By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

The mission of the U.S. military is provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security, unfortunately the armed forces of the United States have now been infected with woke ideologies instead of focusing on its core mission of warfighting.

The current Biden administration policy is to replace warfighting doctrines with woke ideologies that place emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Just last month, the Air Force Academy has begun telling its cadets to avoid committing “microaggressions” by replacing terms such as “you guys” and “terrorists” with terms that have been deemed “less offensive.” Instructors tell cadets that they should use the terms “Parent” or “Caregiver,” rather than say “Mom and Dad.” You can say “Partner,” but not “Boyfriend/Girlfriend.” Under the Biden administration, our Air Force cannot call terrorists what they truly are, yet considers “Mom and Dad” to be offensive language. We have put pronouns over potency in our fighting forces.

This even extends to a fellowship program that excludes men who are biological males – only women and transgendered need apply.

Two sources inside America’s much touted elite Special Forces community, one a senior military commander on how he spends roughly two hours a day on diversity, equity and inclusion training. Another Special Forces soldier with over ten years’ experience left the military because of a woke ideology that infects his and his fellow soldiers ability to conduct training that would prove successful on the battlefield.

Instead of focusing on threats emanating from Russia or the ongoing Chinese threats over Taiwan or Iran’s continued aggression throughout the Middle East, the U.S. military is focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.  How does this translate in deterring war and ensuring the safety of the nation’s security?

Could this also be the reason why America is unable to find anyone willing and able to serve in uniform, if America is to retain its military edge it will have to figure out how to recruit and retain its troops!  This isn’t the way to do it!

Every military commander and national security strategist knows the military axiom articulated by the famous military strategist of Sun Tzu when he wrote in the “Art of War,” “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The nation’s military should know this is to include President Biden’s own Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, but I guess he forgot, Sun Tzu’s advice, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

With the low number of recruits entering the armed forces the U.S. will have to figure out how to prepare for future wars with a dwindling and leaner active force structure.

Current trends are disturbing to say the least, in order to meet the Pentagon’s overall active duty troop strength of 1.3 million; the military will need to recruit 150,000 new inductees across the various service branches.  With the end of the fiscal year the Pentagon is now around 15% short of its recruitment goal, with the largest gap being with the Army.  By the end of June the Army had only signed up 22,000 troops, which equates to 60% below its annual baseline target.  If current trends continue on pace the Army will be down to a force structure of only 445.000 troops, making it 40,000 smaller then congressionally mandated.

In August, Michael Bloomberg penned an article, “Military Recruitment Woes Endanger National Security,” A tight labor market is one reason for this state of affairs, but the bigger problem is the shrinking pool recruiters are drawing from. Because of rising rates of youth obesity and drug use, the share of Americans aged 17 to 24 who are eligible to serve without a waiver has fallen to 23%. Discounting those already enrolled in college, the number is only 12%. The military estimates that among those who are eligible, a mere 9% have a “propensity” to serve, the lowest since 2007, during the height of the Iraq War.

This might be one of the problems, but other issues need to be examined or explored.  Too many Americans who are eligible to serve are automatically disqualified because of past criminal history, drug history, educational deficiencies, and high rate of youth obesity, but another rational has to be explored as well.

Why would anyone want to serve in the nation’s armed forces today, when a major political party, to include a sitting U.S. president consistently degrades the very country these recruits are supposed to defend as systemically racist and irredeemable? Why would anyone want to serve when you have an administration who consistently is more concerned with diversity, equity and inclusion instead of focusing on the core mission of the military solely focusing on deterring war and protecting the homeland?

This hatred for America is indoctrinated early, as most public schools across America teach a deep seated hatred for the country, and consistently teach that the U.S. is systemically racist and needs to be fundamentally altered.

This begins by teaching that the founding fathers perpetrated the establishment of “white supremacy” and they should never be admired or emulated.

Recently we have witnessed attacks on the founders, the constitution, and such venerated leaders such as President Abraham Lincoln and President Ulysses Grant.

Why would anyone want to join the U.S. military when the nation suffered the most humiliating military defeat since Pearl Harbor with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?  The same political and military leaders who were responsible for this humiliation left Americans behind then add insult to injury resulted in the deaths of thirteen U.S. military personnel.

Why would families of those who otherwise would serve in uniform want their son’s or daughter’s to be sacrificed in endless wars perpetrated by both the Democrat and Republican Party elites while there children stay safe.

Why would someone serve when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley and the current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin both vowed before Congress, without any supporting evidence they are rooting out “white supremacy” in the ranks but when pressed could not even articulate what this even means.

Why would anyone enlist when the Department of Defense pursues progressive woke diversity-equity-inclusion training instead of focusing on warfighting or the core mission of the Department of Defense to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.

This currently being done today in the armed forces of the United States, so how would our military be ready if its needs to be called on to protect the security of the nation if the primary training is on diversity-equity-inclusion?

Is this is what our adversaries are focusing on, is Russia or Iran focused on diversity-equity-inclusion training? What about China, are they focused on diversity-equity-inclusion, or are they more focused on how to defeat the U.S. military?

Military Historian Victor Davis Hansen of the Hoover Institute commented that both Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin were asked to explain why the armed services were recommending soldiers read inter alia the often-discredited “antiracist” theories of Ibram X. Kendi. His polarizing doctrine asserts that the entire U.S. system of government, all social and political life, and our very culture are racist to core. As a result, Kendi’s solution requires radical and overt racial preferencing and discrimination supposedly to fight such an insidious system.

Hansen continued that the subtext of the entire testimony debacle was that the two titular heads of the military wished to reassure progressive majorities in the U.S. Congress that they were sympathetic to the woke movement and, along with other high-ranking officers, wanted publicly to virtue signal to that effect.

The nation’s political and military have instilled a priority of focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion—this is the bases they go by to use race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps.  Austin and Milley seemed entirely oblivious that the U.S. Army depends on generations of family loyalty to the armed forces.  Such heritage and legacy considerations have ensured a steady stream of recruits for front-line combat units.

Our military leadership seems to place greater emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion—focusing on utilizing race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps, without analyzing merit in their selection process.

What Austin and Milley forget is that the U.S. military depends on the generations of family loyalty to the armed forces; it’s rare for someone to join the military that didn’t have a family member who had previously served.  This unique heritage and legacy has always ensured a steady stream of recruits to the military that has been important in filling front-line combat units.

Our political and military leaders have forgotten that over the generations throughout history families, drawn from the preponderance of middle-class groups, who then served disproportionately in the various conflicts America became involved in the post-World War II era. The conflicts include Korea, Vietnam, and the Iraq and Afghan wars have borne this out.

With the entire fixation on race by our political and military leaders, the vast majorities of the casualties have been borne by Caucasian Americans; maybe instead of focusing on diversity-equity-inclusion training the U.S. military should return to its primary focus on deterring war and protecting the homeland.

Maybe then will you reverse the decline in military recruitment, but also send a strong message to our adversaries that America is not in decline which in turn prevent a conflict from arising; just look at history as a guide