WALSH: Military Leaders Insist ‘Inclusion’ Is Military’s ‘Strength.’ That’s Completely Insane.

While the leaders of other countries are focused on making their militaries into more effective and deadlier fighting machines which thrive at the central task of defeating the enemy, the folks in charge of our military have an entirely different set of priorities. For them, America’s greatest adversary isn’t China or any other world power, but intolerance. And the best way to defeat intolerance is through the promotion of “diversity” and “inclusion.” 

Once you understand that these are the new priorities of a military that has long been a petri dish for leftist social experimentation, the events of this past week become slightly more comprehensible. Without this background understanding, it might seem shocking and bewildering that a search for the phrase “military leaders” in Google’s news tab delivers not articles about those leaders developing devastating new battlefield technology or doing anything else to make the U.S. safer and more secure, but dozens of headlines like this one from the Military Times: “Senior leaders dunk on Tucker Carlson’s misogynistic comments about maternity flight suits.” NBC News: “Tucker Carlson slammed by military leaders for mocking pregnant service members.” Yahoo News: “Pentagon Takes Unprecedented Shot at Tucker Carlson for Dissing Military Diversity.” 

As the headlines suggest, the crisis that has attracted the attention of these fearless warriors is a politically incorrect opinion expressed by a cable news host. On his show a few days ago, Tucker Carlson had an appropriately derisive reaction to President Biden’s remarks on International Women’s Day, where Biden discussed his plans to get more women involved in combat, including pregnant women. Part of this plan, Biden said, is to offer “maternity flight suits” and to update hair style requirements. Carlson’s point about these plans is simply that they don’t seem designed to actually make the military better at what the military is supposed to do: protect the country and kill the enemy. These are changes based not on science and data but ideology.

He’s right, of course. And it is likely the fact that he is right which provoked military leadership to go into DEFCON 1. The Command Senior Enlisted Leader of United States Space Command, Master Gunnery Sergeant Scott H. Stalker, posted a video on Twitter blasting Tucker for causing “drama” and arguing that the cable host has no military experience. Also, Stalker noted, the decision to include more pregnant women in the armed forces was made by “medical experts.”

The problem with this argument is that it’s beside the point. The fact that he’s never served in the military does not preclude him from making common sense observations about the military. And the fact that “medical experts” said it’s okay to have pregnant women piloting aircraft does not mean that it is better, or even good, to have more pregnant women piloting aircraft. The first and primary question that the people running our military — whether civilian or enlisted — should be asking is whether any given change will help to make the military into a more effective fighting force. That should be the motivation behind every change because that is the fundamental purpose of the military. The problem isn’t just that the Biden Administration wants to include women in the military (they’ve already been included for decades, obviously), it’s that he wants to take active steps to recruit more and more women, and get them more involved in combat at every level. Again we must ask: Will this make the military better at killing the bad guys? 

The answer to that question is, pretty clearly, no. We can arrive at this conclusion through the employment of basic common sense. Those who require studies to confirm common sense judgments will be interested to know that the studies do indeed find what sensible people would expect them to find. As NPR reported in 2015:

A yearlong Marine Corps study trying to understand how gender integration would affect combat readiness has found that all-male units were faster, more lethal and able to evacuate casualties in less time. Overall, according to a summary of the study, all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in 69 percent of the tasks evaluated.

Faster and more lethal. All-male squads are faster and more lethal because men, in general, are faster and more lethal. This probably explains why the Navy SEALs opened their ranks to women years ago but still no woman has managed to become one. Admittedly I say this as someone who, like Carlson, did not serve, but it seems to me that when it comes to the U.S. military, faster and more lethal is good. Slower and less lethal is bad. If increased efforts to recruit and involve more and more women will have the effect of making our fighting forces slower and less lethal, than those efforts are bad. 

If the other side of this argument has evidence that, in fact, women make the military more lethal, then they ought to present it. But the troubling fact is that the other side isn’t apparently interested in having an argument about what policies will make the military better at killing the enemy. To them, killing the enemy ought not be a central function of the institution at all. As General Jacqueline Van Ovost explained in her own response to Carlson: “There are nearly 70K qualified, kick-ass female #USAF #Airmen. For years we have evolved & will continue to evolve, shedding antiquated policies preventing ANY woman from reaching their full potential. Inclusion is our strength — it’ll be the difference between winning & losing.”

Inclusion is our strength. This, of course, is madness. If inclusion is our strength, then why have bootcamp at all? Why have any physical or performance standards? Why have elite unites like the SEALs and the Rangers? The point, in all of these cases, is to exclude. To weed out the weakest and least capable. For the first two centuries of our nation’s existence — back when our military was toppling empires and winning world wars — it was thought that our strength was strength. We had the baddest and toughest and most well-trained men and the best strategic minds to lead and guide them. That is how we achieved world-changing victory after world-changing victory. Why mess with a winning formula?

But that was back when things were allowed to have a purpose that transcended the political. The Left won’t permit such trifles anymore. Now, all things in their control — and, let’s face it, the military is one of those things— have the primary purpose of advancing the leftist ideological agenda. So we must go out of our way to get women, even pregnant women, into fighter jets, and onto the battle field, and we must recruit transgender people and pay for their sex changes with tax money, and do a hundred other things that will in no way make us stronger or safer as a nation. The Powers That Be have decided that it is no longer the military’s job to be a military. If they are to be warriors anymore, they must be warriors of the social justice variety first and foremost.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.