Twenty-three House Republicans, led by Rep. Doug Lamborn (CO), are demanding that the Biden administration reinstate a Space Force commander that was fired after he warned that Marxists were infiltrating the U.S. Military.
In a letter addressed to John P. Roth, Acting Secretary of the Air Force, and General John W. Raymond, Chief of Space Operations, the lawmakers said that they had “grave concern for what appears to be an increasingly politicized environment developing in the Department of Defense which has recently manifested in the United States Space Force.”
Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier was removed from his command after political remarks that he made on a podcast about a book that he wrote.
The lawmakers wrote:
As you know, Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier, commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, was relieved of command last week by Lieutenant General Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command, “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead.” According to media reports, “This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast” and that there is currently an investigation underway “on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
Based on the interviews themselves, these statements by a Space Force spokesperson seem entirely divorced from reality. Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier went out of his way to explicitly express support and admiration for his chain of command. He said “all of my interactions with senior leaders in the Air Force and Space Force have been very positive” and “we’ve got very good leaders.” He goes on to say that they “care a great deal about our people” and “they care a great deal about the lethality of the force.” According to his interviews, he raised concerns expressed in his book and on the podcast through his chain of command and through the Air Force Office of Inspector General. Based on the outreach we have conducted in a very limited period of time, Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier has a stellar service record with no history of insubordination or malfeasance. We also know that the 11th Space Warning Squadron has long served as a premier command post for those officers serving at the top of their year group. These facts combine to paint Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier in a very positive light.
The lawmakers then highlighted politically-charged remarks that other U.S. Military officials have made in recent months, which align with the political Left, and noted how those officials were treated differently after making the remarks:
Additionally, we have plenty of recent examples of active duty military officers and senior enlisted leaders employing much more politicized speech than anything Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier said last week. Perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier observed the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Goldfein, say in June 2020, “Every American should be outraged that the conduct exhibited by police in Minneapolis can still happen in 2020.” While a reasonable person can share that sentiment, it is an extremely political statement for a Service Chief to make about a then-pending legal case. Or perhaps he read the tweets by then-Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright in which he accused the Air Force of racism because of “racial disparities in military justice and discipline among our youngest Black male Airmen and the clear lack of diversity in our senior officer ranks.” Again, while we can sympathize with Chief Master Sergeant Wright’s passion, these quite-political statements were made in-uniform from his official twitter account. Then there is the example of Colonel Jason Lamb, who anonymously ghost-wrote multiple articles to the Air Force Times and War on the Rocks that were extremely critical of various culture issues within the Air Force. Rather than being reprimanded, General Goldfein offered “Ned Stark” a job on the Air Force headquarters staff.
From earlier this year, we have the example of multiple senior leaders in the United States military attacking a private citizen and journalist, Tucker Carlson, for comments he made on his political opinion show. Space C0mmand Senior Enlisted Leader, Master Gunnery Sergeant Stalker; both the Commanding General and Deputy Commanding General of Army Training and Doctrine Command, General Paul Funk and Lieutenant General Ted Martin; Fort Hood Deputy Commanding General John B. Richardson IV; even the II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group weighed in to explicitly attack the views of a private citizen. There were no actions taken against any of these senior leaders who publicly, in uniform, and from official Department of Defense accounts lambasted a private U.S. citizen for having an opinion regarding defense policy which differed from the official DOD policy. In fact, the official Department of Defense website still proudly trumpets the headline “Press Secretary Smites Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military” in response to Tucker Carlson (emphasis added). We have never seen anything like it.
“Ultimately, there seems to be no material difference between the very public statements made by many senior leaders while in uniform and on official social media accounts, and those made by Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier in an unofficial capacity,” the lawmakers added. “The sole difference seems to be the ideological content of his remarks.”
The lawmakers said that far-left critical race theory was in fact “a school of thought ultimately and explicitly derived from Marxism.”
“Critical race theory is a subset of critical theory that was developed in the 1980s to focus on perceived legal injustice in the United States trafficking in racial and sexual stereotypes and collective guilt, and viewing any differences in outcomes as evidence of systemic injustice,” the lawmakers wrote.
“This is an inescapable fact that senior leaders in the Department of Defense can no longer continue to ignore. Now is a time for choosing: those leaders who are complicit with this poisonous philosophy which promotes racial essentialism and collective guilt in our beloved military will be judged by history accordingly. Promoting critical race theory will disrupt the good order and discipline of the Space Force and eviscerate our nation’s ability to attract patriotic talent to serve in uniform and fight our wars.”
The lawmakers demanded that Lohmeier be “immediately” reinstated, barring any violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that had not been publicly disclosed.