the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission to assess the militarys ability to execute the National Defense Strategy and examine and make recommendations with respect to the national defense strategy of the United States. The commission, composed of national security experts selected by the House Armed Services Committeehalf by the Democrats and half by the Republicansissued its report in 2018.

Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general who directs national defense studies at the Heritage Foundation, summarizes the key conclusions of the report: