Posted on 06/01/2025 4:29:43 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
On April 29, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that he was canceling Defense Department participation in actions generated by the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017. Hegseth posted on social media that it was “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING. WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”
Journalist Walter Pincus, who spent 40 years at the Washington Post covering topics ranging from nuclear weapons to politics, wrote in a recent column that Trump and Hegseth’s defense strategy is riddled with irrelevant political considerations resulting in a series of strange moves that must surely weaken national security.
In fact, as Pincus points out, what Congress had in mind in the Women, Peace and Security Act was to increase women’s participation in preventing and resolving conflict, countering violent extremism and building post-conflict stability around the globe. It is hard to believe that the program was “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists” when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem co-sponsored the bill when she was in Congress, and President Trump signed the measure in 2017.
Perhaps reminded of this doctrinal dilemma, Hegseth pivoted in a later tweet, arguing that “the woke & weak Biden Administration distorted & weaponized the straight-forward & security-focused WPS initiative launched in 2017.”.....
So far, the administration has fired five four-stars, including three women: the first female chief of naval operations, the commandant of the Coast Guard, and Navy three-star Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, former president of the Naval War College, who was the U.S. deputy military representative to NATO’s military committee in Brussels. Yet women make up less than 10 percent of general and flag officers.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I think we can stop here. Of course when those flag officers privileges are threatened who they gonna call?
This is EXACTLY what I voted for. Hearing the screaming and wailing of Leftists as the bloated ineffective, wasteful, woke monstrosity that is the pentagon gets FORCED...kicking and screaming....to refocus on its actual mission of killing people and breaking things....is music to my ears. We need much more of it. Fire far more flag officers. Also, I want to see a full on purge of Leftists throughout the military. There need to be tens of thousands of Leftist officers fired.
While the military may be top-heavy, it goes without saying that military firings should be based on merit, not political considerations or race-based policies. Hegseth’s purge appears to be totally political. “That’s a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine officer in Iraq and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico. .. Trump’s military purge began in February, when the president fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs CQ Brown — an African American, whom Moulton describes as “one of the most talented general officers of his generation” — for no articulated reason.
First of all what stands out is this Seth Moulton who is another big disappointment in the ranks of "veterans." Second, the person he is defending is CQ Brown. And third, flag and general officers are political. They were chosen that way by autopen and they support the DEI policies that make our military ineffectual first by perverting training time and second by destroying good order and discipline and third by elevating values having nothing to do either with military effectiveness in the field or with furnishing them with the most effective equipment the nation can provide.
American voters didn't want just "reform around the edges" - we wanted demolition of the status quo.
Enter Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Lee Zeldin, et al.
You and me brother. The most dangerous thing would be to operate the Pentagon in a Business as Usual mode.
Kick some ass, Pete!
“While the military may be top-heavy, it goes without saying that military firings should be based on merit, not political considerations or race-based policies.”
I don’t see how you separate merit and political considerations as a basis for firing. If a flag officer is actively pursuing DEI, trans-rights, and intersectionality, it may be presumed that officer has placed politics above building a merit based force. So the political considerations the author is so disdainful of actually provide the metric for determining that a flag officer is ineffective.
Do they have the date wrong, Trump was president in 2017.
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Excellent point.
Colonel, USAF JAG (Ret)
Now, if he’ll just get rid of the lawyers.
You don't get to be a flag officer if you are not political. That's the only way to get a star.
Just a bunch of handwringers moaning that the whole world is changing. In this case, the WPS may be suited to some venuesm but not the DOD.
Yes we did, because it was needed. What we had no longer worked at all except for the few in high places who reaped rewards personally.
The date is correct. But, as the article points out, the Biden admin used the program NOT to benefit women, but to promote their DEI (or, actually DIE) agenda.
The date isn’t wrong. Trump signed the order in ‘17 and it was legit until president butts-been-wiped perverted it.
One of the things that I actually do appreciate about Leftists is, having over the last 30 or 40 years read so much of the pap they put out, that I can often tell exactly the point they are going to make without even reading past the first sentence, sometimes, even the first few words.
They have saved me so much time in my life by not forcing me to expend time that I will never get back.
As an added benefit, I can choose not to soil my browser by avoiding navigating to the source to read it.
Granted, I included the title in my snap analysis, so it was a form of cheating...:)
All in all: This is what I voted for.
In WWII military effectiveness included maintaining cohesion on the European front. Generals who spoke disparagingly of the British were immediately removed by Eisenhower. It’s politics, but it’s also war.
Looking into Mr. Zirin’s background, I do not see evidence of any experience in military matters.
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