How right-wing 'bloviation' over 'military wokeness' may harm the US armed forces: journalist

09 January 2023

In 2021, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was lambasted unmercifully by his critics after claiming that Democrats were to blame for a “woke, emasculated” U.S. military and praising the Russian military for being more masculine and macho. But Cruz is hardly the only far-right Republican who has claimed that the U.S. military is too “woke.” Everyone from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has also made that claim.

In his January 9 column, liberal Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman lays out some motivations behind Republicans claiming that Democrats are hurting the military by encouraging “wokeness.”

“Prominent conservatives regularly complain that the military is becoming ‘emasculated,’” Waldman explains. “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chip Roy (R-Tex.) put out a ‘report’ called ‘Woke Warfighters: How Political Ideology Is Weakening America’s Military.’ A GOP lawmaker expresses his outrage about a West Point course on ‘white rage,’ even though there’s no such course. The fantastical picture they’re trying to paint is one of a military that looks more like the gender studies department at Oberlin College than what it actually is — our enormous and sprawling machinery of war.”

Waldman adds, “Now that Republicans control the House, they’ll be holding hearings on ‘wokeness’ in the military, offering members a chance to emote angrily for the Fox News audience. ‘All this wokeness in the military, we are going to be aggressively trying to root that stuff out,’ says Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), who will likely chair the House Armed Services Committee.”

The Post columnist stresses, however, that there is no proof that what Republicans consider “wokeness” is harming the U.S. military at all.

“Lacking from any of this bloviation is evidence that the various things conservatives call wokeness, from trying to prevent extremism in the ranks to designing body armor that fits female soldiers, have harmed the military’s mission in any way,” Waldman argues. “Have there been attacks on the United States that weren’t stopped because soldiers were being forced to read books on critical race theory? What exactly can’t our military do that it used to be capable of, now that gay soldiers don’t have to stay in the closet? The critics can’t quite say. At least one lawmaker says parents of potential recruits are complaining to him about military wokeness. And where might they have learned about it? Fox News, perhaps?”

Waldman argues, in essence, that the U.S. military would become weaker if it only welcomed heterosexual white males.

“So, here’s the truth: The military has indeed changed, because American society has changed, and so has the nature of modern warfare,” Waldman stresses. “Our military needs not just guys with big muscles, but people with a wide variety of skills and knowledge. To be maximally effective, it can’t deprive itself of the talents of large swaths of the population. But conservatives — especially those whose ideas about war come mostly from the movies — don’t like many of those changes. While they sometimes claim to oppose ‘politicization’ of the military, what they actually want is for their cultural and political agenda to prevail there. They want the military to be a bulwark against progressive social change, where traditional gender norms are reinforced and reproduced.”

During the Barack Obama years, far-right Tea Party Republicans often accused then-President Obama of being anti-military. Never mind the fact that the U.S. had an enormous military budget under Obama, who favored a hawkish foreign policy during his eight years in office even though he believed the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the George W. Bush Administration was a huge mistake. Nonetheless, the claim by Republicans that Democrats are anti-military has persisted.

But in an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal on January 9, the publication’s conversative editorial board argues that defense spending may be “on the chopping block” in the U.S. House of Representatives under a new GOP majority.

“As we reported Saturday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with GOP dissenters puts defense spending on the chopping block,” the WSJ editorial board writes. "No less than Rep. Jim Jordan, spiritual leader of the House Freedom Caucus, confirmed this in response to a question from host Shannon Bream on ‘Fox News Sunday.’”

Jordan told Bream, “We got a $32 trillion debt. Everything has to be on the table. Maybe if we focused on that, helping the troops who do so much of the work out there for our great country, and maybe focus on getting rid of all the woke policies in our military, we’d have the money we need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve, we have the weapons systems and the training that needs to be done, so we’re ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet. That’s what we want to focus on.”

In response to Jordan’s comments, the WSJ editorial board writes, “If Congress wants to cut general officer and PR jobs, and reform military healthcare and pensions, by all means go for it. The latter two are where some money is, but neither is likely to happen this Congress. Woke training is a matter of culture, not money. The reality is that if defense is cut, what will go first is spending for operations and maintenance to sustain military readiness, as well as money for the weapons to deter China.”

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